WWDC 2018 – Mac OS 12, Memoji, ARKit & many more

Apple kickstarted its annual WWDC event today with a keynote led by CEO Tim Cook, where he introduced all the latest updates for iOS 12 and the new macOS. The keynote this year comes off of a quieter season for Apple. The company just had a press event back in March for its educational iPad launch in the midst of strong iPhone sales but unfavorable news cycles around Home Pods leaving ring marks on wooden tables, defective MacBook Pro keyboards, and the fallout since confirming that it throttled iPhone speeds for depreciating batteries.

It wasn’t the biggest WWDC 2018, and some attendees we talked to referred to it as ‘underwhelming’. But what was delivered refined iOS 12 and other OS updates.For developers, WWDC offers a chance to get an idea of what they’ll be working with in 2018 so they can start planning. They can download developer beta 1 right now. 

due to see an intriguing home screen redesign and tweaks to core apps like Mail and Camera, according to several leaks, but that’s been shelved in favor of stability and performance improvements.

Apple is instead looking to make the iPhone faster and more responsive than it’s previously been. It’s doing that at WWDC, all the way back to the iPhone 5S.

Augmented reality and Apple’s ARKit development platform was also showcased, with Apple teaming up with Pixar to develop a new file format for sharing AR content.

Showing off the benefits of the digital and physical worlds merging was a new app called Measure, letting you use AR to see the size of items just by dragging a finger across them when your camera is pointed at them. Apple demonstrated sizing up a suitcase and a photograph for framing. The Photos app got a smart update with a new enhanced search option. A ‘For You’ tab, making suggestions on what you can possibly do with the photos you have saved. 

Siri was well in need of an update, and it got one. A new feature, called ‘Shortcuts’, integrates with apps to build bespoke voice commands.

No one could have predicted the popularity of the beast-themed Animoji messaging option. But Apple’s going one step further with ‘Memoji’ – personalized, animated emoji that can be designed to look like you (or, at least, how you’d like your Messages buddies to see you). Freckles, glasses, hairstyles – you get the picture. In fact, you become the picture.

Group calling in the new and improved FaceTime will let you do that, making use of a moving tile display of faces currently in the chat, floating and coming into greater prominence when someone begins to talk with 32 members simultaneously.