Not everything Apple introduces at WWDC gets a big announcement on stage. Sometimes there are positive things that just aren’t big enough for a fancy executive to spend 30 seconds talking about; sometimes there are good changes that are just a little too copycat for Apple to want people to notice; and sometimes things get a little worse, for various reasons.
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Here are some of the biggest changes that you won’t have heard about.
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1. A Wireless 110-Key Keyboard — and the Death of Wired Keyboards
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Wired keyboards are dead. Long live wireless keyboards. With the slow move to USB-C as the primary wired connection, Apple’s taken the opportunity to kill its wired USB keyboards, which means it’s finally found the time to release a full-size wireless keyboard. With 110 keys, including a full number pad on the right side, the keyboard should serve the needs of those who really, really need as many keys as possible.
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2. NFC
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If you’re an iPhone user, you likely haven’t had much experience with Near Field Communications. The tech has been built into the phones since 2014, to enable contactless Apple Pay transactions, but it’s not been opened up to other uses until now. On iPhones 7 and up — no word as to why the 6 and 6S aren’t supported — developers will now be able to read data from the NFC chip, and use it to give users more information about their physical environment and the real-world objects in it.
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That suggests that the new Core NFC framework will still have some restrictions — preventing, for instance, tap-to-pair Bluetooth functionality that Android users are used to — but iPhone users will now get to experience the questionable joy of tapping their phone on more things than just payment terminals.
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3. Screen Recording
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This one’s useful for…