WWDC 2022: Everything Apple Announced at their Worldwide Developers Conference

What is WWDC? 🤔

WWDC or Worldwide Developers Conference is Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference where developers can attend sessions and meet with Apple engineers. The conference is usually held at Apple Park in California. The event is usually used to showcase new software and technologies in the macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS families as well as other Apple software. Apple's 2022 event ran from June 6 through 10 and was a free digital event.

Apple's WWDC 2022 🚀

As usual, Apple's WWDC 2022 was jam-packed with something for everyone, from the latest version of Apple's flagship iPhone operating system, iOS 16, and its latest chip, the M2, to the newest hardware that puts it all in your hands -- the new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro 13. High-profile new features include Safety Check, which is intended to help people in danger of domestic violence.

iOS 16 📱

The latest version of the iPhone's operating system focuses on customization. That includes an updated lock screen with selectable fonts and colours, Apple Watch-style widgets, and rotating photos. Notifications will also roll in from the bottom of the screen to keep them from obscuring your photo, and Live Activities like music playback can expand to fill the lock screen.

Messages will allow editing, undoing sends and marking messages unread. SharePlay is improved for easier sharing within FaceTime and Messages. Dictation blends with text and touch on the fly so you can use any input type at any time. Similarly, Live Text (Apple's answer to Google Lens) expands to video, letting you pause on any frame and interact or grab text from the video.

Apple says it will be able to smartly extract images from a background and automatically paste them into apps like Messages.

Changes to Wallet include more partners for wireless keys, such as car manufacturers, tap-to-pay on iPhone for contactless payments and Apple Pay Later, which splits the cost of purchase across four payments.

You'll also see cycling, Look Around high-resolution imagery and expanded details for landmarks, and especially detailed coverage for specific cities. It will also show transit card balances.

Apple News is getting expanded sports coverage in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. TV Plus gets Family Sharing for up to five members, with parental controls for apps, movies, books, and music. Photos also improves sharing -- new shared libraries via iCloud let you collaborate -- and offer rules and automatic sharing based on proximity.

On the privacy front, iOS 16 introduces a new feature called Safety Check, which can help you quickly revoke access for someone threatening you, sign out of iCloud on all devices and limit Messages to a single, in-hand device.

MacOS Ventura 💻

Window management with grouping improves in Stage Manager, which also includes drag-and-drop multitasking. Better Spotlight searching incorporates sports and web image search, full-window search results and more detailed info on music and movies. (In iOS, Spotlight moves to the home screen.)

Search within Mail adds instant suggestions and synonyms, also on mobile. It naturally receives the same updates as iOS for Messages. Safari's Shared Tab Groups mean you can send friends and family your latest shopping picks. Goodbye passwords and hello Passkeys -- Touch ID and Face ID come to Safari for logging into sites. Also on iPhone, iPad and Apple TV, naturally.

Improvements in its Metal graphics API include MetalFX upscaling for faster game rendering and added API for faster loading of game assets. Resident Evil Village and No Man's Sky are getting ported to the Mac for the first time; Resident Evil Village is coming later this year.

Handoff comes to FaceTime so you can jump from device to device, and Continuity Camera finally lets you use your iPhone camera as your webcam. It will support a split view for straight ahead and desktop views.

WatchOS 9 ⌚

New watch faces are on the way, including more diverse calendars, the ability to pin apps at the top of the dock, new banner notifications and support for Podcasts for kids with parental controls.

For working out, WatchOS 9 gets a lot more detailed about your running metrics -- for instance, tracking how you move up or down to track your form. A new multisport workout can switch between swimming, cycling and running for the appropriate workout and tracking data.

Sleep Stages uses the accelerometer and heart-rate sensor to track what sleep states you're in and time them. The Watch will be able to track atrial fibrillation history, once it receives clearance from the Food and Drug Administration. Tracking medications in the Health app becomes a little more granular and lets you schedule reminders, so it sounds like a typical full-featured medication app.

MacBook Air with M2 Chip 👨‍💻

For the first time in ages, Apple has redesigned the Air, and it's with the M2 chip in mind. It's still an aluminium unibody, but now it's uniformly thin at 11mm and weighs 2.7 pounds. With the M2, the MacBook Air is available with an 8-core GPU and up to a 10-core GPU. The notebook can be configured with up to 2TB of SSD storage, along with up to 24GB of memory. Plus, new colours! MagSafe returns, leaving your two Thunderbolt ports available, and it retains an audio jack. It finally gets an upgrade to a 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display, with 500 nits max brightness and a P3 gamut. A 1080p webcam brings it up to parity with its siblings, along with a quad-speaker system (with Spatial Audio support) and a three-mic array.

Thanks to the improved GPU in the M2 and a focus on performance per watt, Apple says the Air delivers the same battery life and better performance. It finally supports fast charging, and the new adapter has a second USB-C port.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro also gets the M2 chip, with better performance thanks to an active cooling system. It hasn't been redesigned, though.

Conclusion 🖱️

This year WWDC witnessed huge updates in all apple products. Faster chips, redesigned hardware and lots of software tweaks.

Apple is taking a big leap forward in the field of technology but also promises to remain carbon-neutral to help and protect nature. All the mentioned products and software updates will be rolling out this July.