Apple made some huge announcements today. The first of this kind after the keynote legend , Steve Jobs , passed away. Today’s keynote presentations were pretty big for Tim Cook and team at Apple. It signified a major product series launch. It defines the future of Apple in a way. Though I missed the charisma Steve had  when he delivered keynotes for the core products, If he was alive, he would’ve proudly told us how he was able to leverage the crucial cash balance to outbalance the most important application in  iPhones and iPads, the Maps.





Apple has introduced a series of new products at the WWDC’12 keynote series , starting off a week of developer presentations and tutorials and so on. Though it was very much costlier than the earlier WWDC’s , the attendance was full .The tickets to WWDC was sold out in hours. This is remarkable considering that the key person who was the reason for seats to get filled is no more in this world. But people certainly believe that Apple is in good hands. And it did pay off, at least this year it did.
So , I will round-up the major announcements made up at the WWDC ,

iOS 6

iOS 6 was almost certainly expected out of this year’s WWDC as it has become a tradition , as Scott Forstall rightly pointed out during his keynote  of iOS6,  for Apple to release a new version of the OS at WWDC . iOS6 has vastly improved , both feature-wise and usability wise.
Key features noted are :

• A more advanced Siri , who can respond to personalized queries about sports , actresses and literally everything under the sun now.  Tight integration with feed providers like Rotten Tomatoes for Movies , Yelp for Restaurant ratings and other content providers have enabled this rich functionality addition to Siri.
• Chinese support . To write , to read and to socialize. iOS6 has features for interaction in Mandarin  through Haiku , Baidu and other popular Chinese websites.
  
• Facebook integration  . A single sign on  ( just like Twitter integration in iOS5 ) , will enable you to update and post from almost all the apps with unlimited combinations to your friends.
• Lost & Found feature lets you display your backup phone number on the lock screen by triggering it through your Mac or another phone number  when you lose your phone. The finder can just click on it and call you right away.
• Improved Safari – with native support to Chinese , Unified search bar ( Much like Omnibox
• in Google Chrome ).
• Voice mail shortcuts on the Phone screen – A feature slightly ripped off from Android , I must say. But they have improved on it . As usual !.   It now features a temporary whitelisting when a caller calls you ( or nags you ) multiple times, odds are that it will be important.
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Maps

This was the most anticipated feature of all. Maybe even more than the iOS6 as a whole. This position taken by Apple seriously threatens the revenue generation of Google and their data collection as well. Apple has decided to part their ways with Google on the Maps , mainly owing to the fact that they didn’t like Google collecting location details of all Apple devices  when they themselves had huge amount of applications of it.
Rightly so , Apple has implemented a lot of cool and useful features into their own version of Maps.

• Turn by Turn Navigation  on most cities. Ofcourse , Siri will be guiding you. Who else do you expect to guide you properly. 
• FlyOver – Coolest feature you would ever want in a Maps application, But Google has already managed to do a similar data usage on their new version of Maps last week itself. Flyover takes you through a 3D flyover over select cities , by utilizing the vector models of the cities collected by Apple.

 

MacBook Pro

While they mostly updated the technical specs alone on their MacBook Air line up, Apple has whipped up a useful and flashy move on the MacBook Pro lineup. For starters , they killed off the 13” and 17” Macbook Pro’s . Then they decided to remodel the entire philosophy behind MacBook, not just the physical form.
It’s certainly thinner , sleek and elegantly beautiful. More than the MacBook Air  in a certain way. Tightly packed aluminium body with the display crafted into the unibody structure . Only Apple can make a win-win with this kind of innovation.
They have added some extras onto this :

• USB 3.0
• Bluetooth 4.0
• Thunderbolt ports
• HDMI
• Nvidia GT 650 M – a welcome addition to the Mac Line-up.
• 8 GB of 1600 MHz DDR3L RAM

They have removed certain features as well :

• Optical Drive
• Magnetic Hard Disk
• Boring Old Display
• Noisy Fan

The key feature of the new MacBook Pro line up is it’s elegant display. Crafted into the aluminum and insanely thin. But with a whopping resolution of 2880×1800 pixels. Oh yeah, that’s a huge amount of pixels to be on a 15.4” screen. And Apple is calling it , the Retina Display . Yes, MacBook is getting it finally!.
Also , it has a 256 GB / 512 GB Flash storage. Apple decided to finally respond to a decade old problem of slow I/O devices. They chucked the magnetic hard drives. And they decided to top it off by removing the optical drive as well. Remember , Apple removed FDD’s from the iMacs , causing it to become obsolete . This will repeat again , I’m sure of that. 

What are the F1 through F12 keys?

If your keyboard does not have a row of function keys, they are probably set up as secondary functions on other keys. Some laptop keyboards are set up this way to save space. They can be activated by pressing another key plus the key with the secondary F key functionality.
Below is a listing of some of the more common functions of the functions keys for Microsoft Windows and Microsoft applications, as well as some for Mac OS. As mentioned above, not all programs support these function keys and the function keys on your keyboard may perform different tasks then those mentioned below.

F1

• Almost always used as the help key, almost every program opens a help screen when this key is pressed.
• Enter CMOS Setup.
• Windows Key + F1 would open the Microsoft Windows help and support center.
• Open the Task Pane.

F2

• In Windows renames a highlighted icon, file, or folder in all versions of Windows.
• Alt + Ctrl + F2 opens document window in Microsoft Word.
• Ctrl + F2 displays the print preview window in Microsoft Word.
• Quickly rename a selected file or folder.
• Enter CMOS Setup.

F3

• Often opens a search feature for many programs including Microsoft Windows when at the Windows Desktop.
• In MS-DOS or Windows command line F3 will repeat the last command.
• Shift + F3 will change the text in Microsoft Word from upper to lower case or a capital letter at the beginning of every word.
• Windows Key + F3 opens the Advanced find window in Microsoft Outlook.
• Open Mission Control on an Apple computer running Mac OS X.

F4

• Open find window in Windows 95 to XP.
• Open the address bar in Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer.
• Repeat the last action performed (Word 2000+).
• Alt + F4 closes the program window currently active in Microsoft Windows.
• Ctrl + F4 closes the open window within the current active window in Microsoft Windows.

F5

• In all modern Internet browsers, pressing F5 will refresh or reload the page or document window.
• Open the find, replace, and go to window in Microsoft Word.
• Starts a slideshow in PowerPoint.

F6

• Move the cursor to the address bar in Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and most other Internet browsers.
• Ctrl + Shift + F6 opens to another open Microsoft Word document.
• Reduce laptop speaker volume (on some laptops).

F7

• Commonly used to spell check and grammar check a document in Microsoft programs such as Microsoft Word, Outlook, etc.
• Shift + F7 runs a Thesaurus check on the word highlighted.
• Turns on Caret browsing in Mozilla Firefox.
• Increase laptop speaker volume (on some laptops).

F8

• Function key used to enter the Windows startup menu, commonly used to access Windows Safe Mode.
• Used by some computers to access the Windows recovery system, but may require a Windows installation CD.
• Displays a thumbnail image for all workspaces in Mac OS.

F9

• Refresh document in Microsoft Word.
• Send and receive e-mail in Microsoft Outlook.
• Opens the Measurements toolbar in Quark 5.0.
• Reduce laptop screen brightness (on some laptops).
• With Mac OS 10.3 or later, displays a thumbnail for each window in a single workspace.
• Using the Fn key and F9 at the same time opens Mission Control on an Apple computer running Mac OS X.

F10

• In Microsoft Windows activates the menu bar of an open application.
• Shift + F10 is the same as right-clicking on a highlighted icon, file, or Internet link.
• Access the hidden recovery partition on Compaq, HP, and Sony computers.
• Enter CMOS Setup on some computers.
• Increase laptop screen brightness (on some laptops)
• With Mac OS 10.3 or later, shows all open Windows for the active program.

F11

• Enter and exit fullscreen mode in all modern Internet browsers.
• Ctrl + F11 as computer is starting to access the hidden recovery partition on many Dell computers.
• Access the hidden recovery partition on eMachines, Gateway, and Lenovo computers.
• With Mac OS 10.4 or later, hides all open windows and shows the Desktop.

F12

• Open the Save as window in Microsoft Word.
• Ctrl + F12 opens a document In Word.
• Shift + F12 saves the Microsoft Word document (like Ctrl + S).
• Ctrl + Shift + F12 prints a document in Microsoft Word.
• Preview a page in Microsoft Expression Web.
• Open Firebug or browser debug tool.
• With an Apple running Mac OS 10.4 or later, F12 shows or hides the Dashboard.
• Access the list of bootable devices on a computer at startup, allowing you to select a different device to boot from (hard drive, CD or DVD drive, floppy drive, USB drive, and network).

F13 - F15

• On newer Apple keyboards the F13, F14, and F15 may be shown in place of the Print Screen key, Scroll lock key, and Pause key.

F16 - F19

• On newer Apple keyboards the F16, F17, F18, and F19 keys are above the number pad.

F13 - F24

• Early IBM computers also had keyboards with F13 through F24 keys. However, because these keyboards are no longer used, they are not listed on this page.