Moments ago, Apple kicked off the Worldwide Developers Conference in a live stream from the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. Alone in the auditorium, CEO Tim Cook opened the event with an emotional speech, in which he addresses the struggles society is going through at the moment, like the global pandemic and racial inequality. Cook said that Apple is still “committed to make the world a better place and to be a force for change”.
This year’s conference will bring new features for all of Apple’s operating systems – iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS, and macOS. The company says the iPhone and iOS “are centered on how we navigate our lives and stay connected” and the iOS 14 promises to be “even more powerful and easy to use”.
iOS 14 brings new features to the Home Screen, Widgets, and the brand new Picture in Picture.
The Home Screen will be better organized using the App Library. A system created to simply arrange your apps like you would in folders, but in larger icons, that show you what’s inside the folder. If you have a lot of home screen pages with numerous apps, you can hide the pages you don’t use very often and then find them in the App Library. The feature will sort the apps in categories like recently added, suggestions, arcade, and so on. This will be helpful if you have a lot of apps on your phone and always struggle to find them.
For Widgets, Apple developers created “a completely reimagined experience”. Widgets will get a whole new look and will have different sizes with more information on display. You can also drag and drop any widget from the today view to the home screen. Another new feature for widgets is Smart Stack. This will bring up all your favorite widgets, like news, weather, or stocks directly to the home screen.
iOs 14 brings another new feature – Picture in Picture. This will allow you to access apps on the iPhone while watching videos or while you-re on a video call.
Siri is also getting a new visual interface, with a new compact design. Before now, when opening Siri the iPhone switches to a full-screen UI, now when you give Siri a command to open the app, it will open the app straight away, making it quicker and more efficient.
Apple’s WWDC will take place until Friday, and Tim Cook promises “it will be truly a unique week delivered unlike any that we’ve done before”. All the content for the conference will be available for the 23 million developers and everyone else around the world for free.
Of course, we will keep a close eye on Apple’s WWDC and report all the latest announcements.
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