The new operating systems iOS 14 and macOS Big Sur were presented last night by Apple, during an event streamed from its headquarters in Cupertino, California to open WWDC2020, the series of conferences that the company organizes annually to update who develops and produces applications on its latest news. Unlike in previous years, Apple has chosen to hold the event without an audience to reduce the risk of contagion related to the pandemic, and in the coming days it will continue to broadcast the work sessions for developers in streaming, without meeting in person. In addition to the news on operating systems, Apple has confirmed that it will return to produce computers with processors made by its engineers, and no longer externally by Intel (one of the largest microchip manufacturers in the world). The new operating systems will be available from autumn.
iOS 14
Like every year, the biggest expectation was iOS, the operating system that runs iPhones. Version 14 does not present a lot of new features from the point of view of operation or graphics, but introduces a new system to automatically organize applications, reducing the number of screens with apps that you often forget you have. The most relevant news concerns the possibility of adding widgets, with previews of the application contents, directly on the smartphone home screen, a bit like it has been for some time on Android.
Find all the news and descriptions in the photo gallery below
iPadOS
Apple continues to develop iPadOS in parallel with iOS, the operating system for its iPads that has many things in common with that for iPhones. In addition to the innovations introduced with iOS 14, and which are reflected on the iPads, there are the addition of a sidebar in many applications to make navigation between contents easier, a new, less intrusive option to activate Siri, a notification that does not more locks the whole screen when you receive a call and an automatic recognition system of the things you write on the screen with Pencil, the Apple stylus to write directly on the display.
are described in the photo gallery below
watchOS
The operating system for Apple Watch, watchOS, has reached its seventh version and is now quite mature. Apple has mostly worked to integrate some improvements over the previous edition: you can customize the dials even more, the systems for the recognition of physical activity have been improved and a function has been added to more easily keep track of the 20 seconds when washing your hands (the minimum recommended time to wash them effectively and reduce the risk of coronavirus contamination).
The main news of watchOS 7, told in pictures below
macOS Big Sur
The new version of the operating system for Apple computers is called Big Sur, after the coastal region in central California. The most relevant news is the change of the graphics, which continues to approach that of iOS, in order to offer the same experience on different devices. The icons have recovered a bit of three-dimensionality, there are transparent effects when activating the pop-up menus and there is a new control center to adjust screen brightness, volume, WiFi and other options, as has been the case for some time on iOS .
All the news of macOS Big Sur are described in the images below
Apple Silicon
As had been widely anticipated in recent months, Apple has decided to abandon Intel and return to produce processors by itself, as it already does for some time now for iPhones, iPads and Apple Watches. The first computer with an Apple processor will be announced by the end of the year and will be the first step in a transition that will take a couple of years to complete: switching from one type of processor (Intel) to another (ARM) will in fact rewriting the code of a large part of the software, and could initially generate some compatibility problems.
Apple has announced several programs that will be made available to developers to help them transition to the new system, while another set of software will allow old programs to work – at least initially – on new Macs with Apple processors. The company had done something similar when it switched from PowerPC processors to Intel-made processors in 2006: it wasn't easy, but it still migrated pretty quickly, and now it hopes to be able to do the same.
In recent years, Apple had shown a certain dissatisfaction with Intel's slowness in introducing new generation processors, aimed above all at reducing power consumption on laptops, while maintaining good performance. The company had therefore started experimenting with the ARM-type architecture, noting significant improvements in both consumption and calculation speed, finally concluding that it was useful to switch to a version developed directly by its engineers.
