Apple’s WWDC event today wasn’t as eventful as some analysts and tech personalities predicted (or at least hoped), as no new Mac hardware with Apple silicon was announced, but the two-hour event from Apple’s Cupertino headquarters still was fruitful in new features unveiled. New versions of iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and MacOS all had their announcements during the event, and we’ll cover the new features of all of these here in this article.
First off, we’ll talk about iOS 15. Some of the main features of this year’s update are updates to
FaceTime and Messages, better notifications, and the introduction of a new feature called Focus. We won't go in-depth with Focus, as our writer Caleb Gunnerson has already covered it here.
FaceTime received a whole slew of options for sharing content over calls, such as screen sharing, watching movies or listening to music. Many features that competitors such as Zoom boast are now available on FaceTime, such as background noise reduction, background blur, scheduled meetings, grid view, and cross-platform compatibility.
Messages brings a new feature called “Shared with You” that extends to several other apps. If you are sent a playlist on Apple Music for instance, that playlist will appear in the Apple Music app under a section called “Shared with You”. This also applies to content in Apple News, Podcasts, Photos, TV, and Safari. Messages also has better photo collections in-app that appear as collages.
Notifications on iOS have been cluttered and a little chaotic on iOS up until the announcement of iOS 15. The new update brings a cleaner look with better identifiers on the notification banner of who/what the notification is from, along with a new feature called Notification Summary. Notification summary organizes your notifications every day by relevance so that you can catch up on the more important notifications.
iOS 15 features a redesigned Safari, Maps, and Spotlight with a more clean, modern interface. Safari has a new tab bar design and the added feature of tab groups. Safari for iOS now also supports extensions. Maps has a better look to the general map, and now offers a 3D view of features (that looks much cleaner than google maps in my opinion). Spotlight also now features an updated design that is similar to the new notification view.
A huge part of WWDC’s iOS 15 announcement is the added intelligence features that are baked right into Photos and the Camera. I’m assuming Apple is calling these smart features “Intelligence” rather than Artificial Intelligence because it feels less accurate, human, and (as the name suggests) artificial. This new intelligence paves the way for features like Live Text, and Visual Lookup that allow users to scan things around them or on their phone to copy the text, or find out info. The video below from Nic Ansuini shows Live Text in action, and that you can paste straight from the camera.
Intelligence also can recognize activities, date, and people to create memory videos, automatically adding fitting music and editing cuts to occur in time with the beat. The user can further customize these videos on top of the intelligently curated “Memory”.
A long talking point in this year’s WWDC keynote was the added health features to iPhone, similar to many of the fitness tracking features already present on Apple Watch. There are new options to share selected health info with a health care provider and your family. There is also new fall risk assessment and integrated trends to show your fitness progress.
The last big feature of iOS 15 is the added privacy measures, especially privacy concerning tracking of personal data. The new app privacy report shows which apps are tracking what. Apple also made Mail and Siri more secure, with Siri now processing on device.
Many were hoping prior to WWDC21 that iPadOS would feature more “pro” capabilities and software, especially after the 2021 iPad Pro receiving the M1 Chip. After the M1 chip added so much power to the 2021 iPad Pro, that power seems to be was
ted on iPadOS. iPadOS is fairly capable, as it can run several pro apps like Lightroom, Photoshop, Procreate, LumaFusion, and others. There are still some missing however, like the rest of the Adobe Creative Cloud, and Apple’s Pro Apps like Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and Motion. These apps are essential to the workflows of many creative professionals who may be in the market for an iPad Pro. I myself use Logic Pro, the fully featured desktop version of Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Premiere Pro. Some in the tech community argued that an iPad Pro dual-boot into MacOS would easily solve this issue, and it wouldn’t be very difficult on Apple’s end (M1 is already handling MacOS brilliantly, this article is being type on an M1 MacBook right now). Despite these pro features that would have been very helpful for iPad users, iPadOS 15 had almost nothing in the nature of more tools for pros. Let’s dive into it.
The main focus of iPadOS this year was the added multitasking features, especially those involving apple pencil. The multitasking controls are now much more intuitive than they were in iPadOS 13 and 14. There is now a multitasking menu in the ui that gives multitasking options, rather than having to get finicky gestures to work (I personally found the gestures on previous versions somewhat confusing). This multitasking menu allows for choosing a window’s position and behavior on the screen. Creating Split screen views is now easier in the App Switcher, as you can drag and drop apps together.
Another feature that came to iPadOS this year was the ability to drag widgets right onto the homescreen. Redesigned widgets were implemented last year with iPadOS14, but they were contained to the left side of the screen. Now in iPadOS15, widgets can be placed anywhere on the screen. The spacing between apps appears to have changed to accommodate this. The smallest widget size, which is usually 2x2 apps on iOS, takes up just as much space as a single app in combination with its spacing.
Notes received an upgrade this year for iPad, and a new feature called Quick Note was added. Quick note enables users to slide a small notepad out from the corner of the screen and write on it, or add links, tags, and mentions. The notes app brings features like collaboration to iPad, as well as a view for all of your quick Notes.
iPadOS received all the new iOS features like the redesigned Notifications, Safari, Maps, and FaceTime. There’s also Focus, the new Shared with You, and improved Photo collages in Messages. iPadOS is now far better optimized for productivity, thanks to all these new features in iPadOS 15.
After the huge redesign that Big Sur brought to the Mac last year, this update to macOS 12 may seem small. However, macOS Monterey still brings several features that keep consistency across the ecosystem and improve the macOS experience. The new FaceTime features from iOS and iPadOS are now on the Mac, along with the added features and redesigns of Messages, Maps, Safari, Focus, Live Text, Quick Note, and Privacy. macOS Monterey is also bringing shortcuts to the Mac, and Mac exclusive actions that help with setting up a certain workflow quickly. Low Power mode has also arrived now to macOS for MacBook users. A new feature called Universal Control for users with multiple Macs or Macs and iPads is arriving. It basically links multiple devices together like they are multiple monitors, allowing the use of one keyboard and mouse for all of them. Files and other content can be dragged across borders. Of course, this feature comes with Apple’s ecosystem setup magic. All that has to be done to pair the devices is hold them next to each other and drag the mouse cursor in the direction of the next screen.
watchOS 8 brings quality-of-life improvements to some basic functions of the Apple Watch, and adds new capabilities to messages and home. New photos faces are available with added depth in the photo and text in portrait mode photos. The Breathe app has been redesigned and is now called Mindfulness with feedback and suggestions on what to reflect on. Wallet now supports smart home keys, car keys, id, in addition to the regular card support. Messages can now send photos and #images gifs. Focus for notifications also comes to watchOS, syncing with your other Apple devices.
