From a more fun experience in messages to greater security across its communication apps, much is changed under the iOS hood
At Apple’s showcase Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco yesterday, there were no announcements of any shiny new iPhone or iPad, but there was every manner of update on the software front. And when it came to iOS, the operating system that powers their range of mobile devices, it was apparently “The mother of iOS releases.”
Here’s a run through of what you can expect when this new update rolls out to iPhones and iPads in the October-November timeframe later this year.
More personalization and expressions in messages
The Messages app on iOS brings a ton of new animations and personalizations in its chat window. Need to get your point across with fanfare? There are now full-screen effects like bursting fireworks, showering confetti and floating balloons. Want to add intrigue by masking your messag? There’s an ‘invisible ink’ feature that obscures a message until the recipient slides a finger across, revealing its contents.
You can also send handwritten notes to personalize a reply, and a new feature highlights words in a composed message that have emoji equivalents--simply tapping on these words replaces them with emojis. Or as Apple Senior VP Craig Federighi put it during the presentation, "Children of tomorrow will have no understanding of the English language!"
It will now also be possible to integrate third party apps into Messages, enabling users to do things like making payments or scheduling activities from directly within the app.
Redesigned Maps
The new Maps now integrates with apps that benefit from it--for example restaurant booking services that enable booking a table, or taxi services like Uber that could enable booking a ride without ever leaving the Maps app.
A flurry of other features were also announced, which had an undeniably ‘late to the game’ ring to them--route suggestions based on real-time traffic, overlaying points of interest like gas stations and restaurants were some of the newly announced features that have been around on Google Maps for a while now.
A refreshed Photos app
The iOS Photos app seems to have finally caught up with Google Photos, with abilities like bubbling up older photos into collections called ‘Memories’ (which automatically creates a movie using photos and video clips, complete with background music, titles and transitions.)
The app now uses image recognition to group photos by people’s faces, places and specific elements within photos--once again, nothing we haven’t already seen on Google Photos, which is incidentally available for iOS as well.
A new Home app for controlling your smart home
Furthering their HomeKit home automation, Apple unveiled a new ‘Home’ app on iOS that aims to be the control center for all connected household devices. From smart lighting to home security to surveillance cameras to window shades, this app enables control over individual elements (turn on the hall light) or even groups of elements (set the scene for watching a movie by dimming lights and closing window blinds, for example.) And all of this control can also be triggered using Siri’s voice recognition.
Apple Music and News gets an update
Both of these apps see a design update that makes for easier navigation while putting their primary content up front and center. The Music app can now be queried using Siri (“play me some classic rock from the 80s”,) and the News app now supports notifications and paid subscriptions.
Siri opens to developers
From messaging clients to entertainment, developers will now be able to integrate Siri functionality directly into their apps. Leveraging this new ‘SiriKit’,developers can integrate voice control to trigger actions such as sending messages, making phone calls, searching photos, booking cabs, making personal payments or launching into a workout session.
End-to-end encryption in iOS apps
With the backlash that communication apps have been receiving these past several months, everyone appears to be jumping on to the end-to-end encryption bandwagon. As has Apple--in iOS 10, communication apps like iMessage, FaceTime and HomeKit will now have end-to-end encryption enabled from the get go, enabling better privacy especially when used across public networks.
They also stated that while services like Siri, Maps and News send data to Apple’s servers, this data is not used to build user profiles. The company also referenced a technology called ‘Differential Privacy’, which helps uncover usage patterns of a large set of users but without compromising individual privacy.
Under-the-hood enhancements
Several other improvements were showcased, such as the ability for QuickType to tap into Siri’s intelligence for suggesting more accurate and contextual word predictions, the phone dialer now integrating support for third-party VoIP calls and using the Safari browser to make secure payments from your iOS device directly.
iOS 10 will be available later this year as a free software update for iPhone 5 and later, all iPad Air and iPad Pro models, iPad 4th generation, iPad mini 2 and later and iPod touch 6th generation.
Know more about iOS 10 here.
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