During their keynote presentation at WWDC 2021, Apple announced major changes and improvements coming for nearly every products operating system, from iOS 15 to macOS 12 and more!
While skipping any and all hardware announcements, Apple spent their presentation time at WWDC 2021 discussing the large number of updates planned for their array of product’s operating systems. Some of the biggest new features will specifically hit the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watches.
Kicking things off, FaceTime got some face time with the addition of spatial audio, as well as a cleaner UI update. SharePlay will allow people on the same FaceTime call to easily share their screens, making ease of use on the app increase monumentally. Also, Apple is introducing FaceTime Links, which will allow Android and Windows users to join FaceTime calls.
Additional iPhone updates include Notification Summaries, which will group together news notifications and the like to save you from having long lists from scrolling through tons of push notifications. Along with this comes more control over how and when you get notifications from certain applications. Also, similar to Google Lens, you’ll soon be able to use your iPhone to grab text from photos, called Live Text.
The iPad is seeing some progress as well with productivity features being the main focus. One such example is called “Quick Note” and it allows you to swipe up on the screen using an Apple Pen to get to your Notes app regardless of what you’re looking at.
iCloud is getting a paid service with better security options, Apple Watch is adding respiratory tracking, and the new macOS will be called Monterey. It will add “universal control” which will allow you to combine your iMac, MacBook and iPad and turn it into a seamless multi-screen system, much like a computer with multiple monitors.
Since we did see hardware omitted, it seems that it could make some sense to push all of the quality-of-life changes being made to the software end of things prior to going to town on the hardware end of things, which should happen relatively soon if rumours hold true.
