There was too much at WWDC for me to fit into a single post, so I’m going to divide my coverage into a few separate posts. This is about iOS 15. I have more coverage on iPadOS 15, macOS, and the rest.
The first flagship feature in iOS 15 is a big update to FaceTime. Apple is adding a number of great new features for all the video calls we do during the pandemic…. Just as the worst of the pandemic seems to be winding down, at least in North America. Timing aside, the updates to FaceTime are welcome. Apple has invented grid view in group video calls, something that no other video calling application has had before! (yes, that’s a joke). FaceTime will now support links to calls, which is useful for scheduling meetings, or future calls, like most other video chat apps already support. But this link feature does enable something new. Users on Windows or Android platforms can join FaceTime calls using the link feature, with the calls going through a web app.
There are also ways to share content through FaceTime, using a new API supported services can plug into FaceTime so all of the participants in the call can watch/listen/look at the same content. Think of this like an official way of doing Netflix watch parties, though amusingly Netflix is not one of the supported services.
Notifications get a big update, and this is arguably the biggest update to iOS this year. Apple isn’t really fixing notifications per se, but the company is introducing Focus Profiles. This is a way to manage which notifications you get, and when. The most easy to understand examples are notifications for working hours, and notifications for outside of working hours. During work hours, you can set only apps you need for work to send notifications, and outside of working hours, the opposite: work apps get silenced. Users can set/create as many profiles as they want, so this can get very specific. This looks pretty interesting, and if it works well could be the home run hit.
iMessage gets a few updates, mostly to take advantage of these new focus profiles, though there is now the ability to override do not disturb settings another iMessage user has set. I’m sure that won’t be abused at all. And, most of these new iMessage features only work with other Apple users, which is about 50% of the North American Market, and only 20% of the worldwide market.
There are new privacy controls in iOS 15, expanding on what is already there, and Apple has also invented the ability for iPhones to pull text out of an image and parse it in different ways. Truly unique thing that no company has been doing for years (again, joke).
Apple Wallet is getting some new ID features, though it is unclear if those are US specific, and there are changes coming to Safari across all of Apple’s products, which deserves its own section.
iOS 15 will be available on every iPhone dating back to the iPhone 6S, as well as the 7th generation iPod Touch. This is the same as iOS 14, and is surprising but welcome news. I expected iPhone 6S to be dropped this year.
iOS 15 is available as a Developer Preview on all supported iPhones now with a public beta coming in July. That will be followed by the full release in the fall.