Everything Apple Announced at WWDC 2018

Apple just announced a series of new updates for iOS, tvOS, macOS, and watchOS. You can watch the entire Keynote presentation here, if you have time. Or get the highlights in the video below.

 

iOS12

This new free update will be compatible with devices that launched over 5 years ago.

iOS12 has some nice performance enhancements. Including up to 2x faster app launch and 50% faster keyboard display.

We’ll also be getting new AR features including a new app called “Measure” that will allow us to measure 3D objects with just a few taps.

With a new USDZ 3D object format, we’ll be seeing 3D objects embedded into multiple apps and websites that we can interact with or use our camera to place the object inside our environment.

With Apples ARKit 2, developers will get improved face tracking for apps like Snapchat, there’s more realistic rendering, 3D object detection, persistent experiences; for example, you can paint virtual objects on a wall, and close the app. When you open it back up and point your camera at the wall, your virtual painting will still be places where you left it, and shared experiences for multi-player gaming and more.

The new photos app provides smart search suggestions and will give you highlights of key moments and people important to you. It will categorize your photos for you and you’ll be able to search for places by company name, city, and more.

The new “For you” tab provides highlights like pictures you took the same day previous years and suggests Live Photos you can loop or apply an effect to.

A new sharing suggestion feature suggests people you can share photos with. For example, the people that are in the photos. When your friends receive the photos, Siri suggests that they also share similar photos that they may have taken at the same event. This can ensure that everyone involved has the full set of pictures taken by everybody.

New Siri shortcuts let you use shortcuts from 3rd party apps like telling Siri “I lost my keys” to trigger the tile app to ring your keys for you.

Siri will also offer shortcut suggestions based on the actions you perform routinely, like buying a cup of coffee in the morning.

If you’re late for a meeting, Siri will suggest a text message you can send to the organizer to let them know you’re running late. Or if you’re close to the theaters, Siri will suggest you place your phone in do not disturb mode.

You can create your own shortcut to trigger a series of events and apps. So if you’re heading home, you could create a voice invoked shortcut, like “heading home” and Siri will open maps to give you best route to take with traffic, text your roommate or spouse with an ETA, set your thermostat and open your favorite Spotify channel or audiobook to listen to on the way home.

Siri shortcut commands will work on all Siri devices including the home pod and Mac.

Apple updated the stocks app to include sparklines and apple news within stocks, voice memos got an update that supports all Apple iOS and Mac devices and audio files can now be synced across iCloud to access on any of your devices.

iBooks has an all-new design and a new name, Apple Books. New features include “reading now” tab where you can pick up where you left off reading and a new books store to browse books and audiobooks.

CarPlay now includes support for 3rd party map apps like google maps and Waze.

iOS12 is including built-in features to limit distractions and allow you to focus.

A new do not disturb during bedtime features keeps your phone free of notifications and distractions at night. In the morning, your phone is also free of notifications and will only show up when you decide to view them.

You can enable and disable do not disturb based on a specific time, location, or calendar event.

You will now have greater control over notifications and fine-tune the amount of notifications you receive from apps right on the lock screen. Siri will even suggest to turn off notifications from apps you rarely use.

Notifications are smartly grouped by app, topic, or thread. You can tap to expand a group or close all notifications in a group in one swipe.

A new screen time app gives you a weekly summary of how you use your device and what apps are sending you the most notifications.

You can set limits on apps and during the day you’ll receive notifications letting you know you’re getting close to your limit. Of course, you can always grant yourself more time if desired.

Kids will also get their own activity report and parents will get a report of their kid’s activity on the parent’s devices and have control over app limits. They can allow specific apps to run all the time like the phone app, and limit access to apps and websites the parents deem appropriate.

New in messages is a new tongue detection feature for Animoji. There are also 4 new animojis. The Ghost, Koala, Tiger, and T-Rex. In addition to animojis, there are now memories. These 3D characters can be customized to look just like you and can be accessorized. You can edit face, hair, eyes, eyewear, and much more.

Messages also have fun new effects for the camera. Clicking the star on the left of the camera view opens a strip of new effects to add shapes, text, filters, or apply Animoji live in a picture or video.

You can now group FaceTime up to 32 people! You can make a FaceTime call directly from a group chat to ring everyone in the group. Access Animoji, filters, sticker packs, and more directly in FaceTime and everyone else can use them too.

Group FaceTime has floating video boxes and brings the people who are currently talking front and center automatically to give you the best experience.

New with WatchOS5 are enhancements to the activity app. You can challenge friends in a competition. Win the 7-day competition by closing more rings and earning more p points. You’ll get notifications of where your friends and you stand int he rankings.

New work out types for yoga and hiking. For certain workout types, get custom pace alerts and view current steps per minute.

WatchOS5 now has automatic workout detection. If you press start after you’re working out, you’ll get retroactive credit for your workout before you hit start.

There’s also an alert to remind you to stop a workout if sensors can detect you are no longer working out.

watchOS 5

watchOS 5 has a new walkie talkie app that works over cell or wifi.

The Siri watch face now shows more content than before including sports, maps, heart rate, and also Siri suggested shortcuts. Receive predicted shortcuts and turn on your “leaving home scene” or other scenes with a quick tap.

You no longer need to say “Hey Siri” when speaking commands to your apple watch. Just raise your wrist and give the command.

Apple Watch has interactive notifications allowing you to perform quick actions straight from the notification.

Message notifications are improved and give you the ability to view web content in mail or messages.

3rd party Apple Watch apps can now play background audio on the watch.

Apple introduced new pride addition watch bands that will pair well with their new pride watch face.

Apple TV

Coming out for Apple TV is a new 4K HDR experience with Dolby Atmos audio support giving you a 3D audio experience when Apple TV is paid with a supported Dolby Atmos soundbar.

Apple TV also has a new zero sign-on feature. If your Apple TV is connected to the broadband network, all supported apps are automatically unlocked.

Apple TV remote app can now be found in your iPhone Notification Center by default and new 3rd party remotes are coming out for the Apple TV that will also include support for Siri voice commands.

View all aerial screensaver in a list and swipe between aerial locations. Also including a new location “Earth” filmed from the international space station.

Mac OS Mojave

The new macOS Mojave has a new optional dark mode.

A new desktop features “Stacks” to clean up the documents on your desktop. Quickly thumb through stacks or expand them completely for quick access to categorized documents.

Finder has a new gallery view bringing the front and center of your document.

A new sidebar feature can be used in any finder view and gives complete metadata for images and other document information.

A quick action area near the bottom of this sidebar is contextual based on what you select and can offer quick actions like rotating or cropping images and can also trigger custom actions you create like watermarking a set of images or documents.

When viewing documents in QuickLook, you also get more quick actions like markup for images that let you markup images and add signatures to documents. Want to quickly trim a video, just hit the spacebar and select the trim quick action.

Now when you take a screenshot, the image will appear in a thumbnail on the corner of your screen. By clicking the thumbnail you can quickly markup the screenshot.

The screenshot also has a new HUD with quick options to capture the entire screen, selected window, or quickly record your screen and save as a video. When a recording is done, it sits on the corner of your screen and you can drag the video into any document you wish.

Apple introduced a new continuity feature with our iOS cameras. If you’re on the Mac and need to apply a picture or video in any document, just right-click, choose “take a picture” and your phone lights up ready to snap a picture or video. Once you take the picture and click save, the image appears instantly in your desktop document.

This also works with taking picture scans of documents with your phone and applying it on your Mac.

New apps are coming to the Mac from iOS including Stoks, voice memos, and home and now with Siri on the Mac, you can control your home kit devices.

Apple is increasing security on the Mac and adding greater protection with how apps access info. The extended protection includes cameras, microphones, mail databases, message history, and more.

Safari will now shut down social widgets like the Facebook comments and likes widget found in a lot of websites which can be used to track your history even if you’re not in the social apps. Safari is also making it harder for websites and companies to uniquely identify your device and track you.

The Mac App Store is getting a much-needed redesign to be more in line with the iOS store. There’s a new discover tab featuring the best Mac apps, videos will autoplay in the Mac App Store, and there are new create, work, play, develop tabs with recommendations for the mentioned categories.

New apps coming to the App Store this year including office 365, Lightroom cc, transmit, and BBEdit.

Apple is also enhancing technologies like Create ML and Core ML 2.

Apple emphasized they are not going to merge iOS and macOS as some rumors continue to suggest but they did offer a sneak-peek into an ongoing project to bring some iOS apps to the Mac with very little coding needing to be done by developers to make them cross-compatible. We’ll likely see these kinds of apps in late 2019.