The key takeaways from WWDC 2018

Jeff Weisbein -

Apple held its World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) this past week in San Jose, California and announced a bunch of new things, including updates to iOS, watchOS, tVOS, and macOS. I wanted to take some time to touch on some of the key things from the WWDC 2018 keynote that stood out to me. If you have anything to add or disagree with me, feel free to leave a comment or tweet at me. 

iOS 12

There are a number of things that are worth mentioning in iOS 12:

— Focuses on speed and stability, can really see that even in the first beta.

— Improved FaceID: I noticed it works better in lying in bed. It also allows for multiple faces now.

— Siri Shortcuts: the app isn’t baked into the first iOS 12 beta but there is limited support through settings and if you combine the limited support with Workflow (the app Apple acquired and has turned into Siri Shortcuts) it offers very similar functionality.

— Stacked notifications: I really like this new feature, simply tap on the most recent notification to expand the thread.

— ScreenTime: I’m indifferent about this feature but I guess it’ll be cool to see my usage statistics as well as how often I actually pick up my phone.

— Oh and how could I forget: Memoji!

watchOS 5

I want to focus on three things related to watchOS 5 right now:

— The new walkie-talkie feature. This looks super cool, I remember as a kid seeing those Nextel phone commercials and I always wanted one because of the walkie-talkie functionality. How much I’ll end up using it… I guess we’ll see.

— Podcast support has come to watchOS! Speaking of podcasts, if you haven’t subscribed to mine, TechieBytes, you should do that now. I release a new episode every week.

— Lastly, watchOS 5 doesn’t support the original Apple Watch. Yeah, so if you bought one of those $10k or $17k Apple Watches when they first came out, it’s now obsolete. Ouch.

macOS 10.14 (Mojave)

For now, I have just a few quick things I want to go over about Mojave:

— Similar to iOS 12, the first beta of macOS Mojave is pretty stable. I only have run into one app crashing on me so far.

— The new Dark Mode feature has been a long-time coming and it’s much appreciated by me. Not only does it look insanely cool, Apple really spent a lot of time getting it right. It doesn’t look janky at all.

— The updated Mac App Store was a relief to see. I’m glad Apple hasn’t abandoned it like I thought they had.

— Finally, I’m thrilled that Apple has brought back favicons in Safari (in the tab bar). It was maddening not having them, especially if you have a ton of tabs open.