Apple plans big updates to OS X and iOS
Unveils iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite at it's annual WWDC
First up is iOS’s notifications system. Interactive notifications are now on board, which means you can respond to notifications straight from the pull-down window. Get a Facebook notification from a friend, but don’t want to switch apps to like it? Pull down and hit “Like,” then carry on with your business. Get a text? Respond there and send it off, no need to open Messages. Widgets will now find a home in the notification drawer, too – unlike their Android counterparts, Apple doesn’t want them on the homescreen, but your five-day weather forecast or sports scores, for example, will appear among app notifications in widget form.
Another Android influence is Spotlight, which echoes Yosemite by offering Google Now-style search and recommendation functionality. Users can search for apps, including ones they haven’t installed, browse songs in the iTunes store and search for the usual movie times and pizza place recommendations. Type in a location? Spotlight will offer direction results. It’ll also offer relevant news items as well. Of course, typing will be a much easier affair thanks to a new Quicktype keyboard, with an enhanced prediction algorithm to further nullify those hilarious autocorrect mistakes. No more texting “duck,” hopefully. If, like Android and Windows Phone users, you’ve grown tired of tapping every key, Apple has finally opened up iOS to allow third-party keyboards. That means keyboards with much-lauded swipe functionality, which let you drag your finger across the relevant keys of a word rather than pecking each individual letter. Just wait until you try it, you’ll wonder where it’s been all your life. (On Android, if you really wanted to know.)
Apple, much like Samsung, is pushing health in this new iteration – though one presumes Apple’s integration will be a little less slapdash than the Korean giant’s. Healthkit is, essentially, a collection station for all of the apps and devices connected to your phone that track your health data. Utilize Nike’s health-tracking services? Data will appear in Healthkit, letting users track their fitness and activity, while the Mayo Clinic hopes to obtain real-time health data from patients using the service. If sharing health data isn’t your thing, perhaps family sharing will tempt you. Family Sharing lets users establish groups of 6 or less people, sharing a single calendar as well as app and media purchases. It’s a boon for parents: if your child wants to buy an app, they’ll have to send you a request before you grant access to your credit card. No more $600 surprise charges.
A rather small, yet useful, update, iCloud now offers a unified photo album: take a photo and it’ll be viewable across any connected iCloud device. The same applies for any edits applied to a photo – remove those red eyes on your phone and the changes will be mirrored on your Mac. Lastly, and perhaps in response to Microsoft’s newly-launched Cortana voice assistant, Siri has been given a working over to boost her usefulness. She now includes music recognition, much like Microsoft’s service, though Apple is using a third-party provider (Shazam) to identify tracks – which can then be purchased from iTunes. She also supports an additional 22 languages and, much like with Google’s “OK Google” wake-up command, in car mode Siri can be activated with “Hey, Siri” to kickstart her capabilities.
For those itching to swipe and tap through the new iOS, expect it to drop this fall (with a new iPhone in tow, no doubt) on iPhone 4S’s and higher, the fifth-gen iPod touch and iPad 2’s and newer.
So there we go. Another year, another round of fresh scripture to take away and study. Yosemite gains a flatter UI and better iPhone and search integration, while iOS gets a host of new features to keep it on par with rivals. All-in-all, a fairly standard, surprise-free WWDC. Don’t let that stop you from getting rabid with excitement, however. WWDC may be over, but worshipping Apple is a year-round commitment.
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