As we head towards WWDC 2014 we thought it would be fun to look back at Apple World Wide Developer Conferences past, what they introduced, and what impact they made. Today let's take a look at WWDC 2013, where Apple introduced iOS 7, OS X Mavericks, new MacBook Airs, new Time Machines and the stunning new Mac Pro...

WWDC 2013 took place from June 10 to 14 at the Moscone West convention center in San Francisco. Tickets went on sale in late April and sold out about 70 seconds later, prompting Apple in 2014 to offer WWDC tickets to registered developers for the first time in a lottery.

WWDC 2013 was a crucial year for iOS. Apple had reinvented iOS in the biggest single update since the iPhone was introduced in 2007 when it unveiled iOS 7, featuring a radical visual departure from previous releases. iOS 7 — the first version to be spearheaded by Apple's design chief Jony Ive — focused on clarity by removing unessential interface elements, shifting buttons to tinted text and simply getting out of the way of contents and apps. The entire interface was cloaked in a physics and particle engine that shifted as you moved the device, building a parallax engine into the home screen.

Other new features of iOS 7 included Control Center, to make it easy to access commonly-used apps and features, an enhanced Notification Center, multitasking, AirDrop and more.

By comparison, OS X Mavericks didn't have the visual pizzazz of iOS 7, but sported a lot of under-the-hood changes aimed at improving performance and efficiency, especially for laptop users. Losing the big cat moniker for the first time, OS X Mavericks is named for an infamous surf break not too far away from Apple's Cupertino headquarters.

With timer coalescing, App Nap, memory compression and other features, Mavericks makes the Mac operate more efficiently with less power and better performance. But there are some interface changes, too, like tabbed Finder windows and better document tagging. Multiple display support was enhanced, and Maps and iBooks applications have been added. Notification Center was dramatically improved with Mavericks, as well.

Cloud services got some important updates at WWDC, too. Apple introduced iWork apps for iCloud, making it possible for iCloud users to work on their Pages, Keynote and Numbers documents without needing a Mac or iOS device at all. And with pressure mounting from streaming music services like Pandora and Spotify, Apple introduced iTunes Radio.

Apple also introduced new MacBook Air laptops, the first Macs to feature Intel's Haswell CPUs, which enable heretofore unimaginable battery life for MacBook Airs - up to 12 hours of continuous use between charges for the 13 inch model. The upgrade also gave Apple a chance to incorporate 802.11ac Wi-Fi networking, with an overall speed boost of up to 3x provided you're using an 802.11ac base station. That's why Apple introduced new AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule devices at the same time.

Apple also took the wraps off a machine that wouldn't ship until late December, but one that got Mac hardware fans excited: the radically different Mac Pro, a machine presumed dead after Apple discontinued the earlier model, which languished for years.

One-eighth the volume of its predecessor and turbine-shaped to speed the removal of warm air from its unified core, the Mac Pro is a parallel processing powerhouse, featuring a Xeon processor with up to 12 cores and twin AMD FirePro workstation-class GPUs. SATA hard drive bays are gone, in their place went PCIe-based flash storage, and RAM with twice the bandwidth of the old Mac Pro.

Give it the keynote a watch and let me know — what do you think of WWDC 2013 and what, if anything, does it make you hope for at WWDC 2014?

While OS X Mavericks' look and feel won't change quite as radically as iOS 7's when it debuts this fall, there are some welcome changes for users who aren't fond of skeuomorphic design elements. Calendar is getting a nice facelift in Mavericks and some new functionality too. We got a bit of a preview during the WWDC 2013 keynote, and now we've got a bit more info to share with you.

First of all, those stubborn artifacts of a physical desktop calendar are gone - there are no more torn page fragments at the top of the calendar and the title bar has a flatter appearance. "Streamlined" is the word Apple uses to describe it, and that's accurate: It looks cleaner.

"Absolutely no virtual cows were harmed in the making of this user interface," joked Apple senior vice president of Software Engineering Craig Federighi, when he unveiled the new Calendar at the WWDC keynote.

From the top down, the next obvious change is the placement of the navigation buttons and the date - they've been reversed in weekly, monthly, and yearly views, to give you a clearer visual cue to show what time period you're looking at.

Also gone is the one pixel-wide table grid that's used in Mountain Lion's Calendar for Week, Month and Year layouts. Days in Mavericks are instead separated with white space, with a one-pixel border to separate them vertically. The net result is a cleaner, less cluttered look.

Continuous scrolling is a new feature in Mavericks Calendar. In the monthly view, this means that you can scroll vertically from week to week (the current week gets a colored horizontal line across the top to help you return to it quickly; you can also just click the Today button). In Mountain Lion Calendar, you can horizontally scroll, in weekly or daily views. The scrolling in daily mode is abrupt, replacing each day's events as you scroll; weekly will snap to the next week's events. Now it's smoother and more continuous.

The new look and feel of Calendar will be a welcome change for users who are increasingly accustomed to gesture-based controls for all aspects of the OS X interface, but Calendar gets some really functional enhancements, too. The Inspector is where you'll see the greatest changes.

Many of us now receiving information about social events through friends and family linked through Facebook. OS X Mavericks lets you connect to your Facebook account, and if you've said yes to events you've learned about through Facebook, they'll be displayed on a separate Facebook Events calendar.

The Maps app is coming to OS X, and Calendar's Inspector now ties into that data to provide you with a small map showing your meeting location. That's only a thumbnail, though, so if you need walking or driving directions, you can click on the image and the Maps app will automatically open and plot the way.

What's more, Calendar automatically pads your events with travel time, so you can be sure to have enough time to get to where you're going. It also ties in to weather information so you can see how you'll need to dress. The Inspector also supports autocompletion of fields to save you typing.

OS X Mavericks is still a moving target which won't ship until the fall, so we'll see if Apple introduces any new features to Calendar between now and then. But even if nothing else happens, these changes will be welcome improvements for users who rely on Apple's calendaring application to manage their schedules.

• Calendar: Everything you need to know
• OS X Mavericks: Everything you need to know
• OS X Mavericks: Discussion forum

Introducing iOS 7 at WWDC last week, Apple's Craig Federighi mentioned MFi game controller support in passing. Apple's announcement has long-term ramifications for iOS 7 as viable gaming platform.

Made for iPhone/iPad/iPod

MFi is a licensing program Apple offers to developers. It enables hardware makers to certify that their products are up to Apple's spec for peripherals that work with for iPod, iPhone or iPad. The program's been around for a while, and if you've ever seen the "Made for iPod/iPhone/iPad" stamp on the box for a speaker system or peripheral, their manufacturer is part of the program.

Developers involved in the program gain access to hardware and software they need to make their devices compatible and up to spec with Apple's rigorous guidelines. More than just that, MFi is a necessity for any company that wants to make a hardware product sold in Apple retail stores or by Apple authorized resellers.

Game controllers for iOS devices have been around for a while, but up until now, they haven't really had Apple's full sanction. Successful devices like Ion Audio's iCade system have been able to work around MFi by going through Bluetooth instead.

A change of heart?

Games are already the biggest single category in the App Store, so it's entirely reasonable that Apple should bolster support for game devices with the MFi program. Apple has insisted for years that the right way to interact with iOS devices is by using the touch interface to its full potential. But game developers and critics have also insisted for years that many titles for iOS are hamstrung by the absence of proper game controller support.

Games that are created from the ground up for iOS, and ones that are really cleverly designed to work on touch interfaces, won't benefit from game controller support in iOS 7. But there are hundreds, if not thousands of games that will.

MFi is only one piece of the puzzle. Apple has also created a development framework to standardize the way game controllers should work on iOS, to make sure users get a consistent experience from device to device.

iOS, and the devices that operate it, aren't suddenly going to go toe-to-toe with Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo for dominance of the gaming market, and controller support in iOS 7 isn't going to change that. iOS is, first and foremost, a general-purpose operating system designed to appeal to a broad swath of consumers. Some technology Apple has developed for gamers is obvious, like Game Center. Other stuff is more under the hood - OpenGL 4 support in OS X 10.9, for example.

But by embracing support for third party game controllers, Apple shows that it is open to change, and that it's willing to extend the iOS user experience in ways that it has been very reluctant to in the past. And that's a good thing for iOS users and developers alike.

Andrew Stone has seen a lot of changes in the Apple ecosystem - changes he talked about as a featured speaker at AltWWDC, the event that's happening concurrently with WWDC and is only a few blocks away.

AltWWDC is a five-day gathering on the sixth floor of the downtown campus of San Francisco State University. While space is limited, it's absolutely free to attend. The event mixes technical labs with breakout sessions and featured speakers.

Stone's trajectory through the Apple world is the very definition of a long strange trip. An architect by trade, Stone began programming when he was introduced to HyperCard, Apple's landmark visual programming tool. When Steve Jobs started NeXT a few years later, Stone began developing software for it. He's a vanguard of the NeXTStep operating system, the bedrock basis of OS X and iOS. He continues to make his living from that work - his Stone Design makes apps like Twittelator for iOS and Videator, the VJ and video effects tool .

Stone, who lives in New Mexico, talked openly about his use of psychedelic drugs as a consciousness-opening experience. He was also part of lab tests for a psychoactive compound called DMT. Consumed by South American natives as a tea called ayahuasca, the substance is derived from the South American jungle vine caapi. Stone has written about his experience.

And for those who question the use of drugs all together? Stone says that we have the power to create similar experiences ourselves, using nothing more than our minds and more conscious control of our bodies. He led the crowd in a breathing exercise to demonstrate.

Stone's fascinating story captivated the AltWWDC crowd, but he wasn't just there to entertain with the story of his journey, but to act as a teacher and to impart some wisdom. He offered some practical advice born from decades of indie software publishing.

"Small is beautiful, and you, the individual, can make a big difference," Stone said.

"And to witness that, think of all the little indies that have been copied by Apple," Stone joked, getting a wry laugh from the audience. Stone emphasized the importance of maintaining a positive social media presence, encouraging indie developers reach out to their peers.

Stone's final bit of advice: "Feed your head." More specifically, feed the other part of your head that isn't involved in programming and business. Try to have a rich and balanced life wherever it takes you, even a path less traveled like Stone's.

OS X Mavericks is the first OS X build to be named for something other than a big cat (Apple has run out of feline names, so they're switching to place names). it takes its name from a popular big wave surfing spot in northern California, not too far away from Apple's headquarters in Cupertino. And indeed, Mac users will be catching some big waves when Mavericks makes its way into the Mac App Store this fall.

Mavericks' claim to fame (the place, not the OS) is the giant waves it produces - 25 to 80 feet high, the biggest in California. They happen when the wind and the water interact with an unusual rocky reef formation under the surface.

Some of the most important changes to OS X Mavericks are also under the surface, where Apple has emphasized dramatically improved power and memory management. Apple sells more laptops than desktops, so it's no wonder the company wants to make Mavericks as thoroughly optimized as possible for the MacBook Air and Pro experience. But all users will benefit.

Sipping power without sacrificing horsepower

Timer Coalescing, App Nap, and Safari Power Saver are all new Mavericks features designed to extend battery life. Timer Coalescing enables the CPU to drop into low power mode more frequently, while App Nap intelligently observes what an app hidden behind other windows is doing. And if the app isn't running background tasks that need to stay active - playing music, for example, or processing data - App Nap slows it down, thus conserving juice. Similarly, Safari Power Saver helps to reduce Safari's power consumption by not loading cycle-sucking plug-in content until you actually want to watch or interact with it.

iTunes HD is another place in Mavericks where power reduction has been emphasized. The new version more efficiently uses the graphics hardware inside the Mac, reduces disk access and makes audio playback more energy-efficient - that adds up to up to 35 percent less waste than before when playing video, says Apple.

Jogging your Mac's memory

It's easy to open a bunch of apps and a bunch of windows without thinking about how that impacts your Mac's available memory. Mavericks introduces Compressed Memory - it compresses data from inactive apps, making more memory available when it's needed.

This reduces the size of swap files that need to be written out to disk when physical memory is short. Smaller swap files mean less disk access, which translates into improved performance. How improved? Apple is estimating that Maverick's responsiveness under load is about 1.4x better than Mountain Lion. Waking from Standby mode sees an even bigger benefit: 1.5x better than Mountain Lion.

Some of these new technologies will require buy-in from developers to get the most benefit, so it's good that Apple's providing developer builds of Mavericks now and giving Mac devs time to optimize before the OS is released this fall. We'll all benefit from the changes once they're here.

Apple introduced new MacBook Airs at WWDC today. The new MacBooks Air are faster, more power efficient, and in some cases, cheaper than their predecessors. And they're shipping now, so if you've been waiting to get one, now's the time.

It's been a year since Apple refreshed the MacBook Air, so Apple's smallest and lightest laptop was certainly due for some improvements. The new systems still come in the familiar 11 and 13-inch form factors, with 1366 x 768 and 1440 x 900 pixel resolutions respectively. That's unchanged from last year, and bound to disappoint some forward-thinking Mac users who were hoping to see a Retina Display-equipped MacBook Pro join the ranks.

Weight and dimensions remains virtually unchanged: the 11-inch MacBook Air weighs a scant 2.38 pounds, measuring 0.11 x 11.8 x 7.56 inches when the lid is closed. The 13-inch model still weighs 2.96 pounds, measuring 0.11 x 12.8 x 8.94 inches.

Despite the same display resolutions, same sizes and same weights, under the hood there are a lot of differences. The new MacBook Airs are the first Mac models to use Intel's fourth generation Core processor - the chips known as "Haswell." The new MBAs have lower CPU clock speeds than their predecessors - 1.3 GHz across the board, compared to 1.7 GHz for the 2012 11-inch and 1.8 GHz for the 2012 13-inch - but they also feature Intel HD Graphics 5000, an integrated graphics processor that Apple says is up to 40 percent faster than what was in last year's model.

All of the new MacBook Airs come equipped with 4GB of RAM standard (configurable to 8GB), and the base 11-inch model now doubles storage capacity from 64GB to 128GB. The higher-end 11-inch also doubles capacity from 128GB to 256GB. 13-inch models remain unchanged, with 128GB and 256GB as standard issue for the low and high-end, respectively.

Haswell processors also introduce dramatically improved power management. This is one area where MacBook Air owners are going to see huge improvements: Apple estimated the battery run-time of the 2012 11-inch model at up to five hours, and that jumps up to nine hours for the new one. The 13-inch, which packs more battery capacity inside its larger case, jumps from nine hours to 12.

Other accouterments remain unchanged, for the most part - stereo speakers, FaceTime HD cameras, two USB 3.0 ports, headphone jack and MagSafe 2 adapter; one Thunderbolt port (and yes, it's the original Thunderbolt, not the Thunderbolt 2 that will be featured on the Mac Pro later this year).

There's one other modest change: all MacBook Airs now come equipped with dual microphones, a carryover first introduced on the MacBook Pros with Retina Display. Dual mics produce better sound quality for voice chats via Skype, Messages, FaceTime and other services.

The price of the base 11-inch model remains unchanged from last year: $999. The higher-end 11-inch model jumps up $100, however, from $1099 to $1199 (likely explained by the double SSD capacity). There's better news for 13-inch buyers - both machines see a $100 price drop, to $1099 and $1299 respectively.

All told, a solid enhancement to Apple's popular lightweight laptops. Apple took the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach while incorporating solid enhancements that promise better performance and better power management - always welcome news for road warriors who depend on the nimble MacBook Air to get their work done.

Over the past few weeks I've spent a lot of time writing about the Mac Pro - how to keep it alive a while longer, its importance as Apple's most high-performance computer, and what I thought the future was likely to hold for the aging but still powerful machine.

Well, Apple finally gave us a glimpse of that future today. The new Mac Pro is a huge departure from the old one - Apple started with a fresh sheet of paper and really rethought what the purpose of a "pro" computer is. In the process, they're giving us something completely new.

The new Mac Pro won't ship until later this year, but when it does, it'll immediately jump to the front of the Mac line in overall performance. Despite the ten year old design of the aluminum-clad Mac Pro, it was no slouch - Geekbench reports show that Mac Pros dating back to 2010 still kick the ass of Apple's next-fastest machine - the 27-inch iMac.

The new machine uses Intel Xeon E5 processors, which won't ship until the third calendar quarter of 2013. This generation of Xeon E5 is based around Intel's Ivy Bridge-EP microprocessor architecture. Apple says the new Mac Pro's floating-point performance alone is twice as fast. Faster Error Correcting Code (ECC) memory running at 1866MHz, connected through a four-channel controller, means the new Mac Pro has twice the memory bandwidth of its predecessor as well.

This move to an Ivy Bridge-EP-based Xeon microprocessor finally allows the Mac Pro to have USB 3.0 and faster a PCIe bus, which Apple is using specifically for Solid State Drive (SSD) storage, eschewing the internal SATA interface used in previous Mac Pros all together. That PCIe-based flash storage is more than twice as fast as a SATA-based SSD and up to 10 times faster than a SATA-based hard drive, according to Apple.

This is liable to disappoint some Mac Pro enthusiasts who enjoy the internal expandability of today's model, but Apple says all expandability on this new machine is external. That's because in addition to four USB 3.0 ports, the new Mac Pro has a total of six Thunderbolt 2 ports.

Thunderbolt 2 offers twice the bandwidth of the original Thunderbolt, which is now standard issue across the Mac line, with half a dozen ports to use - three times as many as any other current Mac model. I anticipate that the Mac Pro will be one of the first, if not the first production computer to have Thunderbolt 2 installed. Intel says that Thunderbolt 2 controller chips (previously code-named "Falcon Ridge"), would go into production later this year, with widespread availability not expected until 2014.

Thunderbolt 2 will be used to channel external video, and the massive bandwidth will enable Mac Pro users to drive up to three displays at 4K resolution. 3840 x 2160 is a lot of pixels, and you need more than just bandwidth to push them, so Apple's put dual graphics processors in as standard equipment. The new Mac Pro uses AMD's FirePro GPUs. FirePro isn't a consumer-oriented chip: these are workstation-class graphics processors, and the new Mac Pro comes with two of them. (Plus there's an HDMI cable if you'd like to hook up your Mac Pro directly to a big-screen TV - and with HDMI 1.4 support, that connector will work with the 4K TVs that are coming to market now.)

The cylindrical design of the new Mac Pro eschews an internal SuperDrive. That was an obvious evolution: at this point, the only Macs that still have internal optical drives are the non-Retina Display-equipped MacBook Pros. But that design provides some interesting properties - essentially, the interior of the Mac Pro is a giant aluminum heatsink, wicking away heat from the CPU, GPUs and other components and channeling upward like a chimney. On top of the Mac Pro is a fan to help vent the heat, and Apple says it's quiet. Current Mac Pros can be noisy, so this is a welcome change, especially for digital audio pros who need a quiet studio to record.

As is customary with the Mac Pro, there's not one but two Gigabit Ethernet connections on the new box. Mac Pros often are connected to two different hard-line networks, but those two ports can also be used for link aggregation for even faster data transfers over a Gigabit Ethernet network. And, of course, the new box will support 802.11ac - Gigabit Wi-Fi - and Bluetooth 4.0.

The most amazing part of the new Mac Pro is just how much power Apple has crammed into so small a space. The system measures less than ten inches high, with a diameter of six inches. You could stack eight of these things together in the space of the current Mac Pro. Plus it's got a cool black design that's unlike any other Mac at present, though it's right at home with a black iPhone.

"Can't innovate any more, my ass," said Phil Schiller at WWDC today. He's right - this new Mac Pro shows that Apple still has amazing design skills, and I'm excited to see what the new hardware can do.

The biggest questions I have right now is when is it going to be available and how much is it going to set me back. Apple said nothing about the price of the new machine. Whatever it is, you can count on it being fairly dear - the Mac Pro has always been Apple's highest-priced system. As far as availability is concerned, the Xeon processors that power it won't be out until the third quarter, but Intel is still saying "before the end of the year" for Thunderbolt 2, which could mean anything.

To have a closer look at the box, please check out Apple's preview site.

Apple has just announced the new MacBook Air at WWDC 2013. The new MacBook Airs are still available in 11 and 13 inch models but will feature new Haswell chip technology which means better battery life. They'll also boast faster graphics performance and 802.11ac WiFi networking.

While we aren't getting retina MacBook Airs just yet, the new Haswell chips will bring the 11-inch MacBook Air from 5 hours of battery life to 9 hours and the 13-inch model from 7 hours to 12 hours. Both models will also feature an 802.11ac WiFi chipset. The new Haswell chips will also bring with them better graphics performance and about 45% faster overall performance.

The battery life improvements are about the equivalent of watching a full 10 hours of iTunes movie playback on a single battery. That's pretty decent.

The new MacBook Airs are available starting today. The 11-inch model will start at $999 while the 13" will start at $1099. Anyone plan on picking one up?

So, we've been treated to our first look at OS X 10.9 Mavericks at WWDC 2013, the next question is when can we get it? Well, if you're a developer, the good news is the preview build is available to download today. For the rest of us, we can expect a consumer release sometime in the fall.