Every year during WWDC week, the agenda of Apple executives is, of course, full. After participating in a remote edition of The Talk Show (with John Gruber), Apple’s senior vice president of software, Craig Federighi, also participated in the most recent episode of the podcast Waveform (of YouTuber Marques Brownlee, the MKBHD).
In it, the Apple executive was asked about the company’s expectations of technologies announced at WWDC20, including Siri’s new interface, the option to set standard apps and, of course, the Apple Silicon – among other things.
iOS 14
Asked about the central theme or philosophy behind iOS 14, Federighi said that customization and convenience were the main focus of this fourteenth version of the mobile operating system.
Personalization and convenience are enormous. Having more information available quickly is more convenient. It is also very personal how you choose to configure this. Things like App Clips, where we anticipate that you can move around the world much more easily and discover things you can do with your phone, acting quickly.
Crab
At this point, many should know that Siri has a new look on iOS 14, less invasive so to speak. As a result, the virtual assistant no longer covers the entire screen – allowing you to interact with other elements on the screen. According to Federighi, all of this is intentional.
We will continue to listen to what people say during the beta phase [do iOS 14]because, as I said, we really work both ways. But our feeling was that we wanted to achieve great lightness, not just visually, but in terms of you being able to join Siri to get an answer and move quickly without any kind of overhead.
IPad widgets
Brownlee asked the executive about an important point of the iPadOS 14: so far, the new widgets are limited to the sidebar and, consequently, to the first app screen. Fortunately, Federighi suggested that this could change over time, but that at the moment he believes Apple is offering a balanced solution.
Standard Apps
Federighi also talked about why Apple is only now allowing to change the default apps (browser and email client) and why everything is limited to just those two categories. According to him, the company wanted to “prevent abuse”, giving the example of a random app that could take advantage of the feature just for visibility.
We know how platforms can fall into chaos […] we take great care to ensure that the experience [de definir apps padrões] not to deceive people, but also that users are free to configure their devices. So, we proceeded cautiously about these things, for sure.
Apple Silicon
On Apple’s new chips on Macs, Brownlee pressed Federighi on how easy it can really be for developers to convert their apps to make them compatible with future processors.
The executive then gave the example of Microsoft and Adobe, who put in extremely small teams to transition their apps (as shown in the opening keynote of WWDC20) and that, even so, everything was done in a “relatively short period ”- considering that these companies have some of the most complex apps for macOS.
It wasn’t like [a Microsoft ou a Adobe] they had to mobilize the entire engineering team. This was incredibly secret, and, as we said, you could give us one or two people and get these apps up and running.
Finally, asked if Apple was making macOS an iOS (at least visually), Federighi disagreed and said that people «should avoid prejudging until they use it for a while» – but we will never know if this is «talk for an ox to sleep ”.
You can check out the full interview on Apple Podcasts – and the video with Craig answering some of the questions below:
via 9to5Mac
