[Nfbktad] Apple iOS announcements from applevis

[Todd]

Wonderful information. Thanks for sharing, Tonia.

 

 

Todd

 

From: Nfbktad [mailto:nfbktad-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Gatton, Tonia
(OFB-LV) via Nfbktad
Sent: Friday, June 06, 2014 10:16 AM
Subject: [Nfbktad] Apple iOS announcements from applevis

 

 

Here is the latest we know from Apple. See text after link or go to the
link.

 

http://www.applevis.com/blog/apple-ios-mac-os-x-news/summary-announcements-w
wdc-2014-keynote 

 

 

>From the AppleVis website:

 

Summary of Announcements from WWDC 2014 Keynote | AppleVis.

 

iOS8

 

As always, iOS8 will be a free update, scheduled to be released sometime
this fall. Unlike OS X Yosemite, though, iOS8 is not a public beta; only
registered developers are able to download and test the new operating
system.

 

Notifications

 

The Notification Center in Yosemite borrowed the iOS "Today" view, and iOS8
returned the favor, borrowing a feature from Yosemite. This feature: 

widgets. You can now download apps that offer widgets; if you do, you will
see that a new widget is available next time you open the Notification
Center, and you can add it.

 

Also like OS X, notifications are now easier to deal with. You can tap a
widget to respond to a notification, or simply pull down on a banner
notification to respond. For example, if you are in the Mail app and get a
text, you can just pull down the text, type your response, send it, and
you're back in Mail.

 

Safari

 

On the iPad, Safari now displays the same sidebar and tab view that Yosemite
introduces. No other changes were mentioned for Safari.

 

Mail

 

Have you ever been writing an email and needed to check another email for a
detail? You could cancel your message, save it as a draft, check your
information, go back to the drafts mailbox, find your draft, and keep
writing. With iOS8, you simply pull down while typing your email and it
slides out of the way, returning you to your mailbox/message list. When you
are ready, tap the button in the lower right and your draft returns, ready
for you to continue typing it.

 

Mail also makes extensive use of gestures to flag, delete, and mark
messages. I cannot be sure, but I imagine VoiceOver's "actions" rotor item
will be how this happens. In fact, right now, VO users have access to all
these features from the rotor, so I doubt much will change on the Mail front
as far as Voiceover is concerned.

 

Recent People

 

The App Switcher has been used for years to show you recently used apps. 

Now, it also shows you recently contacted people, and you can text, call, or
FaceTime them right from the new and improved App Switcher.

 

Spotlight

 

Similar to Yosemite, the iOS8 Spotlight search pulls web search results,
contacts, iCloud Drive documents, news, and more when you search. It can
even find apps, movies, and music you do not have yet and suggest them, a
feature for which i currently have rather mixed feelings.

 

Keyboards

 

The stock iOS keyboard now has context-sensitive predictive typing. If you
get a message asking how the meeting went yesterday, and you type "the m",
it might suggest "meeting". If the message instead asked how the movie was,
the auto-complete suggestion would be "movie".

 

Much more exciting, though, is the news that, after years of waiting,
third-party keyboards AND BRAILLE are coming to iOS! One day soon, you will
be able to use braille, or Fleksy, or any other keyboard you like, to type
anywhere in iOS. Imagine using braille to write a text directly in the
Messages app, or Fleksy to type out an email or iTunes search. It is coming
- Apple's WWDC slides said that six-key braille entry would come with

iOS8 as a keyboard option, and the developers of Fleksy plan to be among the
first to offer their app as a default keyboard after iOS8 is released. Of
all the features in iOS8, I have to say that this is the one to which I am
looking forward the most.

 

Messages

 

Messages just got a whole lot more powerful. You can name threads, 

add/remove people (including removing yourself) from threads, temporarily 

share your location with others in a thread, and more. You can even send 

audio or video clips, or still images, right from the messages app itself. 

If you have an iPhone, sending an audio clip is as easy as raising the phone


to your ear, speaking, and lowering it. Other devices can send audio, you 

just have to tap and hold on the dictation button in the keyboard. You can 

even set Do Not Disturb for single threads, letting you mute a busy thread 

you don't care about but still receive all other notifications.

 

Enterprise

 

iOS8 offers several new enterprise features, including passcode locks for 

apps and files, third-party file servers that integrate into iCloud, VIP 

message threads, and much more.

 

Health

 

The very aptly named "health" app will be the central location for all 

health data you authorize it to know about. It will get this data through 

the Healthkit framework, which other apps can hook into. For instance, your 

pedometer app might tell it how far you've walked in the last week, your 

food app will tell it how many calories you've eaten, your bluetooth scale 

will tell it how much you've weighed each day, and your bluetooth blood 

pressure cuff will give it blood pressure information. Health will collate 

all this into a single set of metrics you can use to keep track of your 

health. Apple is also working with medical care providers for things like 

medical alerts - if you lose too much weight, or your blood pressure is too 

high, the app can send the necessary data along with an alert right to your 

doctor, who can follow up as necessary.

 

Apple Accounts and Your Family

 

With iOS8, you will be able to define the people in your family and, so long


as you all use the same credit card, you can use each others' purchases. If 

one person downloads a movie, any of the others can watch it, for instance, 

Children cannot make purchases without being prompted to seek a parent's 

permission, and said parents are notified when a transaction is about to 

take place. Sharing is also auto-configured for things like a common 

calendar, reminders list, photo stream, and Find My Friends. The main 

problem I see is the "same credit card" requirement, but aside from that it 

sounds like a nice feature. Note that a maximum of six people are allowed to


be set as belonging to the same "family".

 

Photos

 

Instead of dealing with photo streams, all your pictures and videos now get 

uploaded to iCloud, just like data in any other app (see why they lowered 

iCloud storage prices?) New and smarter filtering and editing options will 

also come with iOS8, and it will be easier to search for pictures by album, 

location, and time. As you search for a location, for instance, suggestions 

will pop up like "within the last month" or "a year ago today".

 

Siri

 

Siri gets some new features, including real-time transcription, so you can 

see what Siri thinks you are saying. No word on how, or if, that will work 

with VoiceOver. Siri can also recognize a song playing nearby, and offer to 

let you buy it on iTunes. One feature that was not discussed extensively is 

a new way of invoking Siri: Apple said that, when your phone is plugged into


a car, you can say "OK Siri" to bring up the digital assistant. Again, no 

more details for now; I'd like to know if that is only when connected to a 

car, or when on any form of AC power.

 

App Store

 

The App Store will, once again, get a new configuration. There will be an 

"explore" tab, letting you more easily search through apps by category and 

sub-category. Apps will now be in what Apple called a "continuously 

scrolling list", and you will be able to see trending and editorial app 

picks.

 

Developers can now do a couple new things with their apps. They can offer 

bundles, letting users pay a single price for multiple apps (so long, of 

course, as all those apps are from the same developer). Imagine buying 

several games from the same company, and having them all download at once, 

or taking advantage of a "buy this app, get this one free" deal.

 

Developers can also upload app previews. Sadly, previews are not "try before


you buy" options for users, but rather videos used to showcase an app. while


useful, I think everyone of us thought that Apple was letting people test 

out apps when the presenter said "app previews".

 

Put Them Together.

 

Continuity is the other major focus in the upcoming iOS and OS X releases. 

The idea is to make the transition from one device to another as seamless as


possible thanks to a feature Apple is calling "Handoff". Here are some 

examples from today's presentation:

.Say you are writing an email on your phone, and decide to finish it on your


Mac, Simply walk up to your Mac, and you are asked if you want to keep 

writing the message. Say yes, and Mail (on the Mac) brings up a new message 

window with the text you'd already written, awaiting the rest of your input.

.This goes the other way: write an email on your Mac, then grab your iPad, 

and you are asked if you want to keep working on the email. If you say yes, 

the iPad opens the message so you can continue typing.

.Get a phone call on your iPhone: your Mac, so long as it is within range, 

displays who is calling and lets you answer the call. The mac turns into a 

big bluetooth speakerphone, letting you talk while at your computer, even if


your iPhone is actually across the room charging, or still in your bag, or 

otherwise not within reach.

.SMS messages now sync to your Mac through this new system, so that you can 

continue conversations on the Mac, even with people who are not using 

iMessages.

.Airdrop now works between iOS and OS X devices, though between Hand-off and


iCloud syncing, I see less of a need for it than there used to be.

.If your Mac has no wifi signal, but your iPhone is nearby, the Mac can ask 

if you want to use the phone as a hotspot. If you say yes, that's it; with 

no passwords, and no other work on your part, the iPhone's personal hotspot 

feature turns on and it sets itself up to work as a wifi router for your 

Mac.

.Highlight a phone number on the mac, and with one click, you can call it on


your iPhone. Again, the mac will act like a speakerphone for the call.

 

Developers

 

A big part of the presentation today was focused on developers. The release 

of the iOS8 beta and associated developer tools marks the largest SDK update


since the App Store launched, with over four thousand new APIs now available


to coders.

 

Extensibility

 

An app can now offer a service to iOS. For example, the Bing app can offer a


translator to Safari, letting users translate foreign webpages. Apps can 

offer extensions for tons of things in iOS, such as sharing options, photo 

filters, and more.

 

Touch ID

 

On devices that offer it, Touch ID can now be used by developers. You may 

soon see apps that hold sensitive data prompting you for a fingerprint 

instead of a passcode to open, or sign-ins to banking or other account-based


apps done via fingerprint. Some apps will likely have you put your password 

in once, since the fingerprint only gives the app access to keychain data, 

but after that a print is all that is required.

 

Other APIs

 

The camera got more customizable by apps in iOS8, with developers able to 

control the white balance, focus, and exposure, or let the end user control 

those parameters. Photo read and write operations are now faster, and 

non-destructive edits are supported.

 

Homekit

 

Homekit lets home automation devices (locks, lights, garage doors, 

thermostats, and so on) all talk securely to your iOS device and to each 

other via bluetooth low energy. No one knows when, but eventually you'll be 

able to simply tell Siri to unlock the door, or open the garage, or enable 

the security system, or turn the lights on.

 

Cloudkit

 

Instead of making your own backend for server-based apps, Cloudkit lets you 

write your app, while it does the server stuff. User authentication, data 

storage, search, and more, all handled by Apple's cloud. It is a paid 

service, but the fees are very modest and may well be worth it since you 

then don't need to write the server code and pay to rent a server or host 

your own.

 

Metal: Next-Generation Graphics Engine

 

Simply put, Metal is a way of getting better, smoother, more responsive, and


richer graphics. to run on iOS devices. As an example, Apple showed off two 

companies who had managed to take graphics engines designed to run on gaming


consoles, and instead run them perfectly on iOS. That is a remarkable feat, 

as consoles are dedicated solely to running games, and iPhones are, well, 

phones. Enabling such rich graphical environments is quite the achievement.

 

Swift

 

For twenty years, Apple has used Objective-C as its main development 

language. Today, Swift made its debut: a programming language that is even 

faster than Objective-C, yet can be run in real-time to show you how your 

code will work and what output it will have. It is sort of a scripting 

language, yet is faster than pure Objective-C. Developers can use both 

languages together in the same project, as Swift still uses the same 

compiler, so nothing will suddenly become incompatible and developers' 

skills will not be rendered useless.

 

Summary

 

Apple challenged its competitors on several fronts today.

*Android by introducing widgets, extensions, and third-party keyboards

*Dropbox and other cloud storage services with iCloud Drive

*Google Now and Cortana with real-time translation and other new Siri 

features

*and all major device manufacturers, by tying iOS and OS X together far more


tightly than ever before, effectively making it much less convenient to 

leave the Apple ecosystem.

Neal

 

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