When DOIT broke the news on Twitter last year that Texas State’s bookstore became an authorized Apple retailer, many Bobcat Apple fans responded with excitement. DOIT is also your source for all things technology and innovation, so we wanted to share highlights of cool things coming from the tech giant revealed at yesterday’s WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) 2020.
Apple’s opening keynote started with Tim Cook addressing the empty auditorium about Black Lives Matter and Coronavirus. Cook mentioned that Apple has launched its Racial Equity and Justice Initiative with a commitment of $100 million dollars to challenge systemic barriers that limit opportunities of communities of color in education, economic equality, and criminal justice as well as its New Developer Entrepreneur camp to black developers in an attempt to do its part to make the world a better place and a force for change. In terms of Coronavirus, Cook mentioned that he realizes that now more than ever users are relying on products to stay connected, to stay entertained and entertain, be creative and that with great challenges bring great opportunities, which lead to the discussion of all of the new technologies that will be rolled out this fall.
iOS 14
- Home Screen—New developments have updated the App Library that automatically organizes your apps to reduce pages and now will give you the ability to hide pages. Your apps can be organized from A to Z and will be easier than ever to navigate.
- Widgets—New designs are data-rich, variety of sizes, accessible, and with the ability to add them to your home screen making it completely customizable.
- Siri—Siri has been redesigned with a compact design. Instead of taking up the whole screen, Siri is now situated at the bottom of your screen and won’t interfere with your current screen.
- Messages—With these new updates you’ll have the ability to pin your most important or frequent conversations, completely express yourself with new memoji updates, and powerful improvements to group messages including in-lined conversations.
iPadOS 14
Includes the same enhancements for widgets as iPhone, an upgraded sidebar for photos to simplify photo organization, and a compact design for FaceTime and the search bar so that it doesn’t intrude on your current app exploration.
iPencil
Updates to the iPencil has introduced Scribble, with the ability to handwrite in any text field and it is automatically converted to text. With new handwriting recognition, it even recognizes several different characters of different languages.
AirPods
AirPods will now have automatic switching between devices and spatial audio to create an immersive movie-like experience.
Apple Watch
Redesigned watch faces are coming to the Apple Watch, making them completely customizable and shareable. New workouts will be added like dance, cool down, and core training. Another improvement is enhanced sleep tracking, including a customizable wind down to help set a bedtime routine. And finally, a hand washing detection feature with a 20-second countdown
Privacy
Apple has increased its privacy metrics, keeping its users in mind. From now on location data will only share approximate location with apps, an alert is created to let you know when an app is using your camera, app tracking will require your permission, and before downloading any apps, there will be a new required summary of the data that they collect from you and who they share it with.
MacOS
New updates for MacOS include a customizable control center, new customizable notifications, and widgets. An exciting update is that now Office and Adobe will have their apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Lightroom, and Photoshop up and running natively on Macs.
To catch the full keynote for yourself, watch the video below.
Chantal Lesley is a marketing and communications specialist student employee in the IT Marketing and Communications office.
