Apple announces iOS 8, OS X Yosemite at WWDC 2014

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The multi-billion dollar company, Apple, was expected to flaunt its brand new iOS and new version of the OS X this week, but what millions of fans and critics did not expect was how huge this event was going to turn out to be.

ios-8

At the Worldwide Developers Conference 2014 which is held in San Francisco, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook introduced the world to the iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite. As mentioned during the presentation, the new Mac operating system is called Yosemite, however, the press release referred to it as OS X 10.10.

OS X Yosemite

The company has confirmed that the new version of the OS X will be made available to the registered developers. Currently Apple has more than 9 million registered developers. Statistics suggest that approximately 80 million Macs are used around the world, of which about 51% run on the latest OS X Mavericks.

The latest version of the desktop software OS X, largely resembles iOS 7 which was already predicted by the experts a week ago. It can be rightly said that the only big change in the operating system since its introduction in 2001 is the dramatic overhaul in its appearance. As similar it is to the previous iOS version, Yosemite has managed to retain the basic idea in depth of its developers.

os_x_yosemite

Yosemite is designed to imitate Apple’s iOS which runs its iPhone and iPads. The many changes in Mac operating system include, cleaner, colorful and attractive icons, just like the ones we see in iOS, the desktop background has been made translucent, so one could see the background through the windows.

Another additional feature is that the operating system allows users to turn on the “Dark Mode”. This mode lets the user change the desktop’s translucence into a dark smoke color. The dark mode feature is perfect for those working during night time.

As far as the notification section of the system is concerned, a view called “Today” helps provide the users with interactive, user-friendly at-a-glance information. Today provides information not only for the built-in apps, but also for other third-party apps. In order to make Mac user friendly, the developers have moved Spotlight search from the top right corner to the middle of the screen.

OSX-10.10

Additionally, the senior vice president of Software Engineering at Apple Inc, Craig Federighi, introduced the iCloud Drive. In the presentation, he showed the Cloud based documents in iCloud, which appeared in Folders. The new file system based appearance of the iCloud is its first.

The iCloud is capable of attaching files of up to 5GB which can be shared with others by giving them a link for downloading the contents safely. Other modification tools have also been added to make editing documents and signing signatures seamlessly easy directly into the mail.

Big changes in Safari include, the web browser has now become faster, efficient and saves battery power for uninterrupted browsing. The web browser also includes Wikipedia directly into its address bar. The tab bar has also undergone a minor change as now the users can scroll through tabs. With Mac Mail integrating with Safari, users are now allowed to directly mail from the web browser with the help of the “recently sent to” contact list.

Another astonishing feature is the “Proximity Awareness” According to this feature; Mac will automatically detect the user’s iPhone and set up a hotspot. This set up is said to take place without use of any passwords.

Now with the desktop behaving like the phone, users can answer or reject phone calls and read text messages sent to their iPhones in their Mac desktops.

iOS 8

As far as the latest version of iOS is concerned, iOS 8 has its own share of new features as expected. The notifications have become more interactive. Users can now reply to text messages directly in the notification bar itself.

ios8-interactive-notifications

Using iPhone or iPad for mailing has also become user-friendly as the users can perform actions with just a swipe gesture for Delete, Mark as unread, Mark as flag, etc. Another brilliant feature of the IOS 8 is that users now have direct access to accept or dismiss calendar invites, by just swiping from the lock screen. Another big change is that for multitasking interface, the most frequently used contacts are visible.

The iOS keyboard has a “Quicktype” which allows the users to get predictive typing suggestions, similar to that used in Android. The “Tap-to-talk” feature lets users record a concise voice message and sends it to a person or a group of people on the messaging thread.

A new app that has literally changed the entire scenario is Apple and its developers’ concern about their clients’ Health. This is an app which checks the users’ fitness and health metrics. The uniqueness of this app is that it is integrated with medical institutions and automatically sends the collected data to doctors.

Apple has sold over 800 million IOS devices in all, and the overall satisfaction for iOS 7 was reportedly about 97% according to a survey. However, the statistics might change after the incredible revelation of the iOS 8 and OS X 10.10. As Cook righty said it was “the biggest release of iOS since the introduction of the App Store”

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Vishal Gaikar

Article by Vishal

Vishal Gaikar is a professional blogger from Pune, India. If you like this post, you can follow him on Twitter.

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