Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference 2020 was full of some very interesting announcements. The presentation was pre-recorded in various locations at the Apple campus. The conference started off with a message from Tim Cook, where he announced Apple’s Racial, Equity and Justice initiative and their commitment of $100 million.
The first product announcement was iOS 14. New iOS 14 features include an App Library, which is on the last page of your home screen. It’s basically an app drawer that’s organized based on various categories. It helps you see all your applications on one page, which means that you can remove some of the extra pages of apps in your home screen, and find what you’re looking for quickly in the App Library.
iOS 14 now allows you to place widgets on your home screen. There’s also a Smart Stack widget which changes throughout the day based on factors such as time, location, and activity. It might start off as the weather widget in the morning and then switch to maybe the calendar widget. You can also swipe through widgets in the Smart Stack and pick the one you want. For example, you might want to switch the calendar widget to the fitness widget when you need to workout.
iOS 14’s Picture in Picture feature allows for videos to play while you’re in the home screen or when you’re using certain applications. You can drag the picture to another part of the screen and pinch to zoom to change the size of the video screen. It also comes with a revamped version of Siri, which now only takes up the bottom portion of your screen. Siri’s become smarter and this year, you can ask Siri to send audio messages and Siri will start recording you and then send your voice message. iOS 14 also has a new app called Translate which allows for translation to and from 11 different languages. To stay connected and informed, you can pin important conversations to the top of your messages list. Apple has added inline replies to messages and you can also mention people in group chats now.
Apple Maps has gotten some major upgrades. My favourite being the new EV routing for electric vehicles. The map will now be able track your vehicle’s current charge and automatically add charging stations along your route. Apple also announced that you will now be able to use your iPhone or Apple Watch as your car keys. The first vehicle to support this functionality will be the 2021 BMW 5 Series. This feature will use NFC to turn your iPhone into your car keys to unlock your vehicle. The only downside I see is that if you lose your phone, you’ve basically lost your car keys.
Apple also showcased App Clips, a feature designed to make sure you have access to any app that you’ll need without downloading it. Through the use of cards, you can interact with apps that you don’t even have installed on your iPhone. And with Apple Pay integration, you won’t have to constantly enter your credit card or banking information resulting in a seamless, hassle-free experience. Apple also discussed privacy issues and claimed that they will improve security and provide users with more transparency on what data is being collected from them.
iPadOS has similar updates as iOS 14 with new customizations and widgets. Siri will now be in the bottom corner and calls will no longer take up the entire screen. There is a new feature called Scribble which allows you to handwrite in any text field. Any notes that you write using the Apple Pencil can also be converted into text that you can then copy and paste into other places and search for later on.
Apple also showcased a new Airpods feature where the earbuds can now determine when you’ve stopped using one Apple device and have started using another. Say you put down your iPad and pick up your iPhone, your Airpods will switch the audio from the iPad to the iPhone. The Airpods Pro have also received an upgrade, a new spatial audio feature for an authentic surrounds sound experience. The AirPods Pro will use their built-in accelerometer to track the motion of your head, locating the sounds in space as your head moves and delivering more convincing surround sound.
The Apple Watch was not left out from the feature upgrade extravaganza at WWDC 2020. watchOS now has an automatic hand washing detection feature where the microphone allows the Apple Watch to know when you’re washing your hands. The watch will start a countdown timer and won’t stop until it reaches 20 seconds. This is supposed to encourage you to wash your hands properly, which I found to be really funny. On a more serious note, Apple did add a useful sleep tracking feature to their watch. I’ve worked in the wearables space and this is a feature that a lot of fitness watches are trying to integrate into their devices, so it’s nice to see it in the Apple Watch.
Another major update revealed at WWDC 2020 was macOS Big Sur which is basically macOS 11. It’s mostly a design overhaul with rounded window corners and transparent menus. There’s an updated dock with new icons and cool textures which I personally like. There’s also a new quick settings and notification center. The UI for this looked like it would be better suited to a device with a touch screen (such as the iPad).
The most important announcement by Apple at WWDC 2020 was that they’re switching from Intel processors to Apple’s own silicon chip for their computers. Clearly, Apple doesn’t want to rely on Intel and will control their own destiny in terms of performance updates and features. One huge advantage of switching to Apple Silicon is that it will create a uniform architecture, allowing every app to be optimized for all Apple devices.
There will be a transition period where Apple developers will have to shift focus from optimizing performance for Intel chips to Apple Silicon. During this transition, expect some apps to work better on Apple devices with Intel chips and others will work better on devices with Apple Silicon chips. In the conference, Apple Senior VP of Software Engineering and Tim Cook, mentioned that this transition period will take around 2 years. They also said that Apple still has some Mac computers in the pipeline with Intel processors. The first computers with Apple’s proprietary chip will be released at the end of 2020.
Those were some of the best features and upgrades showcased at WWDC 2020 in my opinion. Overall, the conference was engaging and Apple’s production abilities were on full display with smooth transitions throughout the presentation. Check out my Youtube video on the best Apple upgrades announced at WWDC 2020 and please subscribe to my channel.