iOS 12 revamps notifications, improves Siri, and more

Apps: iOS 12 will include a number of updates for Apple’s stock apps, including an improved Apple News and a completely rebuilt Stocks app. Apple News will actually have integration with Stocks. Voice Memos is also getting rebuilt, with iCloud support for easy syncing. Apple Books (formerly iBooks) is getting new features, like a “Reading Now,” which will sync where you last left off.

One of the bigger updates is third-party navigation support in CarPlay. Do you hear that? That’s a huge round of applause for people who can switch to Waze or Google Maps.

Do Not Disturb During Bedtime: As part of Apple’s commitment to mindfulness, there’s a new feature that will hide your notifications until you’re reading to confront them in the morning, rather than jumping right into a barrage of notifications. You can also hard press on Do Not Disturb and set a time limit.

Notifications: At long last, iOS 12 will introduce grouped notifications, which will allow users to organize by app or group. They looked stacked sort of like Time Machine. Regardless of how it looks, it’s about time Apple finally addressed just how horribly it handles notifications.

Screen Time: Similar to Android P’s Dashboard feature, iOS 12 will provide users will a weekly activity summary, which will show a graph with how much time users have spent on their phone. It’ll show how much time you’re spending on an app and which apps are sending the most notifications.

You’ll be able to set limits for individual apps, which will sync across devices. Apple will send you a notification when your time is almost up, and you can tap a link to ask for more time. Parents can even control how much time their kid spends in an app like YouTube.

Messages: Animoji will now have “tongue detection,” which is exactly as it sounds. Users will be able to take advantage of the new feature with the addition of new Animoji, like Ghost, Koala, Tiger, and T. Rex.

But the star of the show this year will be Memoji. The feature will provide users with tools to create an emoji of themselves. Once Apple’s TrueDepth camera makes an emoji of you, you’ll be able to customize a whole bunch of different things, like hairstyle, skin color, accessories, and more.

In addition to using them like an Animoji, users can use Memoji in real time, placing their Memoji creating over their own face. That will make for some really fun selfies. Users will be able to save multiple Memoji.

FaceTime: After years on the market, iOS 12 will support group FaceTime. Users will be able to join a group of up to 32 users at the same time. Apple is taking a strange approach to the feature: At the bottom, you’ll see a strip of people in the FaceTime, with larger squares on the top of people who are speaking. It’s unclear how Apple will handle this when everyone is talking at once.

FaceTime will also support Animoji and Memoji, so the next time you jump in a call you can talk as your digital avatar or a poop emoji.

That’s a lot of stuff, but still no big redesign, which will supposedly come next year. The introduction of a mindfulness app and grouped notifications are huge, as is Memoji. These are just a few of the features Apple announced, so expect more to crop up once a full list of changes is released.

Article source: https://www.technobuffalo.com/2018/06/04/ios-12-announced-at-wwdc-2018/