Apple iOS Developer Conference Reveals Major Changes Coming

Apple’s developer conference for iOS was held virtually last week as we remain in the midst of Covid-19 safety restrictions. The annual conference highlighted Apple’s progress in areas of privacy and security but also performance. iOS 14 will be the latest update and the change which brings all the excitement – here’s some food for thought from the conference as you progress with your plans to have an app built for your business.

As expected, Tim Cook took the lead at the conference, starting out with some of the corporation’s stances on the topical race discussions in America before moving on to focus on iOS progression. One of the things he talked about was planned updates to the Apple designed mobile browser, Safari. This has been long considered relatively inferior to Android’s Chrome alternative but could soon be fighting back against that characterisation with a host of updates. As well as a number of new privacy features, Apple boasted that Safari will now operate as much as 50% faster than Chrome.

As is often the case, the changes to iOS’s user dominated the conference. This year, there has been a lot of hype around the appearance of widgets on the iOS 14 home screen and menu. The irony, as has become typical with Apple releases, is that widgets like those displayed have been available on Android operating systems for years. None the less, excitement has been built as the brand proudly demonstrated in widget push notifications which can and will likely replace full screen hijacking events notifications as they stand now. Naturally widgets will be customisable, removable and personal.

While many users will be excited by the arrival of home screen and menu widgets, app developers and those planning to get a business app created should already be thinking about how they can leverage the widgets for their own creations. Notifications after all play a big part in the execution of some apps and will now likely need to be reimagined given this major change.

The conference also gave us previews of a picture-in-picture style feature which just might solve the age-old dilemma of being able to play and listen to YouTube video while using another app simultaneously. This really should not be considered an exciting or innovative feature in this day and age given the advanced tech we have at our fingertips, but somehow, it just is!

Other features to be revealed include an automatic app library and more granular permissions for apps which want to use hardware features such as the device’s camera, GPS and audio.