Today we talk about iOS 8 and all the changes going on with this version of the mobile operating system. Yesterday I talked about OS 10.10 and the changes there, you can read that here. Lets get right to it.
iOS 8:
On the surface iOS 8 docent look all that different from iOS 7, but when you dive into it iOS 8 is really a big update. Last time we got a pretty update and this time we are getting features. One of the first things you might notice is a change with the keyboard. The key board is getting predictive text. So as you type a message at the top of the keyboard it will try and guess what you are typing and you can just touch the correct word or words that you are trying to type. Another big change to the keyboard is Apple is going to allow 3rd party keyboards like swipe keyboard.
Leading up to WWDC we herd a lot about something called Health Book which was going to be this all in one way to get all the info from your health apps into one app that you can look at. Well We didn't get Health Book, but we got Health and Health Kit. Health kit is basically the hooks that apps and devices can use to interface with Health. For example Fitbit could use Health Kit to put the information about how much you walked or how well you slept last night in to the Health app. Health is good for people who are vary into the wearable health device scene.
Photos will be getting a few new editing features. Right now in iOS 7 you have a few editing things you can do like, cropping, auto enhances, red eye removal, and filters. But in iOS 8 you will have these and more. You will be able to adjust the lighting in the photos the color, exposer highlights, and shadow. They will also be adding time laps video creation to the photos app/video camera app.
Messages is getting some much needed changes. When you are in a group text chat you can now easily silence if it is always going off or you can easily leave the conversation. You will be able to quickly see any photos that were shared in a conversation. You will be able to send a audio or video in messages by holding down the mic icon or the camera icon and just simply swipe up to send. You can even share your location with the people you are texting so you can see where they are and they can see where you are. Just like Where my friends you can set limits and even stop sharing your location when ever you want.
A new thing coming to iOS as well as OS X is iCloud Drive. I talked about this the other day when I was talking about OS X. It is suppose to be a dropbox or Google Drive replacement. So you can host any files you want right in iCloud and have access to them on any device.
Lets move on to Family Sharing. Family Share is away to share things with your family, like your music, movies, iBooks, location, Apps, calendars, videos, and photos. These are all things you can share you can also do find my iPhone on family member devices you can also have a family shared iCloud album. There is also a bit of prenatal control that goes along with this so if you have family share setup and your kid try’s to buy a app or in app purchase the parent will get a prompt asking if it is ok for the kid to make that purchase.
Spotlight the universal search in iOS is getting a bit of an upgrade. It will be able to search not just your phone but the iTunes and App Store as well. So if you want to look for an app that you don't have you can just swipe down and type in the app you are looking for and without having to open the App Store spotlight will find it. It can also search the internet to look for news or movie times and just about anything you can think of.
The last thing I want to talk about is some of the minor changes in the UI in iOS 8. In iOS 7 Apple gave us the ability to swipe up to dismiss a notification when they pop up and you are in another app. In iOS 8 you can do more than just swipe it away you can interact with it now. Say you care reading something in the Kindle app and you get a iMessage from a friend you can pull the notification down and reply back with out having to leave the Kindle app. Another change to the UI is when you double tap to bring up the app switcher you will see at the top the people you contact the most and people you have marked as favorites and have a quick way to call or text them. The last thing is mobile Safari we will be getting better tab view and a new way to view favorites and view later articles.
iOS 8 will be arable this fall and if you are a developer you can get it today.This is just what they announced for consumers they announced so much more for developer even a new coding language called Swift and lots of new API’s and kits.
