Apple’s keynote (aka it’s Special Event) will be streamed live at 10AM PDT (11 Mountain, 12 Central, 1 East coast, etc etc). If you didn’t score a golden ticket, you can watch along on the Apple event web page or on your Apple TV.

I’ll update this post with thoughts and reactions as the event unfolds.

• iOS 12 announced as a free update. New measurement app for supporting devices will allow you to measure and scan physical scale using an AR experience. Lego’s demo shows that multiplayer AR can be a fun and exciting experience. Sample code going home with developers today.
• Enhancements to photo search and sharing put the focus on the user-product experience. Today’s keynote, more than ever, seems to be focused on selling their existing products.
• I love extensible Siri (aka “Siri Shortcuts”, with a dedicated drag-and-drop Shortcuts app), with custom end-user phrases to perform app integration and tasks. Siri will suggest these custom items. Create a macro for common tasks you group together and launch with a custom phrase. A great way to perform everything you need to get to work, hit your commute, or head off to lunch.
• Several redesigned apps: News, Stocks (with integrated Apple News’s business section, adding iPad support), Voice Memos (also with iPad support), iBooks which is renamed to Apple Books.
• CarPlay will now support third party navigation apps, so you can Waze your way home.
• Lifestyle improvements continue with “Goodnight Moon, Goodnight Watch” do-not-disturb mode for bedtime and other naturally concluding cycles. Enhanced notification control, including grouped notifications, diminishes notification burnout.
• Screentime lets you analyze how addicted you are to your devices, with full activity reports that summarize how often you pick up your device and what apps you spend the most time in. App Limits provide an alternative to 12-step Appholic programs.
• Animoji enhancements adds tongue detection to improve language and emotional expressiveness. Memoji adds an iOS “mii” customization to animoji.
• Group Facetime now supports up to 32 participants. With Animoji and special effects support, it’s like you’re doing drugs while sober.
• Apple Watch gets some enhancements for health and fitness, including group competitions to motivate participants. Apple has added Clippy for automatic workout detection: “It looks like you’re starting an exercise routine”. New watch-to-watch walkie-talkie feature adds a little fun for kids and anyone who wants to harass the cook in the kitchen. “Whaaaaats for diiiiiiinnnner?”
• Gymkit sounds like fun.
• Apple TV adds Dolby Atmos sound and is Dolby Vision certified. Better integration with cable TV partners including Charter Spectrum in the US. “Zero Sign-on” means that all the channels you pay for are automatically configured on your behalf. Beautiful new whole-Earth aerial joins the lineup.
• macOS Mojave: Inspired by the desert at night. Desktop stacks allow you to group material together to save space. Preview markup moves to the Finder! Markup augments screenshots. You can also capture video demos from your screen using a built-in video recorder. Integration between your Mac and your phone allow you to use the phone camera to capture pictures for use in iWork. (Apple Work?) Voice Memos, Home, News, and Stocks are now on macOS.
• New privacy measures are in place. Today I learned: you can be tracked by a “fingerprint” including the fonts you have installed and other “public” customizations. Scary.
• Redesigned App Store is redesigned. Pretty.
• CreateML lets you develop assets and train models for Machine Learning. CoreML 2 is 30% faster and quantization reduces model size by up to 75%.
• 2019: iOS Apps come to the Mac. A multi-year roadmap converges design and a whole new generation of developers flood the platform for the benefit of the Mac as well as iOS.