Apple loves to fiddle with its notification features and pages. Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2021 has commenced yesterday with plenty of revelations, primarily regarding the software. Obviously, we were going to hear about the new iOS 15 and expectedly, new notification features. And there are changes akin to FaceTime and privacy controls.
The company is bringing in spatial audio for an enhanced immersive sound experience, which emulates the speaker on display. Voice isolation, similarly, diminishes background noise to avoid distractions. You can share music and videos during calls while use blurred backgrounds courtesy of portrait mode in FaceTime, not to mention, invite Android users on FaceTime via a shareable link through the browser.
As for notification, Apple introduces ‘Focus’, its new filter modes that let you customize notification as required. For instance, you can personalize notifications while you are working. You can also use contact photos during text notifications.
Moreover, you can choose a Focus mode and customize your home screen with apps and widgets. The new notification ships with larger app icons and allows you to batch notification too. Such notifications appear later as a digest.
Messages in iOS 15 come with an automatic status update. This means other people can know if I have turned on Do Not Disturb Mode. Well, you can always contrive Do Not Disturb if it’s an emergency. Similarly, photos that are shared via messages get arranged into a photo collage automatically. So, you can always go and see it as a gallery whenever you feel like it.
The keynote included several announcements related to privacy. First off, all Siri request processing will be done on devices that run on iOS 15 by default. Next up, you get a detailed report every week regarding how many times a given application accessed the device’s camera or microphone or the location. Also, you longer need to worry about pixel tracking, which is practiced to find out whether or not an email has been opened or not.
There are some interesting featuring rolling in as well. This includes LiveText that allows you to search texts in images. There is a feature to search photos in Spotlight too. There is a Find My feature that helps you to locate your AirPods Pro and AirPods Max while the AirPods updates are coming too.
The Apple Wallet gets an upgrade with a new range of accessories including hotel room keys and identification information for TSA. Users will be able to use music and transitions in video clips. The weather app gets full-screen maps and an array of animated backgrounds. Apple did stress Map in its event, particularly the ‘significantly enhanced details in cities’ and the three-dimensional city driving view during navigation and of course CarPlay.
Let’s talk about the Safari browser. iOS 15 will introduce a minimalist tab bar in Safari. The browser will support grouped tabs that work together on all devices at the same time. It will even support browser extensions.
With public beta scheduled to roll out in July, the new iOS 15 will ship across devices, not older than the iPhone 6s in the fall. The developer beta though has already been shipped yesterday.
