Another year, another opportunity for Apple to wow its developers and get the rest of us excited about new features coming soon to an iDevice near you. Apple’s World Wide Development Conference happened today and Apple didn’t leave us hanging. With OSX 10.10 Yosemite and iOS 8, there are plenty of new features, most designed around the idea of seamless movement from device to device to device, with nary a skip in the workflow. For the geeks, Apple has rolled out a new developer language called Swift with features to make the designing process easier. For iOS, there are new features that developers can take advantage of, including: Homekit (a tool that will permit apps to interface with the OS to control external devices – like home security, heating, lighting, etc.); Healthkit (a tool to bring together fitness information from various external tracking methods); the ability to work with third party keyboards, as well as predictive typing like Swiftkey; better communication between apps and iOS; access for third party apps to TouchID; third party widgets; family share for iOS purchases so that everyone can benefit from downloads; shared photo editing through new iOS Photos app; improved Siri performance; and, changes to the App store including the ability to download bundles.

For Yosemite, users will find improvements to AirDrop,  iOS inspired flat design, and  an expanded Notifications function, which will also work with third party app widgets. It will also be able to leverage iCloud Drive – Apple’s answer to DropBox, with 20 GB for $.99 per month and 200 GB at $3.99 per month, synced across all of your devices. And, it works on Windows too. iCloud Drive will make for easier work within Apple apps across devices, improving efficiencies. MailDrop allows Mail users to attach large files without restriction using iCloud Drive. Users will also be able to edit image attachments with simple annotations. Safari has changed its look, and will show recent people you have messaged and RSS feeds and a thumbnail of open tabs. You will be able to view text messages and make phone calls on your computer in the new OSX. Tweaks and shine, rather than a significant overhaul.

While I didn’t note a great deal of business-ready features, iCloud Drive is certainly interesting for those who use Apple products for their office suite. And, the improvements and tweaks to both OS’ will make Apple devices more user-friendly, which is always a good thing.

What do you think? Was there anything you were hoping for that Apple missed? Or are you satisfied with the next iteration of Apple’s operating systems?

UPDATE: Something I missed in yesterday’s live blogs – Google is no longer the default search engine in Safari in iOS. Say hello to Bing. And even cooler: DuckDuckGo, my fav private search engine, is now an option in Safari as well – no tracking allowed!