Digital wellbeing in Apple’s eye

PLAN: BLOCKING DATA COLLECTION

Conference focuses on tools to help users spend less time on smart devices.

This year, excitement wasn’t exactly running high ahead of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). Industry pundits didn’t expect brand new products to be unveiled as reveal rumours usually get to the press ahead of WWDC. That wasn’t the case this year.

As it turned out, Apple’s focus was on digital wellbeing tools aimed at helping users spend less time on smart devices. As part of the new iOS 12 update coming later this year, Apple users will gain access to a feature called Screen Time, allowing them to set daily limits for apps that offer notifications. Screen Time also allows users to see which apps they spend the most time on, the number of notifications they get and how often they pick up their device and stay glued to the screen.

Apple also said that iOS 12 would make older devices faster, more responsive and efficient. App loading with iOS 12, for example, is twice as fast as with iOS 11. iOS 12 will be downloadable on devices from the iPhone 5 S and higher.

Augmented reality features have been expanded and users will soon be able to create what Apple calls a Memoji, essentially a personalised Animoji users can create to look like themselves and use it to talk to friends.

Apple also unveiled the next desktop operating system called macOS Mojave with Dark Mode, which makes all first-party apps take on a darker hue, making night work easier on the eyes, and Desktop Stacks, an auto-tidying feature which groups together related icons in piles.

Perhaps the most interesting part of WWDC was when Apple took a swipe at Facebook. Apple’s senior vice-president of software engineering, Craig Federighi, said there would be greater protection for users against data collection. “These like buttons and share buttons and comments fields,” he said. “These can be used to track you whether you click on them or not.

“This year. we’re shutting that down.” –