Siri might be grabbing the spotlight at Apple's Worldwide Developer
Conference 2016. The company's biggest software star is still the iPhone
and iPad operating system: iOS. Apple has just made iOS 10 official at its keynote in San Francisco.
Apple's list of new features for iOS 10 is extensive. The focus is on revamping established apps (like Messages, Photos, and Apple Music). Also introducing new aspects of the user interface, and doubling down on privacy. One of the more notable updates in iOS 10 centers around Messages.
Apple hopes the new Message features in iOS 10 will bring more "personal and expressive" ways to communicate with friends and family. With a roster of new text message abilities including text balloon animations, invisible ink, enlarged emoji, and handwritten notes.
“iOS 10 is our biggest release ever, with delightful new ways to express yourself in Messages, a native app for Home automation, and beautifully redesigned apps for Music, Maps, and News that are more intuitive and more powerful, making everything you love about your iPhone and iPad even better. iOS 10 adds Siri intelligence into Quick Type and Photos, automates your home with the new Home app and opens up Siri, Maps, Phone and Messages to developers – while increasing security and privacy with powerful technologies like Differential Privacy.”said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering.
Just as expected, there are some new features introduced to the iOS 10 and some are improved from the iOS 9. Following are the important changes that you need to check out.
- Redesigned Lock Screen — Raise your phone and the phone wakes up. The lock screen now has interactive notifications taking advantage of 3D touch.
- 3D touch — Using 3D touch, more functions can be done. One of them is a long press and clearing of all the notifications at once.
- Redesigned Control Center — The control center is now redesigned with better icons and sections. A completely dedicated music control widget is given. It is available with a slide on the control center.
- Siri — The virtual assistant is now open to developers. So now, you can use Siri with third party apps. Siri can now also help in ride booking. Photo search in apps like Pinterest, etc. can be done. Payments can be done using Siri, on a few selected apps.
- QuickType — Siri intelligence is being brought to the keyboard. Intelligent suggestions will now be provided while you are typing any text. Location, Contact Information, etc. can be shared by Siri without you having to type all that. There is intelligent scheduling as well, as Siri adds all the information and make it a calendar entry. The QuickType supports multilingual typing.
- Photos — The Photos app uses Face recognition, and there is Object & Scene recognition as well. Memories uses advanced AI to cluster the photos and match locations, scenes, and faces to produce a collection of Memories. These are shown in an intuitive interface. This is like how Google Photos does, but a good addition to iOS. The movie / memory can be well edited with the addition of music, and change of font of the title.
Proactive Maps — Now, you can search for important locations. A Dynamic view is introduced with a better view of the street you are on. The traffic conditions will also be displayed along the route. There will be alternate routes suggested. These Map features are being introduced to CarPlay. Even the Maps app is being made open to Developers. Maps will have an option to book a ride and pay using Apple Pay.In short, using Maps, one can find a restaurant, find the directions, book a cab, pay for it, without having to leave the app.
- Apple News — All-new design for Apple News. Clearer and easier sections, a Trending section. An intelligent feature that picks and arranges stories based on what you read. Subscriptions are now introduced. Users will now get Breaking News notifications right on the lock screen.
- Home App — The Homekit with addition of more options is now available as a new app named Home, which is on the home screen. It also has the interactive notification support. For example: if someone rings your door bell — you can check the camera feed on your phone’s lock screen and ask to automatically open the door for you.
- Phone App — Voice mail transcriptions are now given to the users. With the Tencent ID inclusion, one can find out if a call is from a genuine user or is it a spam call. The favorite Truecaller app will now work with iOS.
Messages — Rich links, where you don’t just see a link but a featured picture or even a video is embedded with the link. Tapping on the camera app will now show a live camera feed, just like how it is on Facebook Messenger app. Emoji is now 3x bigger. Tapping on Emoji highlights all the words that can be changed to Emoji.
There are bubble effects to let you share your emotions, and there are surprise messages as well. One can now use their handwriting in the messages. There are full-screen effects included in the Messages app. Even the iMessage app is open to developers now. There’s an App store for iMessage app.
Others:
- Notes collaboration can be done with other users at the same time.
- Live Photos Editing is now possible.
- “End-to-end encryption” with the on-device intelligence. There is no user profiling done.
- Split View is now on the iPad Safari browser as well.
Probably the most-requested new addition in iOS 10 went unmentioned during Apple's keynote presentation: stock apps will be made removable.
Company CEO Tim Cook had suggested that Apple would look to allow users
to uninstall its default apps. Things like Mail, Calendar, Weather, and
Stocks can be uninstalled. The next iteration of iOS will indeed give
users that extra control and freedom to choose.
iOS 10 will be available as a free update this fall for the following devices: iPhone 5 and higher, iPod touch 6th gen, iPad mini 2 and higher, and iPad 4th generation and the subsequent iPad Air and iPad Pro models. There's a small inconsistency between the presentation and the list of compatible devices on Apple's site, which also includes the 5th generation iPod touch and original iPad mini.
There are many other little features that Apple didn’t mention during the presentation. iOS 10 is now available for developers. The public beta starts next month, and the company is expected to release iOS 10 in September.
