SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Apple Inc.’s two-hour keynote at its Worldwide Developer Conference was high on incremental improvements to its software and news that perhaps only software developers could love, but the company appears to be laying the groundwork for future products in the areas of wearable computing and the connected home.

Perhaps among the geekier of introductions at WWDC on Monday was news that Apple AAPL, -3.17% is launching software development kits in health care and for the home. It is also launching a new programming language called Swift, which got big cheers from the developers in the audience, with the promise to make it easier for developers to create apps for the iPhone and other Apple products more quickly and easily.

But with some on Wall Street hoping for more specific hardware news, Apple’s shares dipped slightly as it became clear there would be no major product launch, beyond the company’s release of its next generation operating system for the iPhone, called iOS 8. Some of the new features introduced in iOS 8 were noted as already existing in competitive products such as the new predictive text feature, which is already available in Google Inc.’s GOOG, -2.37% Android.

Jan Koum, the co-founder of WhatsApp, the mobile texting company that Facebook is going to acquire for $19 billion in cash and stock, tweeted that he was flattered to see “Apple ‘borrow’ numerous WhatsApp features into iMessage in iOS 8.” Koum was referring to new iMessage features such as the ability to leave a group of messages and tapping to talk or send videos.

Still, for all the disappointment, it seems clear that Apple is going to be launching products in both the smart home arena and/or wearable computing. Analysts still believe that Apple will eventually launch an iWatch that can probably act as a health monitoring device and will also synch with other Apple devices.

The goal behind the new software development kit for the home, simply called Home Kit, is to encourage developers to create apps that connect the iPhone to any electronic gadget designed for the home, where the iPhone could serve as the main control device, even using spoken commands with Siri, such as telling your home heating system to turn on before you arrive.

With the Health Kit, Apple likely hopes that health-care providers will play a bigger role in accepting and using data from devices that monitor human health. Apple’s much-anticipated iWatch, which the company has never officially confirmed is in development, could also play a role here, or perhaps Apple has other smart wearable gadgets in the works that would monitor the wearer’s heart rate or keep track of calories burned.

As it has done in the past, the company is probably taking its time to enter new markets, as it is probably looking at improving upon or simplifying all the tech that has gone before it, with big expectations that it can upend these arenas. But investors who are counting on such news have to be patient.

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