Highlights from Apple’s annual Worldwide Developer Conference
Apple’s worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is the tech giant’s annual developer conference. Held this month.at the San Jose Convention Center in California, the WWDC is the go to place for anyone who is interested about all the latest innovations and new products that Apple has to offer.
This year, however, rather than blow our minds with new products such as Macbooks, iMacs and new iPhones, Apple rather decided to improve upon what was already available . As such WWDC 2018 was sort of a precursor to Apple’s bigger launch that would take place in September this year. So what exactly did Apple announce at WWDC 2018? Well, we made a list of the more interesting ones.
iOS 12
The latest iteration of Apple’s mobile platform comes with a variety of new features. These include group FaceTime, new Animoji, improvements to Apple’s mobile assistant Siri and also a number of performance improvements to older generation iPhones.
Speaking of older generation iPhones, Apple also made no qualms in emphasizing that Apple and iOS 11 have the highest adoption rate amongst smartphones. In comparison, Android is sadly somewhat left in the dust. So in order to soothe over older generation iPhone users, they also spoke a lot about how iOS 12 would run smoothy on devices such as the iPhone 6.
Highlights of WWDC 2018 (Image Credits: The Verge)
Making a meme of yourself
With the advancements in AR and VR and also with apps such at Bitmoji, it’s gotten a lot easier to express the funny side of ourselves. With Apple’s new Memoji feature, you can create a customized avatar of yourself akin to an Animoji and it will follow your head as you move it around.
With iOS 12, you can find new ways to make a meme of yourself (Image Credits: 9to5Mac)
Get more FaceTime with the people you care about
With iOS 12, iPhone users can now carry out FaceTime video calls and chat with upto 32 people. That’s essentially talking with everyone at our office if we all had iPhones.
Ever wanted to have a 32 person conversation? Well, now you can (Image Credits:.Trendolizer)
A smarter Siri
If you felt that Siri was in need of an update, well this might be what you were waiting for. A new feature called “Shortcuts” mixes with apps to create custom voice commands. Using the Tile Bluetooth tracker, the demo showcased the creation of a voice command “find my keys” to activate the Tile app locator feature.
Once identified, you can add these features to Siri via the “Add to Siri” option located within apps. Further, you can also train Siri to launch a set of actions with custom commands.
Running late for a meeting? Siri will give you prompts to inform your colleagues if it looks like you’re getting late. At the movies? Siri will also remind you to put your phone on silent.
Siri gets a lot smarter with iOS 12
Know your Limits
Following in Google’s footsteps, Apple too is joining the bandwagon of letting its users know that they are spending too much time on their phones. This is especially useful to prevent eye fatigue for both adults and children. In addition, if you’re on a limited mobile data plan, it can help you save data and not go overboard.
With “App Limits’, iPhone users can set a specific duration on how long they want to use an app. Once the limit time is reached, a full-screen notification will popup stating that the allocated time has been reached. In addition to this, iOS 12 will also show how much time a user has been spending on all apps.
With App Limits, iOS users can set a limit on how long they can use an app for. (Image Credits: MacHash)
ARKit 2.0
Perhaps the coolest feature Apple announced at WWDC 2018 was ARKit 2.0. In case you were wondering, ARKit is Apple’s framework for augmented reality apps and games. Available to the iPhone, ARKit 2.0 offers improved facial tracking, more realistic rendering of objects, 3D object detection and shared experiences.
So how impressive is ARKit 2.0? Well, have you ever wanted to measure the length of something but didn’t have a tape close at hand? Well ARKit 2.0 can help you with that particular scenario.
watchOS 5
The latest update to Apple’s wearable platform, the Apple Watch, watchOS 5 brings about new ways for you to stay healthier. It introduces new workout types, challenges for friends and even an automatic workout detection.
If that wasn’t cool enough, you can now transform your Apple Watch into a Walkie Talkie. There’s no exact details on how it would work. For example, would all watches have to be on the same Wi-Fi network, akin to how real walkie talkies are on the same frequency? We don’t really know for sure, but we are assuming that Apple is doing this to get more people to buy Apple Watches.
Image Credits: Technobuffalo
(Image Credits: CNET) - You can now use your Apple Watch to talk with your friends over short distances
Meet macOS Mojave
Now this is for all the Mac users. The latest version of the Mac operating system, titled “Mojave” brings a number of updates. First off is the dark mode that dims most of the elements on screen. Then you have a collection of new tools that helps you stay organized.
This takes the form of Desktop stacks. This essentially groups related icons into one pile. You can even set your desktop wallpaper to change according to the time of day. Not exactly a novel idea, but cool nonetheless.
Image Credits: iDownloadBlog
And there you have it
Well, these are some of the cooler things we saw at WWDC 2018. While it may not seem like a host of awesome new stuff, the update and upgrades are more about polishing up stuff to maybe even entice hardcore Android users to make the switch. With Apple’s next big launch set to happen in September, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what the company is working on.
The author is senior tech writer for ReadMe a leading tech news provider. For more information log onto readme.lk