Apple Announces iOS 15, So What’s New?

Apple has revealed iOS 15, and with it a whole host of new features that allow users to be more productive throughout the day. Most of these features revolve around the way you communicate with friends and family members.

Heres what’s new:

• Conversations that you have with them will sound more natural. And with spatial audio, voices in a FaceTime call sound as though they are coming from where a person is positioned on the screen. New microphone modes separate the user’s voice from the background noise.
• Portrait mode is now available with FaceTime. Users can blur their background and put themselves in focus. Group FaceTime has a new grid view , which enables users to see more participant faces at the same time.
• SharePlay allows users to share their experience when connecting with others over FaceTime. This includes listening to songs with Apple music, watching TV shows or movies in sync or sharing their screen to view apps.
• SharePlay works across iPhone, iPad and Mac. Users can access shared playback controls. Anyne in a SharePLay session can play, skip or fast forward.
• SharePlay is compatible with Disney+, ESPN+, HBO Max, Hulu, MasterClass, Paramount+, PLuto TV, TikTok, Twitch, and anty others.
• Users can create a FaceTime link frim an iPhone, iPad or Mac and share it through Messages, Calendar, Mail or other 3rd party apps to anyone using a web browser on Android and Windows devices.

Focus

• It groups messages and notifications based on your preference to reduce distractions. You can create custom Focus or use suggested focus, which uses on-device intelligence to suggest which people and apps are allowed to send you notifications.
• Focus suggestions are based on users’ activity such as work hours and winding down for bed. When it is activated, the setting is automatically applied to your other Apple devices.

Home Screen

• Home Screen pages with apps and widgets that are considered part of your Focus setting, will be allowed to display relevant apps to reduce distractions.
• When a user’s Focus setting blocks incoming notifications, the status is sent to recipients via Messages to inform them that the user is not reachable at the moment.

Notifications

• To reduce distractions, notification summary collects non time sensitive notifications when you are free such as in the mornings or evenings. Notifications are arranged by priority. Urgent messages will be delivered immediately. As such, important communications don’t end up in the summary section.

• You can mute apps or messaging threads for the enxt hour or for teh day.

On-device Intelligence

• Live Text uses on-device intelligence to recognize text in photos. It can recognize text and handwriting on pictures and enable users to act on them. This includes copying a family recipe, WiFi password or placing a call to a local business.
• Visual Look Up allows users to learn more about landmarks, plans, flowers, breeds of pets and find books.

Spotlight Can Do More Things

• Spotlight uses the same intelligen to search for photos by location, people, scenes or objects. And by tapping Live Text, Spotlight can also find text and handwriting in photos.
• Spotlight now has web image search functions. It has a substantial amount of results for actors, musicinias, TV shows and movies. Enhanced results for contacts show recent conversations, shared photos, and their location if shared through Find My.

Photos

• Memories feature gets a new look and interactive interface with integration with Apple Music. It helps you choose songs that suit the mood for the respective memories.

Safari

• The web browser has been redesigned with more convenient and easy to reach controls. The new tab bar is compact and floats at the bottom of the screen. TabGroups allow users to save tabs and access them across Apple devices.

Apple Maps

• It has new ways to navigate and explore places. It comes with enhanced details in cities for neighbourhoods, commercial districts, elevation, buildings, new road colors and labels, new night-time mode with a moonlight glow and several other features.
• When navigations using an iPhone or CarPlay, Maps features a 3D city-driving experience with new road details to better understand turn lanes, medians, bike lanes and pedestrian crosswalk.
• Transit riders can find nearby stations easily on select lines. Maps can also notify users when it’s time to disembark on selected transit routes. Riders can also keep track of this with their Apple Watch.

New Keys And IDs

• Apple Wallet comes with a new host iof features with support for additional tupes of jeys.
• Digital car keys gain support for Ultra Wideband technology so users can securely unlock and start their supported vehicles without the need to remove their iPhone from their pocket or bag. Users can also unlock their home, office or hotel room.
• In participating states in the US, users can add their driver’s license or state IDs to teh wallet. The data is stored in the Secure Element, which is the same hardware technology that makes Apple Pay private and secure.

Privacy

• Siri processes audio requests directly from your iPhone. Mail Privacy Protections stops senders from learning whether an email has been opened and hides IP addresses so senders can’t access the user’s location or build a profile.
• App Privacy Report offers an overview of how apps users data from location, photos, camera, microphone and contacts in the last seven days.

Weather App

• Weather includes more graphically accurate weather data, full-screen map and dynamic layouts that change based on conditions. The app’s graphics change to reflect the sun’s position and precipitation, and notification highlights when rain or snow starts and stops.

Other Updates