Overnight Apple streamed this year’s WWDC keynote where the company unveiled a number of updates. iOS14 is now officially in preview, to be released later this year.
For Apple users these upcoming features will feel new and fresh, but it’s hard to ignore that a large part of what we seen today, has been in Android for years.
While Apple’s hardware has moved leaps and bounds over the past decade, the mobile OS has largely remained the same, with a simple grid of icons.
In iOS14, Apple are introducing widgets on the home screen. These widgets bring information from inside an app, to the surface, allowing you see things like the current Weather conditions, but give that widget a little more space and it can display a whole week’s worth of weather forecast.
It’s also pretty handy to see the first few recent emails or new stories, to enable you to decide if it’s worth launching the app. While widgets certainly consume more of your home screen real estate, they can actually save you time.
Apple are also adding picture-in-picture so you can continue watching videos, while launching virtually any other app. While this is another Android-borrowed feature, it is an important one for iOS users to get. If you find yourself watching a video you enjoy, or are learning from, you’ve been kind of locked into that video.
Now, you simply go launch another app and the video can keep playing. You can resize the video, or move it out of the way and I like that Apple allows you to slide it off-screen and keep the audio running.
There are certainly a lot more to iOS14, including a big Siri update, better control of your Smart Home with HomeKit, the ability to use your phone as your key for upcoming vehicles, and even electric vehicle routing in Maps.
Check out more at https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-14-preview/
