Summary of WWDC 2016: Year of the Software

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

WWDC 2016

Welcome back to Applevis' yearly summary of Apple's yearly developer conference announcements. There's a lot this year, much of it exciting, some of it very much expected, and a few things long overdue. Instead of a long introduction, let's just start moving!


First up is the Apple Watch. Love it or hate it, Apple is committed to it and feels it's a great way to get people more active and connected. To that end, watchOS3 will bring a huge array of updates to your wrist, all of them benefiting from the biggest one of all: speed. Apps launch instantly (well, seven times faster than in watchOS2, but who's counting), and we can expect speed improvements across the entire platform. This is thanks to multiple under-the-hood changes, but mostly due to apps updating themselves in the background, always ready for you to open them. Apple is so confident in this new scheme that you can swipe from app to app, without opening them, and view critical data in real time.

Swiping from app to app? Yep, Apple has added a "dock" to the Watch, which comes up when you press what used to be the Friends Button. What happened to your list of friends is unknown at this point. You can choose which apps are available here, letting you customize a subset of apps you use most, ready to be opened at the push of a button.

Other interface changes coming in watchOS3 include a control center, accessed by swiping up from the bottom of the screen, just like iOS. What's in here, or where your glances went, wasn't explained. Apple has also added more watch faces, including a Minnie Mouse face, a face centered on your activity rings, and several numerical ones. It was also suggested that they've allowed for more complications on different faces. To change faces, you need only swipe between them, rather than force-touching, scrolling, and tapping the face you want. Apple's goal seems to be to make changing your Watch face easier, as their data suggests most users like to do this, and to give people quicker access to more complications. After all, if you like the Astronomy Face but want quick access to a lot of complications, you can just put Astronomy and Modular next to each other, then swipe between them. We don't yet know for sure, but I suspect this is as simple as a two-finger swipe left or right for VO users. After all, that's how you scroll vertically already.

The other big interface change is in messages: no longer do you have to tap the Reply button before you can reply to anything. Now, when you see a message, you already have access to quick replies and (presumably, though it wasn't stated) the Dictate button. I'll be eagerly waiting to see if this means VO users can do a two-finger double tap to dictate a reply on the same screen as the incoming message--ow great would that be? Sighted users can also use handwriting, by writing with a finger, and each letter they draw is recognized and added to their reply. No word yet on whether this indicates a handwriting mode for VoiceOver on the Apple Watch.

Apple has added something rarely used, but hugely important, to the Watch: SOS. Hold in the side button on your Watch and you get a countdown. At the end of that countdown, if you don't cancel, you're suddenly calling your area's emergency number. Once the call is complete, any contacts you previously designated will be notified that you're in trouble, then your medical information (another new addition to WatchOS) will appear on your watch screen for emergency responders to see. All this happens with an awareness of where you are; if you don't know that the UK uses 999 as its emergency number, it doesn't matter--your Watch knows.

In the fitness and health space, Apple continues to improve. The Activity App now offers competition, if you want it. Once you and a friend share information, you can see each other's activity rings, heart rate, step count, and more. Check in and see if you've beaten your buddy's exercise amount for the day, or look at where you stand (pun intended) among the step counts of your friends and family. You can even message the people you're competing with right from the Activity app, and the canned phrases here will be specific to workouts and motivation.

Speaking of workouts and motivation, Apple has set its universal access sights on wheelchair users. With a single setting change, you can set your activity to wheelchair mode. The reminders that it's "time to stand" turn into "time to roll", and the algorithms that determine activity are changed to ones specific to wheelchair users. Apple teamed up with two organizations dedicated to fitness for wheelchair users, plus conducted extensive studies on manual wheelchair movement techniques, to get this right. It's a great thing to see such dedication to another group of disabled people.

Finally, Apple has focused on helping everyone with something we all do: breathing. A new "Breathe" app comes standard with watchOS3, meant to guide the user through deep-breathing exercises. You set the duration (one to five minutes), and the Watch does the rest. You can even use this app with haptic feedback instead of visual aids, as it's meant to be used by people with their eyes closed. If you want to, you can also set up reminders to do deep-breathing exercises, similar t other activity reminders you already use.

All these improvements, plus the addition of tons of new options for developers, make watchOS3 a major release any Watch owner should be eagerly anticipating. It's faster, offers even more activity options, and will let apps really grow and transform. It will be a free update, as usual, available this fall.

Apple TV

The latest Apple TV, the fourth generation, was released last year. Don't worry, no new hardware is coming to replace it (yet). New software, though, will make it an even better platform, though it didn't get as much attention as the rest of Apple's products.

The Remote app for iOS is getting a major overhaul. Primarily, it will let you use your iOS device as a complete Siri remote: voice input for Siri, the touch surface, buttons, and motion tracking for game play are all duplicated in the app.

Siri is getting smarter about finding content, with the ability to search by topic. The example used during the keynote was "find high school comedies from the eighties". The presenter then said "just the family friendly ones" to filter the results. That, plus Siri's ability to search Youtube, will make an already great TV experience that much better when tvOS10 lands this fall. You'll even get single sign-on for cable network apps, letting you sign in just once to one app and instantly authorize others, and a dark mode for your TV.

The Mac Operating System

OS X has been around for over fifteen years, according to the presentation. Yet, when put alongside watchOS, iOS, and tvOS, it stands out. Apple has therefore decided to rename it: macOS. Interestingly, along with the new name came a change I never expected: no number. Not "new number", but "no number". The next version of macOS will be dubbed Sierra, but that's it. We have iOS10, watchOS3 and macOS Sierra.

No matter what you call it, Sierra has a lot to offer Mac users. Let's get the minor changes out of the way first: picture-in-picture for videos, and automatic tabs for all multi-window apps, are both included. What this will mean for VoiceOver users isn't known, but given my own experience with tabs in Finder, I suspect it won't have much of an impact.

Now, onto the fun stuff. First, the great MacID app has been Sherlocked; Apple is now letting you unlock your Mac with your Apple Watch. There was mention of careful planning to make sure it unlocks at the right time, rather than unlocking when you happen to be nearby but still want to keep it locked to the people around you. Presumably, then, you won't even need to confirm anything on your Watch, just be near enough to the Mac while wearing the Watch.

Next up is Apple Pay, which is being brought to the internet. Sites that choose to can add a "pay with Apple Pay" button which will, when you click it, ask for confirmation from you. This can be done either with your Apple Watch (which, unlike unlocking a Mac, you will have to tap to confirm) or Touch ID on an iOS device. As soon as you okay the payment, you've bought your items on the website. No typing card information, or storing your details with a site that could get hacked; you can use the same security of Apple Pay you enjoy at physical locations, but now online. Of course, companies will have to add this to their websites, so let's hope they do. The day I can check out at Amazon with Apple Pay will be a happy day for me!

In keeping with all this connectedness, Apple is making iCloud even more useful. Your clipboard will be shared among your devices, for example. Note that I said 'devices', not 'Macs'. If you copy something on your Mac, then paste on your iPad, what the iPad pastes will be what the mac copied, and vice versa. This not only includes text, but links, images, and other rich content. One iCloud feature that is Mac-specific is desktop syncing. The presentation was a bit hard to follow, but it seems that what's on the desktop of any Mac will mirror itself on any other Mac you sign into. Presumably, this will require you to have the space in iCloud to store everything, and no, new iCloud storage pricing was not among today's announcements.

The last thing to mention in this vein is iCloud's ability to store things you may not need, alongside Sierra's ability to clear out things you can get rid of. For instance, iCloud will hold documents you haven't accessed in a long time, getting them off your hard drive, while Sierra will clear old caches, empty the trash, and perform other tasks. All this adds up, and can remove huge amounts of unused information from a Mac. The example given on stage was of a Mac going from 20GB free to 150GB free. Of course, your iCloud will need to be able to handle the offloaded data.

I've saved (arguably) the best feature for last. At long last, and a year after Microsoft tried it, Siri lands on your Mac! All the commands from iOS you already use seem to be present--messaging, asking for information, playing music, and the like. With access to your files, though, Siri can perform complex searches and list the files you want. When a file/folder list is displayed as a result of a Siri query, you can ask to have it filtered further. Request "documents I worked on yesterday", for instance, and you might then want to say, "only the powerpoint files" or, "the ones about the trip". You can even pin these searches to your Notification Center for quick access at a later point. If you use Siri to pull up a list of files--from all over your hard drive--that you need to work on, pin it, and you can get at that list at any time without having to ask Siri for it again.


Finally, we get to the release that will probably impact the most people: iOS10.. There are a lot of features in here (unsurprisingly, Apple detailed ten of them). I'll group some together, but I'll hit all the points we saw today. Speaking of seeing the major points, check out this audio-described iOS10 video from Apple, marking the first time I've ever seen a described product video from any company.

One of the places many of us spend a lot of time is on the lock screen. Knowing this, and knowing that a lot of people find it too easy to accidentally unlock their phones with the faster Touch ID, Apple has copied a feature from their Watch: raise to view. Your phone will detect when you're holding it up to look at it, and will show you the lock screen without you having to press any buttons at all. Once on that lock screen, you'll notice much richer, more interactive notifications. The 3D Touch feature on the iPhone 6s will shine here, letting you look at full calendar views of your day for calendar events, or an entire thread for a message, and so on. Unsurprisingly, developers can customize this however they want to. Depending on how apps are rewritten, lock screen notifications could become far more useful and information-packed than they are right now.

Unlock your phone and you'll find something Android users have had for a long time: widgets. This part of the presentation wasn't entirely clear to me, but it seems that apps can customize what happens when you 3D Touch on them. Instead of a menu of shortcuts actions, you can now get anything the developer wants to offer--recent sports scores, your activity for the day, upcoming calendar events, you get the idea. You can also add an app's widget to your Notification Center, which seems to be a way of getting at the content without having to 3D Touch it. Again, take this with a bit of salt, as the verbal presentation of this feature wasn't straightforward to me.

Next we have the Messages app. It got major upgrades in the form of messaging options: full-screen animations, handwriting and digital drawing, marking up a picture taken (within the app) with the device's camera, and even sending an 'invisible' message that won't appear until the recipient opens it. It seems the basic interface remains the same, there are just a lot more options for how to talk now. The experience was made richer in a lot of ways, such as links now showing webpage previews instead of just URLs or Apple Music links letting you play a song right in the message thread. Emojis were also featured: they're three times bigger, and iOS will offer the option of replacing full words with their emoji counterparts. Plus, Apple has opened the app for extensions written by third-party developers. Reserve a table, order some food, send a Square Cash payment, and so on, all within iMessages. This will happen as apps come onboard, much like sharing extensions did in iOS8.

Similarly, the Maps app has gotten better. The interface is easier to use, with smart suggestions, category filtering, and its own extensions for programmers to use. You could reserve a table and then call a Lyft to get you there, all without leaving Maps. For those who drive, Maps can now try to route you around heavy traffic, and will zoom in and out based on your speed and location. Cruising down a highway, you'll see more of the map than when you're moving through a city, for example.

QuickType, the feature that displays word suggestions above your keyboard as you type, is getting a whole lot smarter. The same context awareness and deep learning that drives Siri is being tied into QuickType, so that it can do a far better job of providing suggestions. As you're asking your friend over iMessage where you should meet for dinner, you might see QuickType suggest a restaurant you were looking at in Maps, for instance. Or, it could tell the difference between your responding to "where did you go yesterday" and "where did you put my bag", offering different responses based on the question. It can even offer word options in two languages, if you frequently switch from one language to another.

The Phone app has gotten some much-needed attention in iOS10. A feature that may be especially exciting to deaf-blind users is your phone's ability to provide voicemail transcriptions. Imagine being able to read your voicemails on a braille display! Apple has also extended the phone handling APIs to third-party apps. What that means for you is some cool stuff: VOIP apps can make themselves act like phone apps. See recent Skype calls in the Recents tab of your Phone app, or call someone using Facebook Messenger's voice call feature right from Phone. Add a VOIP app option to a contact, just like you already can with phone or FaceTime. There's even a chance that Skype or other apps can trigger the same "ringing" we're used to with the Phone app itself, better supporting interrupting other apps or ringing longer until you answer. The details of this integration will be explained to developers as WWDC continues, and I don't think it'll be long after iOS10's release that we start to see apps taking advantage of the new capabilities.

Siri, first released in 2011 and now serving over two billion requests per week, is long overdue for an upgrade. Apple announced just such an upgrade today: a Siri API. Finally, apps can hook into Siri; you could request a Lyft from your current location, order some food, book a table, and more, all from Siri itself. As with other third-party development offerings, this will all depend on apps being updated to take advantage, but I don't think that'll be a problem. Prefer Facebook Messenger? Just tell Siri to "use messenger to tell Bill I'll be late tomorrow." Or say, "have A Lyft get me a ride home", or "send $10 to Jim with Square". We don't know exactly how the phrasing will work, but we do know that any app that wants to can take advantage of Siri's contextual awareness and speech recognition.

iOS will also gain the ability to perform image recognition, without even talking to any remote servers--it happens right on your device. The concept is similar to Facebook's recent auto-descriptions for pictures, but with the ability to better pick out objects. Essentially, iOS will now "look at" your photos (Apple claims iOS performs eleven billion calculations per photo to do this). It can detect faces and match them to contacts, letting you ask Siri for "pictures of Wendy" or tap a contact below a picture to interact with the person. More excitingly, though, it can pick out objects in photos, like houses or trees. Apple has added a feature to the Photos app called Memories, which can intelligently group pictures together based on subject, location, time, and other factors. The image recognition they unveiled today is used to make this happen, as well as to do some cool things like automatically generate a slideshow of a memory. My hope, though, is that they use it to generate descriptions of pictures for VoiceOver users. They didn't say anything about that, but it seems like an obvious application of the technology. Here's hoping!

Apple's Music app has been redesigned. You can easily see which songs you have downloaded; look at song lyrics; play shows from Beats One on demand; and more. It sounds like Apple has made the app easier to use, while still offering the full Apple Music experience.

The News app has, Apple reports, over two thousand publications on offer. In iOS10, this app gets more useful in three ways. First, subscriptions will be supported, meaning that users who pay for content from a paper or journal will get their paid content right in the News app. Second, there are now categories--some set, some automatically generated based on your usage--for stories. Third, News can now give you breaking news notifications if you want it to, which will make it a far more useful app for many people.

There are a bunch of smaller, but no less important, features: 3D Touch to bring up "clear all" in the Notification Center, like on the Apple Watch; an official Home app to control HomeKit devices and activate groups of settings at a touch or based on your location; the ability to collaborate with others on notes; displaying two websites at once in Safari on iPad; and a great deal more.

Finally, Apple was careful to point out how seriously it takes users' privacy. Despite facial and object recognition in photos, extensive app integration with Siri and other core apps, predictive typing with locations and other contexts, and all the other features iOS offers, you aren't a profile. Apple has done a lot of work to be sure that no one can ever be tied to any data they send to the cloud. Apple can get trends and other metrics, while never using your specific data to do it. They also put encryption and security first--Apple Pay, Touch ID, iMessages, FaceTime, and other services are all as secure as Apple can make them.

Bonus: Learn to Code for Free

Some people have suspected that the iPad Air 2, and later the Pro, would bring Xcode (the program developers use to make apps for Apple products) to iOS. That didn't happen, but we got something equally cool: a free app that teaches you how to code. It shows you the basics of controlling what happens when in your program, how to write basic code, and so on. It also offers advanced lessons including physics modeling, access to the iOS SDK, and more. It's a great idea, and will, Apple hopes, teach more students--and even adults--the basics of coding. The app is called Swift Playgrounds, and will be launched this fall, for free, alongside iOS10. It only runs on the iPad, and we have no word on its accessibility at this time.

That's a Wrap

And that's WWDC 2016. macOS Sierra, iOS10, watchOS3, tvOS10, and Swift Playgrounds. There were no hardware announcements, just software, and there sure was a lot of that! Some people are excited, others are grumbling about how long many of these features took, and others are just underwhelmed. Let us know what you're thinking in the comments, and remember: the rules haven't changed this year, so mum's the word about what you find in the betas, even if you're a public tester. Now: Surprised, stoked, sad, or seething... What do you think?

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mixed feelings

well, generally speaking, my first impresion is that Apple is been very conservative. The most exciting feature of iOS 10 will be... that third party developers will be able to interact with Siri, advanced notifications... So, in my opinion, Apple, sincerely, doesn't know what else could be added to their operating sistem, so, let's see what others would do.
Imessage's stickers, bigger emogies, another (and another, and another) predictive keyboard feature... really? A major update of a whole operating sistem for that?
On the other hand, iOS is an experienced operating sistem, and though sometimes I'd like to see new things, I mean, new things, not bigger emogies, if something is working, don't fix it, isn't it? So, perhaps iOS 10 will be faster, more reliable and even easier to use and less buggy... So, in this case,, while I love iOS 9, I will love iOS 10, why not.

watchOS3 also will include Reminders and Find My Friends

Presently, on the watch there isn't a reliable way to be notified about reminders, so the new native Reminders app on the watch will be welcomed by me!
Find my friends will also be on the Watch, but isn't that relevant for my situation.

facial recognition

honestly, the feature intrigues me most is facial recognition. i hope it is as what i perceive, although i can't be sure based on the short introduction of wwdc. if it is as what i perceive what it is, i'll do anything to get it, including buying a new device. i do use some kind of facial recognition app, but it is it not very reliable, and it requires lots of training.

Some concerns

Hi! Having read the above blog post, as well as hearing a big chunk of the WWDC keynote yesterday, there are plenty of impressive things in store in future Apple software for all platforms: I would guess that some of the more visually-oriented changes may not be of much use to us blind users of Apple devices, but they'll hopefully still be appreciated in the wider Apple-device-using community. However, I do have a few niggling worries, for visually-impaired users in general, and for those who don't possess every kind of Apple device and who don't necessarily have the latest model of whatever device they own. I would hope that those of us without 3D Touch on our devices will still be able to interact with the locked screen on those devices in the best possible way, even if we have to continue doing so in the old way without any extras 3D Touch would bring. Also, although I do not own a Mac, I can be pretty sure that there are plenty of Mac users out there who don't have Apple watches, so I would hope that, even if the Apple watch provides a newway of unlocking a Mac, existing methods without the watch will still be usable. Finally, even though I gather VoiceOver can describe emoji pictures, we don't know if it can do the same for the new stickers which will be added to the Messages app in IOS 10 if people we know decide to use them, and there's also a risk that VoiceOver users will not be able to read handwritten messages: here's hoping that our sighted friends will continue to send us text messages which are not handwritten and won't overdo the other visual stuff when they send us messages! Maybe I'm over-reacting a bit here, but the above niggling worries immediately crossed my mind when i heard about some of the new features, so I felt I wanted to share them.


Hi Tim Noonan,

For reference, certain useful elements of the Reminders App already work brilliantly on the Apple Watch.
For example, when any Reminder created on my Watch, phone or Mac is triggered, the Reminder will appear with a Chime and vibration on my Watch. The alert will give me the choice to mark as Completed, snooze or dismiss (these options are from my terrible memory and may not be verbatim).
I can also create a Reminder by asking SIRI "in 20 minutes remind me to BlahBlah" and presto, thy will be done.
HTH you make the most of your Watch until 3.0 hits your wrist.



There is nothing here that interests me, but there is nothing I was overly awaiting this year either, so that is fine. As someone has said, iOS now is working great. If they fix feedback for contracted Braille input, to me that's all that needs to change. I like apple Music but many people I know find it a poor design, so maybe those folks will be happier also. All in all, we'll see what happens! Thanks as always to Applevis for the great coverage.

Deleting unwanted apps

Hi all,
I heard on the news today that soon we will be able to delete those pre-installed apps we'll never use. Sounds like for example, I can now get rid of compass and stocks instead of putting those unwanteds in a folder.

The Siri feature for

The Siri feature for Mac sounds great. Odd that it will come out after a long time that the iPhone and Apple Watch had it.

Siri and iCloud

I haven't yet listened to this year's WWDC, but one feature which I'm really looking forward to is Siri on the Mac. Having never used Siri before I'm a bit skeptical, but otoh I'm excited to try it out. I was talking with one of my tutors last week all about screen readers, because he was curious. One point he brought up is that iTunes should probably have some sort of voice-enabled search feature, and I think I'd have to agree with him. Now it looks like this will be a reality, and I for one am excited about it. The other thing I want to mention is that this same tutor and I tried out iCloud recently, and while the website seemed very accessible we were a bit confused on how to use it. I'm actually getting an external hard drive on Thursday to help out with the memory issue on my Mac, but I'm wondering if iCloud will now be able to back up the system if need be? In any case this is good stuff!

handwritten messages

I'll be interested in how apple decides to handle handwritten messages from an accessibility standpoint. Although I can also see it opening up the ability to write in languages whose charsets aren't available on the iPhone, AKA armenian.

My Thoughts

I'm not sure I like the idea of my phone's lock screen showing when I just lift up my phone. I hope that that's optional. I hope that the messages app doesn't change too much to the point it becomes harder to manage. If there isn't a way to make sub folders or nesting folders in IOS10 I'm going to be really disappointed. That really should be a feature and would allow me to organise my apps better. I wish that they would have added support for Siri to do things such as create contacts, and close apps. I hope that we will be able to customize what voice over sounds are on for example if I could I'd turn off the swiping sounds. I'm excided for more 3D touch options! Lastly I wonder if Siri being open to other developers is to try and compete with Viv, or to make way for Viv any thoughts?
For those of you that don't know what Viv is see the link below.


Personally, Apple has Siri. Why would Apple give two seconds of care to Viv when Siri is mature, and functional? No, the third-party integration with Siri is Apple finally giving in to market demand. Most people who use Siri have wanted third-party integration since its introduction, and it's about darned time we got it. One thing Tim Cook seems to grasp that Steve Jobs did not, is that Apple needs to be able to communicate and work with products other than their own. The new Siri, Maps, and Phone APIs are solid evidence of this. So if this Viv chooses to integrate with Siri I'm sure they will permit it, but I doubt Apple really care about Viv in the slightest.

My next future wish

Now that Siri will have an API, I'd like the text-to-speech system to allow third-party voices as well. I want Acapela's voices on iOS, outside of apps like Voice Dream.

Not sure

I'm not sure Viv looks like it can do way more than Siri can. I guess only time will tell. I just hope I'll be able to get it.

.mov only works only on Apple devices

Club AppleVis Member

I initially thought the video link link did not work too. However, I saw that the file extension is .mov, which requires QuickTime to play. Result is non-Apple devices cannot view video.

What if you don't have vlc?

Welp, guess i'm screwed then cause I'm not about to download vlc just so I can watch the video. I bet it's probably already on YouTube somewhere.


Wait, are you saying you're on this website and don't have a single Apple device? That video will play on any iDevice or Mac, if you're really so insistent on not having something as handy as VLC installed. Failing that, there's always Quicktime for Windows though I dare say the accessibility of this latter solution is very much lacking.


iTunes also works, using CTRL + U should do the trick.

If you have audio description turned on it should come up automatically.

Apple watch

I have never been tempted by the Apple watch before. But I have to say with these coming updates I'm starting to get tempted. My partner is a wheelchair user and is now very tempted by the wheelchair workout features and the SOS in case she falls over when there is no-one around as she cannot get up unaided. Does anyone know if Apple are releasing a new watch with new hardware or is it just software updates?

Thank you

Thanks for confirming. I imagine the watch is the kind of thing you don't know you need until you have then once you have it you wouldn't be without it. I must say I am very tempted!

Rumors suggest a new Watch

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

I love my Watch as well and am glad you are considering one. I'd suggest waiting until the fall, though, as rumors are pointing to the next hardware revision of this product being released then. That may not happen, but it's likely considering the age of the current generation.

I won't consider one

Until we have a way to use it completely without speech, I'm not interested. I don't want something I can't hear in a noisy environment, nor do I want to have anything that talks when I'm in meetings. And no, a headset isn't acceptable.

oh, I have iTunes and an iPhone 6

I have iTunes and an iPhone 6 for sure. I didn't know iTunes could play .mov files, but it makes sense. Thanks for setting me straight guys!

Audio discription in the video

Hi all. Just wanted to let you all know that I was able to payst the link into iTunes, then head to the controls men, and activate English DE from the sub titles menu. Hope this helps anyone who wants to see the video with audio discription.

When I paste the

When I paste the video link into iTunes, iTunes will play a song from my music library. Not sure why it would do that because I press control + U and then I press control + V to paste the link. After I press enter to activate the link, a song from my music library will start playing instead of the video. Am I doing something wrong?

macintalk fred will finally be coming to iOS 10!

Hi all,
VoiceOver users on the mac had the macintalk fred voice, and for myself and others, it was very fast and responsive. well, you'll be happy to know that the same voice that you here on the mac will now be on iOS 10. yes, macintalk fred will be available for VoiceOver users. and it's fast and very responsive on iOS 10. what about samantha, alex, and the siri voices? yes, you will still have them, with the addition of fred. I cannot wait to try this out when the public beta is released this July!

Also I was thinking about

Also I was thinking about testing the public Beta of iOS 10. Does anyone know if the iPhone 5S can run Beta software?


yes, the iPhone 5s will runn the beta.

How do you

How do you sign up for testing beta software? I would like to test iOS 10.


Hey, where did you hear that? I honestly thought Apple had just left those Macintalk voices to rot, and while they'd keep them on OS X as long as they functioned, they'd not get updated. Now they're putting at least one of them on iOS? A surprising move, though a welcome one.

I signed up for

I signed up for the beta program. I only have one question. I will test the data on my old iPhone fife, but both my iPhone five and my iPhone 6S have the same Apple ID. Can I test the beta version only on my iPhone five, while leaving the 6S intact?


You can test the beta software on the old iPhone 5 and leave the iPhone 6S intact. Although your iPhone 6S will be receiving notifications for beta software updates.

the freed voice

hi @jake I herd about the fred voice through a friend of mine who has a dev beta, and he says that it is very fast. yeah, it is a welcome move. like I said earlyer, I cannot wait until the public beta comes out this juky, and I cannot wait to try the new messages app.

Can't Wait for OS Sierra

Hello peeps! I just listened to WWDC 2016 up through the OS Sierra segment. I'm so excited to try out Siri, and I'm hoping those voices will be included in the final release of OS Sierra. I'm also having perhaps second thoughts about iCloud, although of course I'll have to try it out for myself and see if this will work as expected. But I'm one of those people who had a rather large iTunes library, and rather than use an external drive my father suggested to me that I just transfer everything to iCloud in order to save space on my MacBook for all the audio-described movies I want to download. However, I went with a drive because my tutor and I couldn't quite figure out how to use iCloud to our advantage. But as useful as the external drive is, I just might try out iCloud in OS Sierra.

iOS 10

I love iOS 10 I already use iMessage but with the new emojification feature I will be using emoji even more.

Apple watch

@jake I won't get the Apple watch until you can at least tell the time without speech, so I'm with you on that one. However, I understand from elsewhere on this site that we won't have to wait long for this. I understand that at WWDC it was said that tactile timekeeping is going to be implemented, though I'm sure someone will correct me if I am wrong.

Only part of it

Telling the time without speech is only part of it. I don't know about anyone else here, but when I'm around people using VoiceOver in a public place, I try to keep my noise down. Those who don't annoy me. So, the Apple Watch has a small, shrill speaker and public places are loud. That's not what I want. At the moment I use a Braille display or, if that isn't available, a headset. But if I already have those things paired to my phone, what purpose does the watch serve? To tell the time? I already have a tactile watch for that. I'll have a look when the new WatchOS comes out and, perhaps, I'll revise my opinion then. For now though, it doesn't seem to be a device that's right for me.

Fair enough

@Jake that's fair enough. i don't have an Apple Watch either, and won't even consider it until tactile timekeeping is available. I think the advantage lies in some of the other features, and I must admit I'm fortunate in that it is not prohibitively expensive from my point of view, so perhaps I don't have to consider my purchase quite so carefully. That said I'm not into wasting money. I'm a watch sceptic at present but tactile timekeeping will go a long way to allaying my scepticism.

I already own an apple watch and I...

@jake I already own an applewatch and I cannot wait until the new watch OS update comes out. I use it all the time when I'm at home and when I'm out with my family. I used to use time buzz, but finally having the ability to say time using haptic feedback will be a total life saver. well see how it goes when we are near to release.

Money's not it

I think we're on the same page. I don't consider it expensive either, but I don't tend to buy something when I can't think of a functional use for it. I'll pop down to the Apple Store when WatchOS 3 comes out and give it a look then. I'm not opposed to having one, rather I'm just not sure what it would offer me.

Me neither

@jake indeed yes, I think we're in the ambivalent camp the both of us. It's up to the Apple Watch to change our minds.