There’s a great set of new features in Apple’s latest version of iOS 12. Being technophiles, we here at KND have installed the developer beta and have been putting it through its paces.
The more obvious features are great. These were revealed during the latest keynote speech early June 2018.
Here’s a few of the best –
- Notifications on the lock screen will be grouped so you won’t have an annoyingly long list running off the screen.
- Animojis have been upgraded with new facial features like winks and tongue tracking, and ‘Memoji have been added so you can use a human looking Animoji that looks the same as your actual face.
- Screen time can be measured and limited per app, which is a great tool for parents to manage their kid’s phone usage.
- You can program Siri using ‘shortcuts’ which are custom Siri commands. So you could say ‘Siri let’s go for a surf,’ and Siri will bring up the weather report, driving times and directions, and a reminder to bring your towel.
- There’s a new native Apple app to measure distances in real-world objects. Using AR tech, it can recognise rectangles and box-type shapes, and give measurements for the lengths of the sides. If you watched the keynote and saw the Lego demo, you may have noticed that the AR even gives a reflection of the artificial objects back onto the real-life objects.
However, there are some more features that Apple didn’t exactly make public that you may find just as useful.
- You can now store more than one face for Face ID. The idea is if you wear something that would obscure your face like sunglasses or heavy makeup, you’ll be able to save both of your faces. You can hack this by saving a completely different face in there too, like your partner’s face, so that they can also open your phone.
- Jason Hawkins discovered that he can use his Apple device as a directional microphone, now that Apple’s Live Listen feature is available for anyone. This lets you hear better in noisy environments by locating your phone near or pointing it towards a single person.
- If you’re security conscious about your iPhone like Chris Garrett is, you might like that you can prevent unwanted USB access. There’s now a setting that blocks anyone connecting via USB unless the phone has been unlocked for an hour.
- Passwords can be a pain in iOS 11 – you have to enter them or use Apple’s keychain system. Now Apple has opened things up to third-party password managers like Lastpass.
- Animation on the main iPhone interface has been improved – running 50% faster and smoother and using less memory and processor grunt. It makes your phone feel like the good old days when you first got it in your hot little hands.
- The portrait mode software that gave us those cute face overlays can now separate the person’s face from the scene, allowing for such effects as automatically splitting the person out and animating over the top. There’s not too much that takes advantage of this just yet, but we at KND predict some new apps will come out soon.
So there you have it, some less publicised but still useful features of the new iOS12 from Apple. We hope this information helps improve your workplace and remember to contact us for all your digital needs.
