Apple Announces iOS 9

Apple made a number of announcements at WWDC today, including Mac OS X El Capitan and iOS 9. There are a number of new features.

Your iPhone will now suggest people that might be calling you. They call this your proactive assistant, doing things like bringing up Now Playing when you plug inheadphones. Of course, this doesn’t help with the Bluetooth headphones that you just bought to go with your Apple Watch.

They also announced a search API. They’re starting off with a bunch of new Siri features.

They’re now showing off some new Photos features. You can search for photos you took last June in San Francisco. I’m assuming you can search for other dates and places. There’s also a photo scrubber at the bottom, which frankly, looks pretty cool.

The theme here seems to be intelligence, something like how Google does Google Now on Android. They’re also making it clear that they’re not mining your data (like Google does) and it all happens on device.

Next up is Apple Pay. You will now be able to add aDiscover card to Apple Pay. You can also add store cards, such as Kohl’s, JC Penney, and BJ’s, and they’re changing Passbook to Wallet.

Notes will have a new toolbar with a formatting option. You can also add photos to your notes, as well as draw with your finger. This is something I’d expect to see present if they announce an iPad Pro with a pen later this year.

Next up is Maps. They are FINALLY adding a public transit option to Apple Maps, a feature that iOS users have long missed ever since the loss of Google Maps in the stock apps. Mass transit will start off in the U.S. and in China.

Next up is News, a new app coming to the stock apps iniOS. I have to say, this app looks beautiful. I’m reallylooking forward to it. It creates a personalized news feed based on preferences, much like Blinkfeed, or, well, a million other news apps.

Next up they’re talking about iPad. They’re adding shortcuts to the shortcuts bar, allowing you to cut, copy, paste, or add a picture, and more. You can also place two fingers on the screen to turn it into a trackpad. Again, this is something we’ll hear more about later this year when we see force touch on the new iPad.

Next up is iPad multitasking. There’s an all new task switcher. Of course, there’s split screen multitasking. You just slide in from the right and you can choose an app to open. Four finger gestures still work, of course. There’s also PIP if you’re watching video.

 

They’re still announcing iOS 9. I’ll continue to write. You refresh the page.