Before introducing this major change, Apple senior VP of software engineer Craig Federighi explicitly pointed out that this shouldn’t be misconstrued as the “merging” of iOS and MacOS.
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As the tech industry and in particular, Facebook and to an extent Google, deal with data privacy breaches, Apple took extra steps on Monday at its developer conference to ensure its users’ data privacy and well-being are among the company’s highest priorities.
Apple has unveiled a new version of the operating system which powers iPhones and iPads. The challenge is that many users find these pop-up alerts to be a nuisance and just blindly click on them.
But at today’s WWDC 2018 keynote, Apple announced “Shortcuts”, a feature that will make Apple’s virtual assistant more convenient to use. Use Instagram a lot? iOS 12 will tell you how long you’ve spent in the app and give you options to reduce your usage. Apple said it was working on “new features and enhancements” to address the concerns, and in March added a new webpage to educate parents about existing controls. Designed in collaboration with Pixar, a new open file format, usdz, makes it easy to experience AR almost anywhere in iOS, including apps like Messages, Safari, Mail, Files and News, delivering powerful graphics and animation features.
APPLE HAS SHOWN OFF iOS 12, a souped-up version of its mobile OS that looks to cut down the amount of time you spend on it. Set a limit and Apple will send a full-screen notification when time is up.
Following the comments, Apple had teased these features, referring to them as parental tools earlier in 2018.
For example, saying the word “Travel Plans” could prompt Siri to pull your flight and hotel info from the Kayak app and relay it to you.
If you’ve ever seen macOS’s Time Machine app, the way in which notifications are stacked will look familiar. This is a multi-year project, he stressed, adding the first iOS apps Apple will bring to macOS will be made by Apple.
There’s a big focus on device speed, with every model back to the 5S standing to get a performance boost if you upgrade to iOS 12.
Finally, there’s Apple TV which may be about to get support for Dolby Atmos and a host of new applications and content. Also cool: Live Animoji and Memoji are now supported in FaceTime. That, Federighi says, has been a particular area of focus for Apple this past year. Boot up Safari on your iPhone or iPad and go to the link to watch the show.
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The software will be available for beta developers later this month and will be released to all users in the Autumn.
