Watch the keynote.
iOS 12
- The David Attenborough-narrated The Developer Migration video was hilarious and completely delightful. I was grinning ear-to-ear the whole time the video was playing 😆
- Apple has 1-billion active iOS devices. One B-I-L-L-I-O-N! 😲
- Focuses in iOS 12 offer performance improvements on older devices. Specifically, it can offer up to 2x performance improvements in some actions.
- LEGO augmented reality demo was incredible! I can totally see my son and I playing and bonding over something like that in a few years.
- The For You feature comes to Photos on iOS that offers a flashback feature showing you photos you took on this day in years past. I’m really excited about this feature. It’s one of my favorite features of Google Photos and in Day One.
- Siri Shortcuts is a really welcome improvement. Some of the Siri suggestions features have me less hopeful that they will work as advertised but only time will tell.
- Turns out the Siri Shortcuts app is where the Workflow team has seemingly spent their time since they were acquired. It looks awesome and the demo was impressive! 👏
- Stocks app comes to iPad 😴 (how about a calculator?)
- Do Not Disturb improvements are now context-aware, yes!
- Screen Time generates a weekly activity summary on how you use your iPad or iPhone. This is going to be really important as time continues.
- App Limits let you control how long you can spend in apps. I like how this is self-controlled. If you find yourself spendint too much time in social media apps, you can set a limit for yourself.
- App Limits and Screen Time are also built into Parental Controls and connected to other people in your family.
- New Animoji (ghost 👻, koala 🐨 , tiger 🐯 , and t-rex 🦖 ). Meh 😑. Was I the only one who thought there was way too much awkward silence during the new Animoji demo?
- Memoji is such an awful name but the tech is pretty cool, I’ll admit. The live Memoji in Messages is also pretty impressive.
watchOS 5
- Walkie-Talkie feature sounds neat on the surface but there are lots of implications about how that will work. Will they just come through anytime regardless of notification settings? 🤔
- 3rd Party apps on Siri watchface, great!
- The Connected podcast highlighted on stage! 😳👏. I bet Myke, Stephen, and Federico and a bunch of the Relay.fm folks were all losing their sh*t!
- Background audio on watchOS 5!!! Could this mean native support for Overcast?
Apple TV 4K
- Apple TV 4K will support Dolby Atmos for high-fidelity sound.
- Ariels screen-savers can display the location information with the tap of the Siri button on the Apple TV remote.
macOS Mojave
- Mojave Preview
- System-wide dark mode! 🏴
- Screenshots now provide the ability to record a video of the screen. I’m dying to know more on how this works. I use Droplr all the time for this and I’m wondering if this will offer anything better.
- Apple News and Home app comes to Mojave. These are some of the first apps that Apple has built to utilize some of the UI Kit frameworks.
- Mac App Store overhaul is long overdue but seems to be a very welcome change.
