Apple WWDC 2017 keynote highlights: iOS 11 with ARKit, smarter Siri, HomePod and new iMacs

Apple WWDC 2017 video 

End of Live updates

Apple WWDC 2017 keynote announcements below

12.56 am: Tim Cook is revising the announcements and there’s been a tonne of them. We are more excited by how Apple is integrating machine learning and augmented reality with the iOS 11. Also, the new iPad Pro looks amazingly powerful.

12.52 am: HomePod will be priced $349 when it comes later this year. India not in first wave. So don’t get too excited. It will start shipping in December in US, UK and Australia first. Later it will come to other parts of the world.

12.49 am: It comes with Siri understanding what you want to know or play. HomePod is free-form Siri as Phil Schiller puts it. This is going to be fun. It’s also going to answer all your regular Siri queries. We need to see how much that will be in a market like India, where Siri has traditionally not been that smart. Plus it will work with HomeKit devices as well.

12.47 am Apple might be late to smart speakers, but it seems to be doing its best to make its HomePod the best sounding one. It works with Apple Music subscription, and comes with unprecedented access to music and intelligence about what you like to listen on the service. Works with an array of six microphones. And you can just say “Hey Siri” to get the HomePod to respond to this.

12.45 am: Apple’s HomePod detects the space around it, and adjusts audio accordingly.

Apple’s HomePod speaker is here.

12.42 am: Apple hopes to reinvent music in our home. So this 7-inch speaker has a 3D fabric cover and under it is a 7-tweeter pack. It has a 4-inch woofer.  Powered by an A8 chip, Apple calls it the biggest brains in a speaker.

12.41 am: Apple Phil Schiller on stage. A new smart home speaker that sounds great, well this is the smart speaker we have been hearing about.

12.39 am: Apple CEO Tim Cook has one last thing to discuss. He’s talking about Apple Music, and AirPods. Apple wants to reinvent Home Music, and now it is time for the speaker to be unveiled.

12.31 am: Handwritten notes will now be searchable, while notes will come with built-in document scanner. Apple Pencil is deeply integrated into Notes as well.

12.25 am: There are some new features in iOS for iPad. Drag and drop, multi-tasking that’s more intuitive, and even keyboard flicks. And yeah, the Files app is coming to iPad with third party support too.

12.23 am: 64GB on board storage will be standard for Apple iPad. The price is $649 for the new 10.5-inch version.

12.21 am: The demos this time have really been awesome. At least, they have managed to wow the developers. 10-hour battery life continues with the new iPad Pro. iPad Pros now have the same camera as the iPhone 7. Apple could have thought of the dual camera too.

12.17 am: Powered by the A10x fusion chip, Apple’s new iPad Pro will be faster than the earlier versions.

12.15 am: Apple iPad Pro will have a feature called ProMotion, which pushes the display to 120Hz refresh rate for smoother visuals. Double of the earlier refresh rate of 60Hz. Apple Pencil latency is now down to 20 milliseconds.

12.15 am: Looks like the new Apple iPad Pro is coming today. iPad Pro is getting an upgrade. The 9.7-inch model is most popular one, but Apple now has an iPad Pro with 10.5-inch Retina Display and still weighing at one pound. This means it’s big enough for a full-size onscreen keyboard, and Smart Keyboard as well. Support for more than 30 languages at launch.

12.09 am:  Apple doesn’t really believe in half-baked experiences. It has brought in ARKit at a juncture where the experience stands out from the rest.

12.06 am: Apple opening up the ARKit will make it the largest AR platform in the world.

12.05 am: But there is Augmented Reality too, and we have seen that with the success of Pokemon GO. Now ARKit is opened up for developers. The demo is getting a lot of cheers from the developers. They know the possibilities of this are endless. Relies on sensors to recognise the image, and rendering. Apple’s ARKit will take advantage of the iPhone’s hardware.

12.02 am: Machine learning is going to be bigger on iOS. It’s already there working in the background. ML APIs are being opened up for developers. Vision API is coming to Apple iOS 11. It’s on device recognition, which means the machine learning tasks are being carried out on the device itself.

11.53 pm: App Store is going to be completely redesigned. It reminds us more of Apple Music. It will have a today tab, where you will get featured apps. Games will be a new tab too. In-app purchases will be showcased on the App store itself.

Apple iOS 11 will see a redesigned App Store.

11.52 pm: Some big news about the App Store on iOS 11. Phil Schiller is on stage. And his focus is the App Store. 500 million weekly visitors. 180 billion apps downloaded till date. $70 billion paid out to developers so far.

11.51 pm: Apple Music now tells you what your friends are listening to. So stop listening to Honey Singh on your public profile.

11.49 pm Oho… so speaker capability in Apple Home. Does this mean there is a speaker coming?

11.47 pm: Apple Maps will now have detailed maps of some malls, and airports across US and the world. It gets even better. iOS 11 will activate do not disturb when it learns you are driving. This is how machine learning should work.

11.45 pm: Live Photos is clearly a big thing for Apple. There is a lot of time being spent on its new features. Machine learning is being integrated seamlessly into a lot of the iOS 11 features.

11.42 pm: Siri is doing a lot more to learn how to use your device. Of course, as Apple says most of this machine learning will be done on the device itself to protect a user’s privacy. Siri might soon recommend news items to you depending on your interests.

11.41 pm: The Control Centre has got an update that makes it easier to use.

11.38 pm The camera is getting updates too. The depth API will help developers make new apps that use this feature of the iPhone 7 plus and newer phones. Depth API will help developers as well. Live Photos can now be trimmed.

11.36 pm: Siri now sounds better and more natural. It will support translations for a bunch of languages. Apple is clearly going after a Google.

Apple iOS 11: Some of the new features showcased, including a smarter Siri. 

11.32 pm: Apple Pay now has person to person payments and it’s enabled via chat.

11.30 pm: Now, iOS announcements. Cooks takes a dig at Android fragmentation. Just 7 per cent Android users on latest version compared to 83 percent on iOS10. Apple’s Craig Federighi on stage to discuss iOS 11’s key features.

11.28 pm: It will have 128GB ECC memory. 4TB SSD. Yeah, we have no clue what all this can create. Two 5K displays running simultaneously for sure. The iMac Pro will cost $4999 and will come in December.

11.24 pm: Yeah, it’s going to be the most powerful Mac ever made and has a new thermal architecture to keep it cool, really cool. Greater than 80 per cent increase in cooling capacity. 8-core Xeon processor and a 10-core Xeon processor and an 18-core one as well. This is really uncharted territory. Plus, Radeon Vega graphics with 11 Teraflop compute power.

11.22 pm: Apple is also updating its MacBook Pro, MacBook lineup. All of these will ship today. Apple MacBook Air is getting an upgrade in Ghz as well. New MacBooks have Intel 7th generation processor.

11.18 pm: Darth Vader has really come to life. Is VR really here for Mac users?

11.17 pm: Apple is pushing through tonnes of device updates at this event. The entire iMac range has been refreshed with better displayed, graphics and RAM. The demo is using HTC Vive if you didn’t notice

Apple just upgraded the iMacs.

11.14 pm: Three USB C connectors on the upgrades. New iMac line will get better graphics too — 80 per cent faster.

11.12 pm: Apple iMacs are getting refreshed. The display has 500 nits brightness, Intel 7th generation processor, great for playing high-quality video. The 21.5-inch iMac with 32GB RAM and 27-inch can go up to 64GB RAM.

11.09 pm:  Yes, Apple talks VR. So Metal 2 will optimise for VR and Steam VR will come to the Mac soon. Apple will double down on pro-content creation. Metal for VR is coming to High Sierra.

11.06 pm: Apple File System is the new default and APFS 64-bit. This new file system is made for our times, and not a decade old system like the one before. It’s going to be much faster and secure.

10.59 pm: Now for the Macs. MacOS Sierra is being ‘perfected’ and will be called macOS High Sierra. Safari is world’s fastest browser with the new MacOS version. But why can’t we get it on other platforms? It will come with auto-play blocking. This is big. Google is getting a hit here with Safari blocking tracking across sites. So no bugging ads based on your browsing history. Mail now has spotlight search and Split View for composing.

10.58 pm:  The Apple watchOS4 has updates that will make people use the apps inside the watch much more. That’s been an issue with the device, it’s a bit too smart for users who forget about so many of the features. The free update for watchOS 4 will come in fall along with iOS 11.

10.54 pm: Apple Music app to be redesigned with auto syncs, which can be navigated with the Digital Crown. That’s going to make the experience real easy for those who don’t want to carry the phone around on workouts or runs.

Apple watchOS 4 Siri face.

10.52 pm:  More motivations updates will come on Activity app now on the watch. This is very similar to the ones on Fitbit and will also comes with monthly goals too, all customised for the users. Also, more pool swim workouts. watchOS 4 will come with two-way data exchange with gym equipment using NFC. Supported by the big gym manufactures this fall onwards.

10.50 pm: Apple Watch is number one all over the world, and there are some new updates coming. watchOS 4 will have a new watch face with Siri and pushes relevant information curated with machine learning. There is a new kaleidoscope face, which looks really good. Mickey and Minnie is joined by Toy Story characters.

Apple watchOS 4 has a three new faces, and an improve Workout app as well.

10.48 pm: Apple’s watchOS has a new Siri Face, which is driven by Apple’s voice-assistant. The face will dynamically update depending on the time of the day, it will show relevant options depending on the time of the day. Intelligence practices on your wrist, says Apple.

10.47 pm: Apple Watch number one selling smartwatch and in customer satisfaction, says Tim Cook. “Some exciting updates to the watchOS,” announces Cook.

10.46 pm: Amazon is coming to Apple TV app and Apple TV later this year. This is big news as Prime Video is gaining in popularity across the world.

10.43 pm: A lot of them are student developers. The youngest is Yuma Sorianto from Australia is 10, but has five apps on the store. In contrast, Mosako is 82 years old and published her first app earlier this year.

10.41 pm: All right that video was really nice. Now Apple CEO Tim Cook is on stage. “One thing that hasn’t changed: Our commitment to the developer community. This will be the best and biggest WWDC ever.” Apple developer community: 16 million registered developers. “We added 3 million last year alone,” says Cook. 5300 developers are attending the WWDC event. Also most student developers ever.

10.40 pm: Apple’s event has begun with a video. The guy has the original iPod in it. A sign of things to come? Oh, and all the apps are going down and have stopped functioning in that video. Looks like a nightmare.

10.32 pm: Silence on stage. The logo has changed. WWDC 2017 is about to start.

Apple WWDC 2017 is all set to start as the Apple logo has changed.

10.27 pm: And Apple events start without fanfare or drum roll. Apple CEO Tim Cook just walks in and the even starts. Talk about being understated.

10.22 pm: Apple’s live stream video is now up, and this means the event should be starting soon. Get ready folks.

10.17 pm: Apple’s WWDC keynote line up will look something like this: iOS 11, macOS, watchOS and tvOS, new MacBooks and the Siri speaker. Will there be something more? Let’s see.

10.08 pm: Also, the art work this time, which is all animated inside the venue, again highlights how Apple is committed to ensuring a multicultural tone to whatever it does. This is an important message to send out now in the US and Apple has not shirked from doing so. At the keynote be sure to see all cultures and voices represented and that is one thing that sets Apple apart from most of the other tech companies.

10.04 pm: I am looking forward to how Apple takes the narrative ahead when it comes to artificial intelligence and machine learning, both fields where Google has made serious strides.

10.03 pm: Exactly 30 minutes to go. People are still flowing in. There is already buzz about if there will be one more thing, and what it would be if at all. What are your guesses? Tell us in the comments below.

10.01 pm: Apple could also showcase new iPads at the event. This is based on some recent leaks.

9.56 pm: We are inside the venue and it’s actually bigger than the hall at the Bill Graham Centre, or at least so it would seem. The hall is about half-full now with about 30 minutes left for Apple CEO Tim Cook to take stage with the keynote.

Apple CEO Tim Cook will soon be on stage to open WWDC 2017. (Express photo: Nandagopal Rajan)

9.55 pm: For those who don’t know, Apple’s event will start 10.30 pm IST, which mean we have another half an hour to go.

9.45 pm: In iOS 11, we could see a greater emphasis on the in-built Apple apps, including Apple Maps, Photos, Apple Music as well. These could be refreshed for iOS 11.

9.43 pm: Apple’s new macOS could come with deeper integration around iOS. Apple will also showcase its new watchOS and tvOS at the keynote.

9.31 pm: While we’ve not seen too many leaks take place around Apple’s iOS 11, reports say a new redesigned UI is on the cards. The last big redesign for iOS took place with Apple iOS 7, which introduced a more vibrant version of the software. Apple iOS 11 could also see a new ‘dark mode’ as well, according to the report on Bloomberg. Apple could also add split-screen to the iPhone as well.

9.28 pm: Apple will also unveil new MacBooks at WWDC, 2017. The new MacBooks will be an upgrade to the earlier versions. A new MacBook Pro with the 7th generation Intel Kaby Lake processor is also expected on the cards.

9.25 pm: Apple is expected to unveil a new home speaker which will be powered by Siri, Apple’s own voice-assistant. The Siri speaker is already in production, though the actual shipping might not begin this year. Apple’s Siri speaker will take on Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa, and could work with home appliances which support Apple’s HomeKit. Additionally the Siri speaker could sync with other Apple devices as well.

9.20 pm: Apple’s WWDC isn’t just about announcements for the public. This is also the space where developers get access to a lot of vital, inside information from Apple, and prepare for their future applications. Check out what’s happening outside the venue.

At #WWDC2017 all set for the new announcements pic.twitter.com/aer8ht0jfS

— Nandagopal Rajan (@nandu79) June 5, 2017

9.19 pm: For those who know their Apple history well, this is the first time WWDC has returned to San Jose since 2002. At that time, Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs was still in-charge, and this was years before the iPhone had officially get launched.

9.16 pm: Apple’s iOS 11 could finally come with a file manager. An app called Files was spotted on the Apple Store, and this could allow users to access files within the iOS system. For iOS users, this could be a game changer.

9.10 pm: Apple CEO Tim Cook tweeted ahead of the event, saying it is only a couple of hours to go before the keynote begins. Check out his tweet below

Just a few more hours to go, developers! We've got a big week ahead. See you at the keynote! #WWDC17 pic.twitter.com/ewnOg3dXQ5

— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) June 5, 2017

9.05 pm: Now as is traditional, Apple’s online store is down ahead of the WWDC 2017. This usually takes place before new products are announced, so yeah it looks like those MacBooks are coming.

9.04 pm: Apple’s live stream of the WWDC 2017 keynote is also available on Apple TV devices, including 2nd generation, third generation and fourth generation devices. Microsoft Windows 10 users can watch the Apple live stream for the keynote on Edge browser only.

9.01 pm: Apple WWDC 2017 keynote will start at 10.30 pm IST. For those who want to watch the event live with their relevant Apple devices or on a Windows 10 PC with Edge browser, you’ll have to go to the Apple.com website. Apple iPhone users, iPad users or MacOS users will need to watch the event on Safari.

Disclaimer: The author is attending WWDC 2016 in San Jose at the invite of Apple India, which is paying for travel, accommodation.