All the news from Apple's 2014 Worldwide Developers Conference

Apple unveiled a redesigned version of OS X last week, and today it's releasing a video that gives the closest look you can get at it — at least, without being a developer. The video gives a close up view of the new icons, font, and buttons, and traces across pretty much everything big that's changing in OS X Yosemite. The video was actually run during Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference to introduce the new design, but it was only uploaded to YouTube as a separate video today. It's a quick one minute, and you can watch above if you're interested in seeing what the Mac will look like beginning this fall.

While I watched Apple's WWDC 2014 opening keynote on Monday morning, I couldn't stop thinking about the infectious mixture of fun and confidence everyone onstage seemed to be exuding. It was something new for this era of Apple, and it felt like a mirror image of the announcements being made. The message was loud and resonant from where I sat: We're back, we're ready to play, and we know who we are.

Watching CEO Tim Cook and his "Superman" companion Craig Federighi bound about onstage, trading jokes and launching into strangely lengthy and effective bits on topics like a near-miss naming of OS X "Weed," you might not recognize the company if not for all the Apple logos everywhere. The tone was jovial, loose, and confident. One might even say playful.

It began with developers stampeding to their seats and ended with the announcement of a new programming language. It was WWDC 2014, and Apple had a lot to talk about. Tim Cook and Craig Federighi took turns announcing new versions of iOS and OS X, with new features and designs on both sides. But they spent most of their time talking about how Apple devices talk to each other, how apps can work together, and how Apple is taking a new, friendlier, more inviting approach to the way it designs software. That may turn out to be much more important than a new Mac Mini ever could have been.

Apple spent two hours today talking about new software it plans to release this fall. That includes iOS 8 and a newly-revamped version of OS X called Yosemite. The whole keynote took a little under two hours, or you can just watch the best, most important parts in our 10-minute edit above. There's also a full rundown of the most important announcements from today right here.

The biggest reaction from the crowd at WWDC today wasn’t for a shiny new product or even a cool new app. Instead, the news that Apple was introducing its own programming language, Swift, got a full-throated roar of appreciation from the thousands of developers in attendance.

Even without knowing a thing about programming, it's easy to understand this is a big deal: Apple's current language of choice, Objective-C, has been in the mix for Macs since the launch of OS X, and for iPhones and iPads from day one. For Apple to throw out the developer playbook across its entire product portfolio suggests there’s a big change afoot — and many devs aren’t sad to see it happen. "[Objective-C’s] a real pain," says Alex Chung, the co-founder of Giphy, who has created multiple iOS apps. "If you’re off by one character it all falls apart. It’s just really old school, you know, it’s like speaking Latin."

"Messages is the most frequently used app on iOS," Apple said today — and with today’s announcements at WWDC, it sounds like Apple intends to keep it that way. Apple gave Messages its biggest upgrade ever, lifting many of the most important features from competing apps like WhatsApp, Snapchat, Facebook Messenger, and others.

Like WhatsApp, Messages now lets you send a quick voice message instead of typing out a text. Like Snapchat, videos sent in Messages disappear unless you tap "Keep" to save them. Like Facebook Messenger, Messages lets you quickly add friends to a group message, and remove them just as easily. And the features keep coming. Like Path, you can now share your location with a friend, and like Moped, you can now view a list of all the photos you’ve shared inside a chat.

Apple's making a lot of design tweaks for OS X Yosemite — its desktop operating system's next big release — and one of the biggest is the system font, which it'll change for the first time since OS X was released. Yosemite changes the font from Lucida Grande to something from the famous Helvetica Neue family, which lends to the thin and clean design style that Apple's been favoring lately. When Yosemite is released next fall, you'll start seeing it pretty much everywhere across the OS, from the menu bar to app windows.

Helvetica Neue also debuted as the iPhone and iPad's system font in iOS 7 last year. With Apple placing a big focus on consistency between platforms today, it makes plenty of sense to see it cross over to the desktop. Perhaps more importantly though, Apple's touting the change as a boon for legibility. It says that the new font looks great on high-definition displays — and with Retina screens making their way from iOS devices to the Mac, Apple will soon need a font that looks its best even on close examination.

Apple announced iOS 8 with great fanfare today, revealing many new features and a number of significant changes to the platform. Things like HealthKit, new extensibility options, and HomeKit got a lot of attention during Apple's presentation — but as is often the case in Apple's big keynotes, there were a number of new features that didn't even get a mention. Here are eight of the most interesting.

Apple has supported making FaceTime audio and video calls over Wi-Fi networks for some time now, but it looks like iOS 8 will bring the ability to make standard calls over Wi-Fi as well. Carriers such as T-Mobile have offered this service on other smartphones for years, but it's been excluded from the iPhone — until now. In fact, T-Mobile has already confirmed that it will support Wi-Fi calling in iOS 8, though It's likely that this feature will be dependent on carriers, not available universally.

Developers have been asking Apple to open up iOS to other keyboards for years, and today the company obliged. As part of iOS 8, which will be released in the fall, users can swap out Apple's keyboard with ones made by other companies. Users have been long able to do that on Google's Android, but it's been far more difficult on iOS, requiring either a jailbreak or individual developers to supply their own specialty keyboard features.

Following Apple's annual developers keynote earlier today, a number of prominent third-party software keyboard makers now say they're already at work on those keyboards, and plan to let people try them out ahead of time.

As has been the custom for every Apple event in recent years, the company began today's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC 2014) in San Francisco with an emotive video. Entitled "Apps We Can't Live Without," the short spot features a wide variety of professionals describing their favorite apps, thanking the software developers who made them, and describing some joking unflattering developer stereotypes. It even includes testimonial of a young man who uses an iOS app to control his bionic prosthetic arm. Watch it for yourself below:

If you weren't able to watch the opening of WWDC 2014 live today, Apple has you covered. The company has posted the full two-hour event on its site, featuring every announcement made by Tim Cook and his fellow executives. Watch it to see what's coming later this year in Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite, iOS 8, and the new developer tools that Apple unveiled today — including a brand-new programming language called Swift. If you're short on time, you can check out the 22 most important things Apple announced at WWDC right here on The Verge. But for the full experience, head on over to Apple, or just check out the YouTube embed below.

Update June 3rd, 8:55PM ET: added link to the keynote video on YouTube.

Most people aren't going to change their default iOS search provider away from Google anytime soon, but that's not stopping Apple from giving them new choices. Mixed into a slide containing dozens of new features in iOS 8 that went unmentioned on stage was something interesting: "DuckDuckGo support in Safari." With its latest mobile operating system, Apple will easily let users switch over to the privacy-minded search engine and set it as the default for all queries within Safari. The preview page for OS X 10.10 Yosemite also confirms that DuckDuckGo will be available as a search choice for desktop users.

DuckDuckGo was designed to be a less creepy and less invasive alternative to Google. It ditches the tracking habits of Mountain View, much to the relief of internet users who've grown wary of overzealous surveillance from tech companies and the government alike.

Apple kicked off its Worldwide Developer Conference with a glimpse into the future of OS X, iOS 8, and the developer tools that bring them to life. This is the rare event where a man can get on stage and write code for ten minutes while thousands of developers watch in stunned silence before erupting in applause. It's where Apple talks about everything it's bringing to customers, and to developers — the deeply nerdy and the user-friendly, all in one two-hour event.

Rumors were flying about all sorts of hardware that might be announced at WWDC, but this was a software-focused show. OS X 10.10 Yosemite and iOS 8 bring the desktop and mobile device closer together than they’ve ever been before, and a host of new developer tools should enable the creation of some powerful new apps. That includes a new programming language, Swift, which Apple hopes will replace Objective-C over time.

Apple introduced a boatload of new consumer features for OS X and iOS today, but one of the biggest announcements for developers could be its new programming language, Swift. Craig Federighi just announced it, saying that Apple is trying to build a language that doesn't have the "baggage" of Objective-C, a programming language that came from NeXt that has formed the basis of OS X and eventually iOS. Coders will be able to see the results of their programming in real time as they write the code, and it should definitely be faster than Objective-C as well.

In its press release highlighting the announcement of iOS 8, Apple says the following about the release of Swift:

For developers, Apple is offering a new beta testing service based on TestFlight, which it acquired earlier this year. The service will be available to developers for free.

Apple says the upgraded App Store and TestFlight beta feature will be available later this fall when iOS 8 officially launches.

Apple is adding one of the most-requested features to iOS 8: inter-app communication. App developers will be able to enable "extensions" in their software so that it can be used within other apps — examples demoed onstage at WWDC included VSCO Cam editing functionality accessible from within Apple's stock Photo app, and Pinterest sharing inside Safari.

"To handle extensibility in the iOS way, extensions live in app sandboxes," says Apple's Craig Federighi. "But apps can reach out to those apps. This enables some great things."

For the first time ever, Apple's opened up iOS to third-party keyboards, the company said today. The new feature — which is a part of iOS 8 this fall — lets users pick keyboards from other companies instead of the one Apple's shipped on its phones and tablets for the past few years. On-stage, that included Swype, which lets users slide their fingers across the keyboard to spell out words.

While introducing OS X 10.10 Yosemite, Craig Federighi showed off a new widget system for the Mac notification center, allowing users to pin small apps right in the "Today" view — and now we're learning that the iOS notification center will have a similar feature, as well. In iOS 5 and 6, users could access weather, stocks, and Twitter / Facebook post buttons, but those were removed in favor of the Today view for iOS 7.

However, now iOS 8 users will be able to add widgets to the iOS notification center — and it sounds like third party apps will be supported, as well. It's a major change to iOS, giving it perhaps the most comprehensible glanceable information setup that we've seen on iOS yet, and gives the OS something that can compete with Android's widget system and the Windows Phone live tile system.

Apple is trying to make Siri smarter in iOS 8. The redesigned version of Siri can be activated without touching the phone at all if the phone is plugged in — in other words, "Hey, Siri" is the new "Okay, Google," if you're doing something like driving. Siri was already plugged into pop culture, but now, it will also tell you what song you're listening to. Apple has announced a partnership with music recognition service Shazam that will let Siri do what its popular app has been doing for years. The feature was rumored before the event, and it's a useful and obvious addition to a digital assistant. A couple of other new options add iTunes purchasing capabilities and streaming voice recognition, letting you see what you're saying as you speak, and Siri takes commands in 22 more languages. It's even a part of Apple's new smart home framework. Saying something like "Siri, get ready for bed" could automatically dim the lights and lock the doors.

Siri got an early lead in the smartphone assistant space, but it's facing competition on other operating systems. Google Now doesn't have the same illusion of personality, but it uses Google's trove of information to create smart, contextual recommendations. Microsoft, meanwhile, is working on a system called Cortana, created with help from the actress behind the iconic Halo character.

Apple has just announced some changes to the way iOS handles photos that will hopefully make things a lot more convenient for users. iOS 8 will come with a new Photos app that lets users access every photo they've taken across all of their various devices. It's not just the images themselves either; the new app will also share edit parameters, so you can tweak an image on your iPhone, then dive into the same photo on your iPad, and revert and tweak those same changes — with the two syncing in real time.

Unfortunately, this type of broad storage isn't going to come free of charge. Photos will count against the iCloud storage limit for users. The first 5GB will still be free, while users can upgrade to 20GB for 99 cents per month, or 200GB for $3.99 per month. Tiers will also be available that offer up to a terabyte of storage.

Families can also share calendars, reminders, photos, and find my friends across devices. It appears to be very similar to the family groups offered on Microsoft's Windows Phone 8, but with the added ability to share iTunes Store purchases. Parents will be able to approve or deny purchases made on their childrens' devices, making it more difficult for kids to run up large bills on in-app purchases.

FamilyShare will be available when iOS 8 launches later this fall.

Apple just unveiled HealthKit, a new app bundled with iOS 8 that's designed to help users keep better track of their personal health and fitness data. HealthKit appears simply as "Health" on the iPhone home screen, and provides an easy-to-access dashboard where you can monitor important health metrics on a daily basis, while also stepping back to examine your fitness trends over a longer period of time. SVP Craig Federighi said this is a marked improvement over the current situation, which has your health information strewn across various apps or "silos."

To centralize everything, HealthKit allows health and fitness apps to share data; Nike is among the first companies signed on to support that feature. "For example, the Nike+ apps using NikeFuel will be able to pull in other key HealthKit metrics such as sleep and nutrition to build a custom user profile and improve athletic performance," Apple says. Apple will also partner with the Mayo Clinic and other health institutions, allowing healthcare providers to receive and transmit data from your checkups. The company says it has deep privacy protections in place to secure those sensitive records.

Apple has just announced QuickType, a new predictive typing keyboard for iOS 8. The system appears similar to SwiftKey, a popular third-party keyboard for Android; it predicts the next word you're going to type based on the sentence context and your past history. But it goes a little further in other ways, recording your typing style with different apps and contacts — perhaps you type more casually in iMessage than Mail, or more formally to your boss than your friend, so QuickType will adjust its suggestions accordingly.

"It does all this learning on the device and it protects your privacy," said Apple's Craig Federighi onstage at WWDC 2014. QuickType doesn't appear to include any swipe-to-type functionality as seen in Android and Windows Phone, though iOS 8 will also make third-party keyboards available for the first time.

iOS 7 was the biggest overhaul for Apple's iPhone operating system since its inception. Today the company introduces the next version, iOS 8.