One year has passed and it’s that time for developers again! WWDC 2018 brings in tons of new features for developers of the Apple platform. Apple announced the new iOS 12, macOS Mojave and new updates for the Apple Watch and the Apple TV. They mostly focused on under the hood improvements on performance and security in response to some serious bugs in the past releases of iOS and macOS.
iOS 12
The biggest and most anticipated release of the event was definitely the new iOS 12. It features huge performance improvements, making older devices (like the iPhone 6) faster, launching apps smoother and appearing keyboard and camera sooner.
Alongside under the hood development, Apple served us with some great new features:
Updated notifications
One of the most anticipated features finally came to iOS as well! Grouped notifications. We all know the pain of dozens of notifications from same apps that you had to dismiss each one by one – that time is now over! Notifications in iOS 12 will be grouped which will make checking the notification center a better experience. You will also be able to dismiss the whole group of Updated notifications in iOS 12
Screen time
Screen time analyzes your daily use of app on your device, counting pickups and adding limits to your daily app use, reminding you when you reached your daily. This is a great solution to recent theme regarding smart phone addiction, reminding you when you’re overusing your iOS device.
ARKit 2
ARKit 2 brings in improved face tracking, a more realistic rendering, 3d object detection, savingScreen time app
In addition to updated ARKit, Apple also introduced a new app called Measure, which allows you
to measure real world objects with your iPhone.
New 3D file format (.usdz)
Alongside ARKit 2, Apple introduced a new 3D file format, which was co-developed with Pixar and is optimized for sharing. In addition, Adobe also said to support that file. USDZ files can be USDZ 3D object on the left, and placement of it in the real world in the right
Siri Shortcuts
With Siri Shortcuts you’ll be able to integrate Siri with 3rd party apps and create your own routines, for example, you can bind the phrase “Good morning” with Siri showing you the Weather, checking the Traffic, turning on the Music etc. It’s a convenient way to customize and Siri shortcuts example use case
Alongside the above features, there are plenty more features, like:
- Generating strong passwords in Keyboard and third party password managers support
- Redesigned and renamed iBook to Apple Books
- Updates in do not disturb – schedule and night time mode
- Memoji with new Animojis with tongue and eye detection
- Facetime group calls
- Camera updated with filters and third party app support
- For You tab in Photos
- And much more…
macOS Mojave
Along with iOS 12, we got an updated macOS as well! This year it’s named by the California desert Mojave. It will be available for all users this fall. Let’s jump straight into what’s new:
Dark mode
Apps to fully support dark mode, like Finder, Messages, Safari Calendar and of course Xcode! Along the
new Dark Mode update, they also introduced new APIs to help developers optimize their apps for Dark Mode.
Dynamic desktop
The one thing that caught my eye is definitely the Dynamic Desktop, which looks just like a normal desktop wallpaper with one special feature – it changes based on the time of the day. There’s a different wallpaper in the morning, noon, afternoon, evening, night and so on.
Desktop stacks
Ever had a junky desktop? Now you can stack them up by kind to see only the specific files, that you want.
Screen capture
Finally no more third-party screen capture apps! Screen capture is pleasant to use with many features like editing the captured screen/window, markup, hell you can even record your screen or a section of it! Finally something useful!
New gallery view with more
No more “Get info” on files to view it’s metadata, now you can access all the file metadata straight in the Finder with the new Gallery view. It works with images, PDFs, videos and more… You even have the capability to quickly edit the files like rotating images, mark-up PDFs, trim videos and more.
Redesigned App Store
App Store on the Mac also got a complete redesign. At first glance, it focuses more on simplicity regarding on what you search, for example, either apps for Work or Play etc. It looks much like the iOS App Store including Stories and App Previews
Desktop versions of iOS Apps
Using the new integration of some of the frameworks from iOS into macOS, Apple made porting iOS apps to macOS much less painful. Since macOS and iOS frameworks have much in common, macOS Mojave includes a portion of UIKit frameworks as well which makes the migration an ease. A complete re-write won’t be needed any more. This is a great way to raise the Mac App Store and I’m sure many popular iOS apps will be ported to macOS Mojave.
tvOS and watchOS
In the back, tvOS and watchOS also got an updated.
tvOS 12 top features:
- Dolby Atmos support
- Updated Areal Screensavers including location info
- Zero sign-in enables Apple TV to automatically log you in into supported apps that you have included in your Cable Subscription
watchOS 5 top features:
- Activity competitions – compete with your friends
- Web browser – viewing web content, WebKit
- Walkie-talkie with friends nearby
- New workout types
- Automatic workout detection
- And more…