Well it’s been another eventful evening from the Apple Camp… They have launched a steady stream of new apps, services and SDK’s for developers over at WWDC today. Here’s a quick rundown of the most exciting new features for iOS8 for consumers and developers:
- Interactive Notifications – Heading more and more into android territory you can now reply to messages, like Facebook posts and bid on eBay items right from the IOS 8 Notification Panel.
- Keyboard – For consumers apple have provided some smarter features in the flavor of “Smarter Auto Complete”, and “Quick Type” which will learn to answer questions for you. Apple has finally allowed access to other developers to design new keyboards for IOS, and Swift Key is said to already be in development.
- ICloud Drive – Dropbox beware, ICloud Drive is a new feature that allows online storage of files and folders and allows seamless access from both MAC OS and IOS. The first 5GB of storage will be free.
- Airdrop – Now you can share files between IOS and Mac OS.
- SMS & Phone Calls on all devices – This is an update to iMessage which allows you to send and receive SMS Messages and Phone Calls all from your Mac.
- New Photos App – Apple have finally made it easier for you to organize your collections of photos from various devices. It allows syncing via ICloud to allow you to edit and share the photos over every device.
- Healthkit – This addition allows an app to track your health and fitness data over periods of time.
- Messages now with Audio & Video Chat – Video & Audio Messages, Self-Deleting Messages and Temp Location Sharing.
- Spotlight gets brighter – A wider variety of apps are now searched from spotlight as well as useful and relevant data online.
- Siri hands free – Siri now has the ability to listen all the time for when you say them magical words “Hey, Siri”, as well as Shazam integration, making it all hands free.
- Inter App Communication – Finally after all this time your apps can speak to each other.
- Widgets – You will be able to attach apps to the Notification Centre.
- HomeKit – This will slowly allow your iPhone to control devices in your home such as security cameras and lights, link this in with Siri and you’ve got something very special.
- Family Sharing – This feature will allow up to 6 family members to share ITunes purchases between them, as well as sharing Calendars, Photos, Reminders and it allows parents to approve purchases for the kids.
- Touch ID Fingerprint open to all – Apple will also allow access to its Fingerprint Reader for other apps and developers.
So that’s a summary of the updates that so far have been released for IOS8 that we can all expect to see on iPhone around the world. If you were expecting some major hardware updates there are currently none, but these software updates for Apple are going to give them some major headway to making their phones a little more android like and a little more open and free from apples clutching hands.