During its yearly Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple took the opportunity to officially introduce iOS 10, now the newest version of the tech giant’s mobile operating system. Apple is planning to roll out a public beta by July of this year, which means that a month from now, iOS users will able to start experiencing for themselves what iOS 10 is really about.
According to Craig Federighi, the senior vice president of the Software Engineering division at Apple, iOS 10 will be the biggest iOS release ever. Not only that, Federighi and his crew have also done some nice new touches in iOS 10. For instance, a new feature called Raise To Wake will allow mobile users to see their lock screen even without touching their device. This feature was introduced because apparently Touch ID on the last year’s iPhone 6s has become so far that users would not be able to notice alert notifications on their lock screen.
Speaking of notifications, with iOS 10, users will be able to preview them with 3D Touch. All they need to do is make a deep press on an alert and it will launch a small window with the user’s message convo for instance. This could prove to be handy especially for third party mobile apps. For example, deep pressing on an Uber alert will allow users to determine the location of their ride. Mobile apps now have the ability to put live data directly in the 3D Touch popup, essentially making 3D Touch shortcuts more useful.
Launching the camera from the lock screen can be done with a swipe to the right, while widgets can be displayed with a swipe to the left. What about swiping from the top or the bottom? Doing this will launch the notification center and control center. Users will notice that the notification center now has a new look that is rather reminiscent of the notification screen found on the Apple Watch. As for the control center, it now features a couple of panes -- swiping right lets users see another control center with the music player only.
Those who frequently use Siril might be delighted to know that Apple’s digital assistant has been integrated with a number of third party apps. For instance, requesting Siri to send a WeChat message will launch a small version of the mobile app so that you can message somebody right away. The same functionality is integrated with Uber, Lyft, Runtastic, Runkeeper, Number26, Venmo, Skype, Viber, and other apps.
iOS 10 also makes clever use of face recognition in allowing users to build photo albums based on who are featured on the photos. The Photos app has been upgrade significantly, and so is Maps (now featuring Proactive suggestions).
Apple Music has gone through a major overhaul -- Connect is still available, although the Connect tab has been removed. The Now Playing screen also has been redesigned, making it less busy in structure, and even displaying lyrics (users need only scroll down).
HomeKit is upgraded with a new Home app that lets users control all their connected devices, while the Phone app is now capable of transcribing voicemail. As for Messages, it now has rich previews, the ability to play video content directly from app, mixed live camera and photo picker screen when opening the camera, and bigger emoji, just to name a few.
Apple is expected to widely deploy iOS 10 in September later this year, but a public beta will be released next month.
