JOIN USApple iOS 14: Key features you should know
Technology major, Apple unveiled the new iteration of the iPhone operation system iOS 14 along with iPadOS 14, watch OS 7, macOS Big Sur at the ongoing World Wide Developers Conference at its HQ Apple Park, Cupertino.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the programme was an online-only event and have to say, it was well executed and straight to point along with witty wordplay thrown around to keep the viewers focused.
Apple iOS 14: All you need to know
App Clips: It is a small part of an app experience designed to be discovered the moment it is needed. Currently, iPhone users had to install dedicated apps to buy a product, or coffee at a local Starbucks or rent a vehicle or bike. With so many apps on the iPhone, the home screen looks messy and, some times it would be difficult other apps and swipe through pages of homes. App Clips are a special application that does not be installed on the iPhone at all. They are easily discovered and accessed by scanning a new Apple-designed App Clip code, through NFC tags and QR codes, or shared in Messages or from Safari, all with the security and privacy expected from apps.
New Widgets and App Library: In the iOS 14, the new widgets present timely information at a glance and can be pinned in different sizes on any Home Screen page. Users can create a Smart Stack of widgets, which uses on-device intelligence to surface the right widget based on time, location, and activity.
Home Screen pages can display widgets that are customised for work, travel, sports, entertainment, and other areas of interest.
Furthermore, at the end of the Home Screen pages is the App Library, a new space that automatically organises all of a user’s apps into one simple, easy-to-navigate view, and intelligently surfaces apps that may be helpful at the moment. Users can choose how many Home Screen pages to display and easily hide pages for quick access to the App Library.
Improvements to the Messages: With the iOS 14, users can pin conversations to the top of their messages list, easily keep up with lively group threads through mentions and inline replies, and further customise conversations by setting a group photo using an image or emoji. There will be new Memoji options in Messages that are even more inclusive and diverse with additional hairstyles, headwear, face coverings, and more.
New features in Apple Maps: With iOS 14, Apple Maps makes it easier to navigate and explore with new cycling directions, electric vehicle routing, and curated Guides. Cycling directions take into account elevation, how busy a street is, and whether there are stairs along the route.
Also, there will be an electric vehicle routing date with charging stops along a planned route based on current vehicle charge and charger types.
There are also Guides that provide a curated list of interesting places to visit in a city, created by a selection of trusted resources. This feature designed to help discover hot new restaurants, find popular attractions and explore new recommendations from respected brands, including AllTrails, Complex, The Infatuation, Time Out Group, and The Washington Post, among others. However, the new features will be available in select countries only.
Enhanced privacy features: All apps on downloaded to the iPhone via Apple App Store will now be required to obtain user permission before tracking. Later this year, App Store product pages will feature summaries of developers’ self-reported privacy practices, displayed in a simple, easy-to-understand format. In addition, users can upgrade existing accounts to Sign in with Apple, choose to share their approximate location with app developers rather than their precise location when granting any app location access and get even more transparency into an app’s use of the microphone and camera.
AirPods update: With iOS 14, AirPods get the ability to seamlessly switch between Apple devices with automatic device switching. Spatial audio with dynamic head tracking brings a theater-like experience to AirPods Pro. By applying directional audio filters, and subtly adjusting the frequencies each ear receives, sounds can be placed virtually anywhere in a space to provide an immersive listening experience.
Translate: This is designed to offer quick and natural translation of voice and text among 11 different languages.4 On-device mode allows users to experience the features of the app offline for private voice and text translation. However, it is limited to select languages-- English, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Russian, Brazilian Portuguese, and Arabic.
Back Tap: Though Apple failed to mention this feature, it was shown by certain media outlets with iOS 14 beta software. As the name suggests, this feature allows users to perform actions just by tapping the back of the iPhone. Users can assign functions for double tap and triple tap gesture actions to launch an app, take a screenshot, and other stuff.
Other notable iOS 14 features
With iOS 14, Siri expands its knowledge and will help find answers from across the internet, and can now send audio messages. Keyboard dictation runs on devices when dictating messages, notes, email, and more. It is available on iPhone XS and later in English (US, UK, India, Canada, Australia), Mandarin (China mainland, Hong Kong), Japanese (Japan), French (France), German (Germany), and Spanish (US, Spain, Mexico). Requires download of dictation models.
As with the Home app, it now makes smart home control even easier with new automation suggestions and expanded controls in Control Center for quicker access to accessories and scenes. Adaptive Lighting for compatible HomeKit-enabled lights automatically adjusts the color temperature throughout the day, and with on-device Face Recognition, compatible video doorbells and cameras can identify friends and family.6 The Home app and HomeKit are built to be private and secure, so all information about a user’s home accessories is end-to-end encrypted.
For multitasking, iOS 14 will now offer picture-in-picture mode. You check the calendar while using face-time in the same screen
With iOS 14, select iPhone models and Apple Watch get Digital car keys to help owners securely unlock and start their car. Digital car keys can be easily shared using Messages or disabled through iCloud if a device is lost, and are available starting this year through NFC. Apple also unveiled the next generation of digital car keys based on Ultra-Wideband technology used in the iPhone 11 series for spatial awareness delivered through the U1 chip, which will allow users to unlock future car models without removing their iPhone from their pocket or bag and will become available next year. This feature works on iPhone XR, iPhone XS and later, iPhone SE (2nd generation), and Apple Watch Series 5 through participating manufacturers.
Find My feature, which exclusively used to locate Apple devices, will add support for finding third-party products and accessories with the new Find My network accessory program. This will allow customers to use the Find My app to locate other important items in their lives, in addition to their Apple devices. "User privacy remains central to the Find My network with end-to-end encryption built-in. A draft specification is available for accessory makers and product manufacturers starting June 22, the company said.
With iOS 14, Safari browser will start to offer Privacy Report so users can easily see which cross-site trackers have been blocked, secure password monitoring to help users detect saved passwords that may have been involved in a data breach, and built-in translation for entire webpages.9
In the iOS 14 update, native Health app gets all-new experiences to manage sleep, better understand audio levels that may affect hearing health, and a new Health Checklist — a centralized place to manage health and safety features — includes Emergency SOS, Medical ID, ECG, Fall Detection, and more. Health also adds support for new data types for mobility, Health Records, symptoms, and ECG.
With the Weather app and widget keep users up to date on severe weather events and a new next-hour precipitation chart shows minute-by-minute precipitation when rain is in the forecast.
In the iOS 14 update, accessibility features now include Headphone Accommodations, which amplifies soft sounds and tunes audio to help music, movies, phone calls, and podcasts sound crisper and clearer, and sign language detection in Group FaceTime, which makes the person signing more prominent in a video call. VoiceOver, the industry’s leading screen reader for the blind community, now automatically recognizes what is displayed visually onscreen so more apps and web experiences are accessible to more people.
The new iOS 14 will be available as a free software update for iPhone 6s and later models in the Fall (September 2020).
If patience is not your strong suit and want to try it now, then you can head to developer.apple.com, but you have to be an Apple Developer Program member. Interested people wait for public beta software, which likely to be made available before the end of July.
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