Yesterday was a big day for Apple as they revealed their new software making way to consumer later this fall w/ iOS 8 + OS X Yosemite. I finally downloaded it to my iPhone 5 and began exploring. After spending several hours w/ it, we wanted to share our initial thoughts on Apple’s new vision for their mobile OS.
Many features aren’t available as of yet due to early access. We still wanted to talk about what is available and what we found that wasn’t mentioned too much during the keynote.
- As the 1st beta it is a lot faster yet still more stable than the iOS 7 beta 1 release.
- Siri could be a bit faster but the hands-free + Shazam integration works just fine.
- The quick reply option in Notification Center is a God send. You can also access it from the lockscreen. Many of iOS users will love this!
- The predictive abilities of Quick Type is a lot better than I thought it would be. The suggested words appear as fast as you can type.
- Tap to Talk option is an interesting addition to the Messages app. You simply press and hold to activate as it can also be used for quick replies from the Notification Center.
- Apple has made it a lot easier to add multiple photos to a message thread and also adding a better way to view photos to choose from without moving to another screen.
- With single + group message threads, you can share location, mute them via Do Not Disturb, as well as view photo + video attachments sent. I’m just happy we can now remove folks from group chats.
- The Camera app now has a self-timer along w/ a time lapse video option. Hidden inside is the option to focus + separately control exposureLooking forward to see what interesting results come from that.
- You can create slideshows from your photos + videos. You can customize them by adding transitions & choosing your own music to go with it.
- Editing your photos just got more robust. You now have more controls at your disposal like adjusting the brightness, contrast, exposure, and change the aspect ratio of the photo as well.
- Healthkit is a offer pretty in-depth details about your well-being. Covering from BMI to body fat to blood glucose + alcohol to daily dietary intake to blood pressure and more. The app will heavily rely upon 3rd-party accessories like the Fuelband, Fitbit, Up and others to record all of this data. At least until the iWatch becomes official.
Well that’s it for now. We’ll make sure to revisit iOS 8 as the other betas come down to pipe.
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