As part of its yearly tradition, Apple took to the stage at its developer conference (WWDC) to announce the latest revisions of its consumer-facing operating systems: iOS (for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad devices), watchOS (for the fairly recent Apple Watch), and OS X (for the Mac Pro, iMac, Mac mini, Macbook, Macbook Air, and Macbook Pro lines). WWDC '15 sees the versions numbers reach iOS 9, watchOS 2, & OS X 10.11 "El Capitan", and sees the releases being quite...quiet in terms of new features.
iOS 9 promises a bit more polish and some new intuitive features, including a more capable Siri, split-screen app support on supported iPads, enhanced Maps functionality, a more flexible Apple Pay, and enhanced CarPlay support. Surely a myriad of bugs from iOS 8 are just waiting for an opportunity to be squashed, so I'm betting anyone with an iPhone is anxious for iOS 9 to relieve all their woes.
watchOS 2 gains a better ability to review tasks in your calendar, support for native app functionality (for better performance and reliability), and more customization support to make your experience more..."you". The watch update will also be taking advantage of the updates and additions within iOS 9 (such as the more intelligent Siri, improved Apple Pay, and support for using Apple Maps to handle transit routes). General interface tweaks abound, just waiting to make your Apple Watch all the more shiny & intuitive compared to your friend's Pebble or Android Wear device.
The odd ball out of the OS update group is OS X. The long-standing desktop OS is going through more polish than addition this year, with a focus on stability and performance. Still, Apple could not resist adding a few features, one of which is a native window snapping feature akin to the snapping support introduced in Windows 7 (and replicated by many 3rd party OS X extensions). El Capitan (as 10.11 is called) should see better graphics performance for transitions (like minimizing/maximizing windows, opening menus, etc), which has been quite a thorn in the side of many Mac users for quite some time. (Complaints about that can be found in nearly every new OS X release, but as hardware has gotten more powerful and Apple's reliance on its Retina displays has increased, the jittery animations have become a prominent eyesore that not even switching to discrete graphics can avoid.)
Beyond that, other pragmatic improvements such as improved support for Chinese and Japanese character display & input can be found in the impending OS release, and the release looks to smooth out some of the lumps introduced as Apple combines its iOS design language with the dynamic needs of OS X's ever-loyal power users. Time will tell how successful their efforts are, but given their success with OS X Snow Leopard some years ago (which acted as a giant bugfix release to 10.5, and acted as the comparison point to the oft-maligned 10.7 and 10.8 releases).
There's even a little treat thrown in with these OS releases, as Apple has announced an update to its programming language in the form of Swift 2. This release promises to build on user feedback, be more informative in terms of error messages, allow greater access to APIs (as well as better documentation for said APIs), and a wider base feature set for internal structures (meaning developers will have to do slightly less customization or will find more familiar naming conventions for popular features found in other languages). As developers struggle to be platform agnostic, this release holds some hope of relieving some pressure when it comes to remembering common conventions. And since updated apps are a major part of the fun of updated OS releases, this seems like the perfect time for a Swift update.
Apple states that all OS updates are slated for release "this Fall", which continues in the tradition of past releases. As usual, the updates should all be free. Given that this slew of updates is focused on refinement over new features, iOS 8 devices will all find support with iOS 9, and OS X Yosemite users will all find themselves able to use OS X El Capitan (should they desire).
More information may be found on the respective Apple pages. As each bit of software is in preview stages, you'll find them on soft landing pages sure to change upon official release:
WatchOS 2: https://www.apple.com/watchos-2-preview/
iOS 9: http://www.apple.com/ios/ios9-preview/
OS X El Capitan (10.11): http://www.apple.com/osx/elcapitan-preview/
