Apple has unveiled iOS 12 in its annual WWDC 2018 conference, and as already reported earlier this year, iOS 12 focuses more on the refinements of the user experience, as it’s predecessor has come under fire with reliability issues on older iOS devices, therefore the company is making it available as a free upgrade for devices as old as the iPhone 5s, as Apple’s SVP of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, claims that an iPhone 6 Plus is 70% faster when swiping left on the lock screen to activate the camera, and two times faster when showing sharing options in the Photos app.
For developers, the biggest improvement to iOS 12 is the introduction of ARKit 2, which now allow multiple devices to have shared AR experience that allows a collaborative interaction on games and AR apps, the introduction of the universal USDZ file type also allows developers to work on AR objects across multiple platforms, Adobe is one of the partners that has fully supported the file format and will enable in the next update of Creative Cloud.
iOS 12 brings many improvements to certain user experiences as well, including a timed Do Not Disturb mode that automatically silences notification when it detects you have a meeting on your calendar and can automatically turn off when you leave a location.
Notification management is also now better on your lock screen, where it groups notifications from the same app, and hides away all of them when DnD is enabled, so that you won’t be pestered with full of notifications when you face your lock screen.
FaceTime is now better with Group FaceTime and can support up to 32 participants, you can also apply camera effects to your FaceTime call with Animojis as well. Lastly, Apple’s CarPlay is now getting support for third party navigation apps, notably Waze and Google Maps, which is a long overdue update to compete with Android Auto.
In terms of updates to stock iOS apps, Apple has finally ported over the Stocks and Voice Memo app over to the iPad with optimizations for the huge display. A new Shortcuts app is featured to work together with Siri to perform certain instructions when calling out a voice command, it works similarly to IFTT, which you can for instance make a call to your wife, navigate home, and play music with a single command.
For those who want to spend lesser time or their iOS devices, Screen Time lets you monitor your usage behavior on apps and shows how frequently you access them in a day, it syncs across iOS devices and can tell if you have been doing an activity for too long, which is a great parental control feature.
iOS 12 is available as a developer beta to developers starting today, a public beta will be available later this month, expect the final release of the software update to be available by fall, presumably around September or October in conjunction with the launch of Apple’s new iPhones.
