Chris Clark, on iOS 7:

Best to embrace it, the good and the bad, and get back to work.

I can’t remember a more controversial Apple keynote.[1]

While the original iPhone announcement or even the move to Intel were exciting, they weren’t as controversial as this year’s WWDC, it seems.

OS X Mavericks seems like a home run.[2] The now 13 year-old OS has received vastly-updated memory and power consumption subsystems that more closely reflect the needs of notebook users, while new Features like Maps and a revised Notification Center should make regular users happy.

The Mac Pro, while lacking in the internal upgradability of the old model, is poised to be the most powerful Mac again, and in a big way. Plus, it looks like the PC Darth Vader probably had under his desk, which is really just a bonus in my book.

iOS 7, however, has some people lighting their hair on fire. Most developers I’ve talked to are excited about things like background updating and Sprite Kit and are anxious to begin work on making their apps really shine with the new APIs.

Many are worried about how their apps will fit in iOS 7’s new UI paradigm. Apps that sport mostly custom UIs may be fine (albeit some may feel heavy at first), but those developers who use standard controls intermixed with their own have some real work to do in the coming months.

The look and feel of iOS 7 is polarizing, to be sure. I’ve talked to just as many people who genuinely dislike the new UI as those who love it. While I do believe iOS 7’s UI — as it stands today — has some problems, I think Apple will sort the real issues with legibility and accessibility out, but my gut says things like the neon colors, text-only buttons and transparency are here to stay. It’s polarizing, but most big, bold choices are when it comes to things like interface design.

The company has to jump forward with its products, and that inevitably means people are going to be sad or upset.

Developers and users may think they face a choice here: either move with the tide, or dig in and refuse to accept that something as fundamental as how iOS looks has changed. In reality, Apple’s rolling on is something that cannot be stopped. It’s time to evolve for many, no matter how hard it might be.

The word parallax really sums up this week’s news. It is defined as:

the effect whereby the position or direction of an object appears to differ when viewed from different positions, e.g., through the viewfinder and the lens of a camera

Tell me that doesn’t sum up the other 1.2 billion articles about WWDC in your RSS reader.

This thing is crazy looking, inside and out. I hope 802.11ac is worth having a tiny Washington Monument in your office.

If you’ve been wanting to take a look at the under-the-hood changes in OS X Mavericks, this PDF is for you.

Federico Viticci:

iOS 7 has a new focus on content with an interface that emphasizes hierarchy, context, edge-to-edge designs, gestures, motion, and typography. I don’t think that iOS 7 has lost its predecessors’ playfulness; in fact, I do believe it’s got a different kind of whimsy – one that is related to content and information, not just the resemblance of toolbars to leather or paper. I already see this in the animations and transitions for moving between views, the way Control Center comes up from the bottom of the screen, or how tapping an icon zooms into it, bringing an app in the foreground.

Craig Hockenberry:

It’s clear that Apple’s designers have done the same thing: their focus has shifted towards content. I can’t wait to see what happens to the iOS ecosystem when other designers and developers follow their lead. That path forward won’t be easy, but it will take the platform to a whole new level.

When reflecting on yesterday’s insane Apple keynote, I thought about John Gruber’s piece for Macworld in which he wrote:

This is how the designers and engineers at Apple roll: They roll.

They take something small, simple, and painstakingly well considered. They ruthlessly cut features to derive the absolute minimum core product they can start with. They polish those features to a shiny intensity. At an anticipated media event, Apple reveals this core product as its Next Big Thing, and explains — no, wait, it simply shows — how painstakingly thoughtful and well designed this core product is. The company releases the product for sale.

At first, I thought some of yesterday’s news — mainly the Mac Pro and iOS 7 — were in a departure from Apple’s normal way of doing things.

Then I thought about this image:

If you remember back to 2002 when Apple released the iMac G4, it was a huge departure from the G3-powered machines before it. However, looking at the whole timeline, it fits with the overall direction the product was heading in. The move to the LCD was a clear forerunner to the iMac G5, whose shape is still present in the iMacs of today.

When Tim Cook said that iOS 7 was the biggest change to iOS since the introduction of the iPhone, he wasn’t kidding. The UI is of course drastically different, but things like background-updating and better car integration are huge changes.

However, once we can all zoom out a little bit, I think iOS 7 will be seen as an evolutionary change. A big one, perhaps, but one that shouldn’t be seen as all that surprising.

Yesterday was a big leap, but iOS is rolling on.

The Mac Pro is a huge jump forward, too, but it’s on a course set out upon but the machine at the far end of the product lineup — the MacBook Air. With on-board flash storage, Thunderbolt and insane cooling, this machine is a complete re-build from what came before, but the Air was the playground for many of these technologies.

When thinking about what a “next-gen” computer should realistically be like, the Mac Pro is the obvious, yet impressive, answer.

Yesterday was a big leap, but Mac hardware is rolling on.

Some think yesterday’s keynote was disappointing, or that it shows Apple’s insecure, but I think it’s great. iOS needed some changes, but despite all the newness, it’s still iOS. The Mac Pro is still the most powerful Mac ever built, but it still can meet the needs of most pro users.

The iMac G4 felt like a big direction change, but in reality, it was just a leap forward down the same path.

Both of these product announcements feel like big direction changes, but in reality, they are just leap forwards.

In hindsight — once 2013 is just a dot on a timeline — that’s how yesterday will shape up, I believe.