Round-up of Apple’s WWDC 2012 Event!

Apple’s WWDC 2012 event had no real major surprise announcements this year. A few things were expected and Apple has quietly and efficiently delivered them. A new MacBook Pro with Retina Display, iOS 6  and many more updates.

I personally do not own Apple made gadgets, which means I do not take much interest in Apple events, except with the normal curiosity of a technology blogger. I followed the event on various social media websites and also the updated list of announcements on Apple.com.

Here is a quick round-up of the announcements made at the WWDC 2012 event.

MacBook Pro with Retina Display

Details:

• Retina Display with 2880 X 1800 resolution.
• 2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor and 8 GB RAM.
• Memory Sotrage will be upto 256 GB.
• Battery should last upto 7 hours if surfing on your Wifi network. It will ahve upto 30 days standby time.
• It wil be equipped by a 720p FaceTime HD Camera.
• Finally MacBook Pro will run on OS X Lion.
• The price of the new MacBook Pro will be $2199.

iOS 6

The new iOS 6 will be available for iPod, iPhone and iPads later in the year from September to November. I think it will probably be made available around the time iPhone 5 is expected, which will be just before the holiday season.

Maps

• Apple has built a new app for Maps on their devices. This was expected as it has acquired new companies that would have helped it with mapping. More importantly for it means not relying on Google Maps for their phones and tablets.
• It will support 3D maps with flyover mode which is sounds interesting. It might help people navigate a lot better.
• It will also support crowd sourcing information from iPhone users anonymously to gain information on traffic.
• The 3D maps are integrated with SIRI and Apple has partnered with Yelp to give its local business search a big boost.
• The maps app looks pretty but at the moment it seems to cover only North America which, so it might be not as useful for users in Europe and Asia.

Siri

iPhone 4S saw the introduction of SIRI. The voice app that allows your iPhone to literally talk to you. Actually the more important feature of SIRI is to listen to voiced commands and show up relevant information.

• SIRI will now allow users to dictate a Tweet or Facebook update from their iPhone or iPad directly.
• Users will be able to launch an app with voice command.
• SIRI will be available optimized with to understand local languages in upto 15 countries.

Facebook integration

iOS has had close Twitter integration which has been appreciated. A lot of people expected Facebook integration this time and they were not disappointed.

• Users will be able to post directly to Facebook from their camera or even photos they are viewing.
• Facebook users will like that their friend information will be integrated into Contacts and all Facebook Events will be integrated into Calendar on iOS 6.
• Users can now directly ‘Like’ Apps or Songs they have on iTunes or the App Store.

Safari Browser

• Safari for mobile has some interesting new features with the main inclusion tab sync. This was expected and was probably inspired from Chrome for Android.
• Users will be able to save entire webpages offline to read later unlike earlier when it could save only links offline.
• A single tap full-screen option will also be made available.

Other Updates

• iOS 6 will also ship with Passbook, a new system to keep which allows users scan their iPhone and iPod Touch for airports check ins, coupons and other tickets to events.
• FaceTime will be enabled for cellular networks along with the current Wi-Fi.
• iPhone users will have the option to ‘reply with message’ to incoming calls.
• iOS 6 will be also feature a redesigned iTunes, App Store and iBookstore.
• China users seem to feature big on Apple radar, as host of small changes are introduced to make iOS 6 more compatible for Chinese users. This will include Baidu as a built-in option with Safari.

You can read complete list of iOS 6 updates here.

OS X Mountain Lion

OS X Mountain Lion was actually announced a few months ago. They had better integration of Twitter, photo sharing directly to Flickr and even unlimited messaging among Apple devices.

• Some of the newer notable updates are that now Safari browser will have a search bar and address bar rolled into one. This again seems inspired by a certain browser called Chrome.
• It also will support Facebook integration later in the year. This is being consistent with the iOS 6 update.
• Check here for the full list of 200+ updates on OS X Mountain Lion.

I guess the focus will now shift to all the announcements that might be expected at Google IO 2012 which will be held on 27th – 29th June 2012.

Do drop in your comments.