Lockscreen camera and 'widgets'
It's easier than ever to flip
on the camera with iOS 10 because sliding the lockscreen right (when
Control Center isn't open) automatically transitions to the camera app.
This is a camera app shortcut we've seen on several Android phones and
it beats reaching for the bottom right corner, where the camera shortcut
remains in iOS 9. You use the camera app everyday, why not make it
easier to access?
What happens when you swipe to the left on the lockscreen? Glad you
asked a second question. It reveals a new spot for Apple's Today menu
"widgets." It's not as customizable as Android widgets, but it's new
location a big improvement.
Graphical 3D Touch shortcuts
Within the home screen, 3D
Touching app tiles like Activity gives you a more graphical account of
your fitness goals. You'll know faster than ever that you have to close
those daily activity rings.
ESPN had even richer shortcut information within its 3D Touch menu.
It runs scores and there's a button to easily add a widget. It's even
more graphical, throwing up a drawn out play-by-play interface and video
of in-progress games you're following.
All of this peeking at
apps can be done without leaving the home screen, and it means that 3D
Touch is becoming a little more relevant in iOS 10.
Talk to Siri normally
Two
billion requests a week go through Siri, and it's now going to do "so
much more," according to Apple. With that, they announced that iOS 10
will open up Siri to third-party developers.
Now you'll be able to ask Siri things like, "Send a WeChat to Nancy
saying I'll be five minutes late.'" It can be said variety of ways and
still understood by the now-smarter Siri.
In (very literal) other
words, Siri also works just fine if you say it like "Tell Nancy I'll be
five minutes late with WeChat," and even "Siri, can you shoot a message
on WeChat and say I'll be five minutes late?"
Siri for iOS 10, all
of a sudden, is going to be a whole lot less "Sorry..." for miscues.
This is thanks to what Apple calls an "intense API," which even
functions in this new way in its multiple languages.
Siri third-party apps
Besides
WeChat, Siri is ready for other chat apps, like WhatsApps and Slack,
and ride hailing services like Uber, Lyft and Didi in China (which Apple
invested in recently).
Searching photos through apps like Shutterfly and Pinterest can be
done with your voice thanks to Siri, and you can start, pause and stop
fitness workouts with MapMyRun, Runtastic and RunKeeper.
Siri can
also help you send money to friends with Number26, Square and Alipay,
or start a VoIP call to tell your friend why you're not paying them on
time via Cisco Spark, Vonage and Skype.
This makes Siri much more useful now that Apple's personal assistant
has broken free of pre-loaded apps, and makes driving a tiny bit safer
thanks to messaging and VoIP integration for Apple CarPlay.
Siri-influenced QuickType keyboard
Apple's
on-screen QuickType keyboard can intelligently tell the difference
between what you're saying and what computers usually think you're
saying (but not) thanks to more advanced Siri intelligence.
Using deep learning, it's able to understand the wider context of
what you're typing, influencing the words in the suggestion bar above
the keyboard. It has better context by taking into account the whole
sentence, not just spitting out the next guess based on the previous
word.
QuickType is also adding a handy button for your current
location whenever someone asks "Where are you?" or requests someone
else's contact information. That Contacts app will go further unused.
Locally, Siri uses deep learning to analyze a conversation and is
able to pick up on you and a friend talking about food, a proposed time
and resturant address, and then pre-fill in Calendar event when you go
to add it to the Calendar app. "Look at that, it's already halfway
filled in," you'll say.
Rounding out the QuickType iOS 10 features
is the ability to paste a recent address you looked up without having
to copy it to the clipboard, do the same for movies and restaurants
you've searched and adjust to your multilingual typing.
It's Apple new "easy button" for iOS 10, and it's all about shortcuts to everydayactivities.
Photos with advanced computer vision
iOS
10 is going to make use of deep learning so that it'll be easier to
organize photos with what it calls "advanced computer vision." This is
how Apple plans to rival Google Photos.
Again, stressing that it's
done locally, Apple touts the Photos app's ability to create albums
based on face recognition, and can do the same for object and scene
recognition thanks to 11 billion computations. It also serves up a way
to see photos overlaid on a map based on where they were taken.
Apple
plans to take Photos to the next level with Memories, which are
supposed to remind you of events in life by clustering together photos
into trips, people and topics. It seems to have a nice
magazine-style
interface I can get behind.
iOS 10 will also let you assemble your captured photos and videos of a
particular memory with a special movie that's cut automatically. It's
customizable, with a number of mood choices and three length options,
just in case you don't want to fine tune it yourself.
Despite the AI-infused deep search and facial recognition capabilities, Apple promises privacy protection.
Apple Maps is way better
iOS
10 fixes my biggest complaint about Apple Maps - its inability to
scroll ahead on a route. Right now, Maps annoyingly springs you back to
your current location whenever you try to look anywhere else.
You'll be free to pan and zoom around the map with the new Apple Maps
update and the navigation software is also dynamically zooming in and
out of long stretches and complex interchanges.
Maps for iOS 10 is adding traffic on route to better compete with
Google Maps and expanding its Nearby functionality with more points of
interest that you can find along your route.
Vehicles that
supports Apple CarPlay not only get suggested alternate routes based on
traffic conditions, Maps' turn-by-turn directions can pop up on the
instrument (if they have a screen next to the odometer).
Apple is
weaving iOS 10 information from other apps into Maps, like if it knows
you go to work at a certain time, it'll make a suggestion for the route,
or make one based on a calendar event address.
That's just the
start. It's also opening up Maps to third-party developers, so Uber
riders can call, follow and pay for their ride without ever leaving
Apple's app. It's getting there.
Apple Music
Apple Music
with iOS 10 is being redesigned for its 15 million paid subscribers, and
it "allows the music to be the hero," according to Apple. It lets the
cover art
It looks to be a much cleaner design, highlighting cover art properly
and suggesting music that you'll like in a more logical fashion. But
it's not going to excite you for iOS 10 if you're not a paid subscriber.
The
Apple Music refresh does add some more depth by way of lyrics (though
it doesn't seem to follow along with the words like other apps do, like
SoundHound do).
The For You tab is does a better job at curating
your personal playlists and it absorbs the Connect tab that we
previously heard was getting a diminished role. Likewise, the 'New' tab
has become 'Browse.'
Apple News
Apple News is reaching 60 million people every
month with 2,000 publications and it's in for a redesign, too. The For
You tab now breaks news into personalized topics and hand-picked stories
by editors.
News for iOS 10 will also introduce subscriptions so
that you can see every issue of National Geographic or read the Wall
Street Journal, periodicals usually behind a paywall.
Breaking news notifications have been added to this pre-loaded app so that big stories appear right on the iOS 10 lockscreen.
Home app
Apple's developer-focused HomeKit is coming to
end-users with iOS 10 (and also Apple Watch), and the new app appears
right on the homescreen unsurprisingly called "Home."
It'll tie all of your home-based IoT gadgets together into a simple
interface and include Scenes to change the mood of rooms in a pinch, no
matter who makes your home's previously fragmented smart tech.
Siri
acts as a shortcut to interact with your home accessories, and Control
Center does too. Two swipes to the right in the Control Center menu
brings up a grid of home accessory toggles.
Also from the lockscreen, you can peek at home notifications, say, if
you get a doorbell alert. Peek into the notification by hard pressing
on the bubble and a video doorbell like Ring will give you a live camera
view.
Phone
Hate listening to voicemails? Never actually
check them? Me too. That's why I'm excited that the rumored voicemail
transcription idea made it into iOS 10.
It'll let you know what a voicemail message says via more convenient
text right within the visual voicemail. Apple is also partnering with
Tencent in China to alert iPhone owners there that an incoming call
might be SPAM.
VoIP is no longer going to take a backseat, as a WhatsApp call, for
example, can be answered right from the lockscreen, just like a normal
incoming call. They'll also be part of your recent and favorites lists.
Messages
Messages
is introducing rich links within a conversation and a live camera view
as soon as you press the camera button. Like emoji's? You're going to
love iOS 10.
Apple is making bigger emojis that are now three times as large as
before, and the keyboard can now identify words you can easily replace
with emojis via a single tap on each word.
There'll be bubble
effects so you can "say it loud" with a bursting bunch of text, or say
something "gently" with slow-to-exist texts.
You can also use "Invisible Ink" that requires the message receiver
to slide their finger over a text or photo. It'll either be a nice
surprise, or horrific shock to your friends.
Apple showed off an
Invisible Ink demo in which a blurry photo turned out to be a
bride-to-be's hand with a wedding ring on it. I'm pretty sure there are
going to be a lot of appendages sent using Invisible Ink.
You can react to individual messages with expression-driven Tapbacks
(reminds me of Facebook reactions) and write out meaningful messages
with handwritten "digital ink."
With club disco lights, big emoji and full-screen fireworks for iOS 10,
Messages is one crazy app. But it'll get even more insane in the future
because Apple is opening up Messages to developers with an SDK.
So far, Apple has shown off integration for licensed Disney stickers,
food ordering services and bitmoji-like expressions provided by JibJab.
More to come from iOS 10
Rounding up iOS 10, Apple quickly
mentioned Notes with multiple users editing a document, the ability to
edit Live Photos without annoyingly relegating them to stills and a new
conversation view for Mail.
On the iPad, Split View support for
two Safari windows has been added, finally letting you open up dual
Safari windows at once on your tablet, you multitasker, you.
Apple
said that despite the deep learning capabilities of iOS 10, it'll keep
that to the silicon on your device and not invade your privacy. It's
been working on something called differential privacy.
We'll have
more on iOS 10, as the developer beta prepares us for the iOS 10 public
beta. When that launches in July, we'll certainly discover additional
features to talk about.
, stopwatch, calculator and camera app) and moves the fifth Beatle, Night Shift, to a new, bigger spot above the quartet. 