2012 Apple WWDC Keynote Recap - Key Numbers, New iOS 6 and the new Apple Maps

Experts – Glenn Letham – Word on the street is that Apple is moving to kill GPS Devices, reduce dependence on Google

If you happen to be like me and didn’t manage to get to San Fran in person for 2012 WWDC that’s ok as the Monday keynote presentation along with all the iOS 6 announcements are now online for your viewing – about 2hrs in length. The following are some of the key numbers I picked up on, a few items that I thought were way cool and/or interesting, and some details about the new Apple Maps (perhaps the biggest news) coming with iOS 6

WWDC Numbers:

23 – This was the 23rd WWDC
1 hour 43 minutes – time to sell out WWDC 2012 (it took 8 days 2 yrs ago)
60 – countries represented at the event
112 – sessions at WWDC
125 – lab sessions at WWDC
1000 – Apple Engineers on site

App Store by the Numbers:

Over 400,000,000 accounts (and credit card data!)
650,000 Apps
225,000 apps specifically for iPad
over $5 billion paid out to Developers
App store in 120 countries (new to 32 countries this month)
155 countries total

"our goal is to do great work… and make a difference in your lives"

More Numbers dropped during the Keynote:

2X – MacBook Air is now 2X faster
3 – USB3 added to MAcbook and is 10X faster
720p – HD camera support for facetime on macbook air
5 – 5hrs battery time on MAcbook Air
$999 & $1099 – MAcbook Air pricing (11")
1199 & 1499 – MAcbook Air 13"
13 and 15 – MAcbook Pro comes in 13" and 15" models
2880×1800 – over 5 million pixels in the next Gen MAcbook pro
365 million iOS devices – most users running the latest version
About 7% Android users are running the latest OS compared to 80% iOS users up to date
7 billion push notifications being sent every day
84 of 100 top apps send push notifications
140 million iMessage users sending 1 billion messages a day
Twitter has a 3X growth increase in iOS users
10 billion tweets sent from iOS 5
over half of photos shared on Twitter come from iOS devices

Source: Uploaded by user via Glenn on Pinterest

Announcing iOS 6

200 enhancements
Addition/update to SiRi (reminders, chat, notices, navigation, search)
Addition of many sports search results
Tighter facebook integration
Multiple language support
Facetime over cell network
Unifying phone number and Apple ID

Cool Stuff at 6…

geofenced reminders in the iOS mobile client. When you miss a call you can be sent a reminder when you leave a specified area (fence)
Shared photo streams – save photos to a stream (collection) and setup sharing with friends and available via multiple devices
Set VIP – mark a contact as a VIP and receive notifications when they message you, easier to locate historical messages too
Passbook – stores all your purchased tickets or flight checkin boarding passes and stores them in a central repository for quick access
more/tighter facebook integration (good for developers I suppose)

New In iOS 6 – Maps – built from the ground up

"Doing all the cartography ourselves"
Local Search – 100 million business listings included in the DB integrated with Yelp
Building a traffic service – speeds, incidents, using anonymous real-time crowd sourced data (that’s because iPhone users cannot opt out)
Built-in turn-by-turn navigation, with ETA provided as well as re-route alternatives being offered
Navigation operates while in lock screen
SiRi integration so you can ask SiRi questions while being routed
Their "fun" feature is flyover, captured via planes and other sensors to deliver
Impressive, free turn by turn navigation
Some limitations include the amount of 3D data available (only select cities) and there’s no street view data layer (yet)
No integrated transit apps but Apple says they will feature and build in "your" 3rd party transit apps
See more http://www.apple.com/ios/ios6/maps/

So who is Apple working with as partners to bring you Apple Maps on iOS6? According to this attribution page it appears data is coming from the following companies:

AND
Corelogic
DigitalGlobe
DMTI
Intermap
LaeadDog
Localeze
Map Data Sciences
MDA
Urban Mapping
TomTom
and more!

Source: apple.com via Glenn on Pinterest

Availability
The iOS 6 beta software and SDK are available immediately for iOS Developer Program members at developer.apple.com. iOS 6 will be available as a free software update for iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, the new iPad, iPad 2 and iPod touch (fourth generation) this fall. Some features may not be available on all products.

iOS 6 will ship this fall…

My quickTake…

iOS 6 is truly impressive. Something that is very wild is the fact that iOS users seem to do a great job, blowing away Android users, at running the latest OS on their devices. The number of apps in the iTunes store is staggering although for developers this really is the avenue to take $$$, particularly for consumer apps. The integration of SiRi into the OS making her available on iPad and the continued improvements to SiRi’s capabilities is definitely a wow factor – SiRi + Maps and anything location aware for that matter is HUGE! Having another player in the free navigation space is really going to kill any of those developers out there trying to push their $99 navigation apps or specialized PNDs on consumers… better start thinking of a new business model I’d say! I also have to wonder what will happen with the @Waze service, although as it really is a community of networked sensors perhaps the community’s loyalty to the app will keep them faithful – waze does offer a gaming experience and robust community to navigation and routing as well so that may be an attractive option to users. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of 3D and 3D maps on my mobile devices and really don’t find it that useful so any addition of 3D cities to the offering wouldn’t really sway me in any way, it’s cool I guess but beyond that meh! I can find awesome 3D imagery, flyovers and the likes using Bing maps (Microsoft imagery is fabulous, and Navteq maps and imagery also has a large WOW factor. The lack of street view imagery is definitely a negative as is the lack of a native transit data layer, although I did find it interesting that transit was pointed out in the keynote
and the company plans to integrate third party apps for this functionality – without using Google’s transit data capabilities this will be very tough to replicate I’d have to think. For more commentary and thoughts on the new iOS Maps be sure to read the referenced blog posts (below) from Peter and Marc.

For some fine reading I suggest you check out the follow summaries on the Maps announcement:

and Apple Previews iOS 6 With All New Maps, Siri Features, Facebook Integration