Apple WWDC 2021 Keynote Highlights
Here are Apple Keynote points for updates on iOS, watchOS, macOS, and Privacy.
Apple’s second streamed WWDC 2021 was released yesterday. I found a pretty impressive list, considering it has been presented 🖥 at the event.
What’s new in iOS 15? 📱
iOS 15 is packed with incredible features that help you connect with others, and use powerful intelligence to do more with the iPhone than ever before.
- Facetime: Introduced “SharePlay”, keep conversations going as you watch TV shows and movies, listen to music or share your screen. Added, “Spatial Audio” to facetime, which includes “Voice Isolation” and “Wide Spectrum ” that will leave the ambient sound unfiltered. It’s ideal for taking music lessons 🎶 🤩. The next one is “Grid View” which shows people on your call in the same-size tiles. The speaker is automatically highlighted. The big news is that FaceTime is now supported on Android and Windows through a web browser.
- Live Text: With iOS 15, iPhone cameras will be able to identify text in a photo. Live Text will recognize text, phone numbers, links, etc. It will work on screenshots, quick looks, and understand seven languages. How cool is that !! 😎
- Spotlight: Spotlight search now supports Photos.
- Photos: Users can mix and match Memories with more intelligent music suggestions playing in the background.
- Focus mode: You’ll be able to shift your phone into different, customizable modes — like “work,” where only your work-related apps will show up, or “personal” which could tuck all those work apps and widgets to the background.
- Notifications batching: You can now tell iOS to batch less important notifications together, delivering them all at a specific time (like after you’ve woken up, rather than letting them trickle in throughout the night).
Apple Maps 🗺
Brand new ways for looking at the world. Explore cities with unprecedented detail for roads, neighborhoods, trees, buildings, and more. Apple always gives great importance to user opinions. Now Apple changing maps to look more realistic with 3D buildings and routes. For example, when approaching the bridge or tunnel, apple maps zoom app and look more clearly in your direction. For now, It’s usable in the US, UK, and some European countries.
Privacy 🔐
Privacy is a fundamental human right. Apple has always centered privacy around its software features.👍
- An “App Privacy Report” option in settings will now summarize how often any given app accesses your location, photos, etc. to hopefully flag any unexpected behaviors.
- Mail app will now automatically obscure your IP address/location from those invisible tracking pixels marketers.
- Siri’s speech recognition will now happen on-device, keeping the audio recordings off of Apple’s servers and allowing for Siri commands without an internet connection.
- You’ll be able to add recovery contacts to your iCloud account, allowing you to select friends who can help you get back into your iCloud account if you get locked out.
⌚ WatchOS 8:
A look inward. A leap forward
- Health — Enhanced breathe app with new animation, reflect to help you focus and aid psychological well-being, respiratory rate(how many breaths you take per minute) through sleep monitor feature.
- Fitness — New workout modes(Pilates and Taichi), fitness plus content, artist spotlight series.
- UI — portrait watch face, redesigned photos app, share photos via message or mail, GIF support
- Text input is getting a subtle overhaul on watchOS, with the “Scribble” handwriting recognition being incorporated right into the text view. You use the crown to place the text cursor, then draw the letters/symbols you want right on top of your text.
New macOS — Monterey ⛰
- Universal control — Single mouse to control screen on different devices, drag and drop files between devices.
- AirPlay to Mac — Share screen on the big screen.
- Shortcuts — Pre-built shortcuts to get the work done, faster.
- Safari — New tabs design, tab groups, instant syncing, redesigned sidebar. Tab bar changes colors based on the website color.
- Extensions — Web extensions.
- All of the aforementioned SharePlay stuff — which allows you to watch a video and listen to music in sync with friends over FaceTime — is coming to macOS.
Dev Stuff 👩💻
- New APIs to hook into things like SharePlay, Focus, etc.
- iOS is getting a built-in 3D object scanning system that developers can tie into their apps, allowing them to integrate 3D scanning-style functionality without having to reinvent that wheel.
- Devs will now be able to build multiple App Store product pages for the same app — with different icons, screenshots, etc. — to see which one resonates best.
- TestFlight — the service for privately distributing pre-release/beta apps on Apple’s phone/tablet/watch operating systems — is coming to macOS.
- Xcode Cloud — It’s a new continuous integration and delivery cloud service designed specifically for Apple developers. Xcode 13 cloud offers a fast and simple way for developers and teams of all sizes to build, test, and deliver high-quality apps even more efficiently. It can automatically build apps in the cloud to free up developers’ Macs for other tasks.
- Swift — It includes built-in concurrency support this means developers can more easily write code that does works in parallel, which is key to building apps that are responsive to user input while doing more work in the background.
Additional Developer Tools and APIs 💻📨
- Xcode 13 includes features that are perfect for working with Xcode Cloud and GitHub, Bitbucket, and GitLab collaboration features.
- With SharePlay, popular apps like Disney+, ESPN+, HBO Max, Hulu, MasterClass, Paramount+, TikTok, and Twitch are building new types of shared experiences for users on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
- Third-party video-calling apps can take advantage of the latest FaceTime enhancements, including Voice Isolation, Wide Spectrum Audio, and Portrait mode.
- Messaging apps including Slack and WeChat can now share user status in conversations; apps like Uber Eats can have Siri announce incoming messages, and new Notification APIs enable high-priority and communication notifications from apps to break through Do Not Disturb or a Focus.
- New camera APIs allow for better-fused images and add the ability to capture high-quality stills and 1080p video in the same session.
- With TestFlight on the Mac, developers can test in-app purchases and other great Mac app features.
- StoreKit 2, which ensures in-app purchases are safe and secure for customers, now features new APIs for handling product entitlements and subscriber status and testing support in both Xcode and the Apple sandbox environment.
- Web developers including Grammarly and Honey are now building extensions in Safari that are available across iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
- Third-party navigation apps can now show a map view in a vehicle’s instrument cluster display, and a new CarPlay simulator for Mac vastly improves testing efficiency.
- Apps can offer the theater-like experience of spatial audio and place sounds all around to bring their content to life.
- ShazamKit enables developers to integrate audio recognition technology directly from Shazam into their apps, making it possible to match music to Shazam’s vast catalog of songs and match any pre-recorded audio to custom results developers create.
Wrapping up… 🏁
That’s all covered up in a short way to know about Apple’s Event. I hope this post has motivated you to know more about this event or has taught you something new. Applaud hearty!!👏. I will leave a list of links at the end of the page, feel free to comment or reach back to us.
Helpful Resources 🔖
- macOS Monterey Preview: https://www.apple.com/macos/monterey-preview/
- watchOS 8 Preview: https://www.apple.com/watchos/watchos-preview/
- iOS 15 Preview: https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-15-preview/
- Dev News: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/06/apple-introduces-new-developer-tools-and-technologies-to-create-even-better-apps/
- iPadOs: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/06/apple-previews-new-ipad-productivity-features-with-ipados-15/
- https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/06/macos-monterey-introduces-powerful-features-to-get-more-done/
- Privacy: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/06/apple-advances-its-privacy-leadership-with-ios-15-ipados-15-macos-monterey-and-watchos-8/
