Apple’s latest version of OS will help beef up the powers of all its products, especially its computers
THE Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) took place last week. Of course the show was a little different this year, with the conference happening online due to Covid-19.
The opening keynote address was transformed – a slickly produced film replaced the usual live one-stage announcements, with the spectacular Apple Park campus playing a big role.
All Apple’s major software platforms got an upgrade, while there was some special news for the Mac.
Here’s what’s in store for the software that powers your iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch.
PERHAPS the biggest change to the iPhone’s OS is coming to the home screen. For the first time in iOS 14 users will be able to create widgets of various sizes that display real-time info from apps and place them on their home screen among the app icons. So you could set up a weather widget with the latest forecast displayed for an at-a-glance update.
There will also be a home screen page called the App Gallery which will collect all your apps up into relevant categories for easy organisation.
Another headline feature coming to iOS 14 is called
App Clips. These are small slices of apps that appear when you need them, even if you don’t have the app in question installed. Say you’re at a parking meter in a car park that uses the PayByPhone service, but you don’t have the app installed.
Scanning a special QR code will quickly launch the PayByPhone app clip – which offers you the option to sign up and pay quickly without ever downloading the full app.
There’s a new app coming, too – Translate. It might not surprise you to learn that it brings real-time translation to the iPhone. Designed to be used on your travels, it’ll let you translate phrases from your native tongue to one of 11 languages and display the results on your screen so you can show it to whoever you’re communicating with. If you turn your phone to landscape mode, it’ll even translate a conversion in real-time.
Other upgrades coming include the ability to pin conversions to the top of your chat list in Messages, and enhancements to Maps, which will feature cycling directions and some curated guides to locations.
Widgets will now appear on screen
THE big news for the Mac this year is a transition from processing chips made by Intel to custom silicon made by Apple itself. Apple has made privacy is at risk.
Safari, for example, will display front and centre a privacy health-check for every website you visit to make it more obvious what kind of data is being gathered by third parties, and how your activity is being tracked. its own chips for iPhone and iPad for years, so this is a natural progression allowing Apple more control over its integrated ecosystem.
A downside is that developers will have to update apps to work on the new chips, and the transition will take a couple of years. Apple has form for this, though – it transitioned Macs from chips made by IBM to
Intel chips 15 years ago. Then, as now, Apple is building into its new macOS (called Big Sur) a system that will allow apps to run on the new chips even if they haven’t been updated.
A potential big upside to the switch is that, because the chips will be built on the same technology as the chips in iPad and iPhone, users will be able to run apps built for those devices on the Mac.
Big Sur will come before the switch to Apple chips, and brings a whole host of improvements to macOS – not least of which is an all new refined design. Big Sur will also get the updates to Maps and Messages to match those on the iPad and iPhone.
The Health app on the Apple Watch gets an update too
Security issues will be more transparent
Appy Mac: Macs should be able to run apps designed for iPhone in the near future
THE Apple Watch OS is getting some nice updates too. There will be improvements to its ability to track your sleeping patterns, with information gathered displayed in the iPhone Health app. The length and quality of your sleep will be recorded to give you the best chance of analysing what’s going on. A quirky addition to watchOS is a new feature that detects when you are washing your hands and times you to make sure you wash for long enough… no more singing happy birthday twice, then…
IPAD OS keeps getting better and better, allowing productivity gains across almost everything you might want to do with a computer.
Some of the same features found in iOS 14 – like the Maps, Messages and widget upgrades – are coming to the bigger screen, but there are also some upgrades just for iPad.
The most remarkable is perhaps Scribble – which essentially allows you use the Pencil to input text into search fields. So you can search it like never before, and even select, copy and paste it.
All the updates to the Apple devices operating systems are scheduled for release in the autumn and will be free upgrades. A public beta of the software begins later this month.
Visit apple.com for more.