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 the Apple News that I felt like talking about, but didn’t all require its own post. I have more coverage on iOS 15 iPadOS 15, and macOS.
Apple Continues Health Push
Apple dedicated a big chunk of the WWDC keynote today to their Health ecosystem. Ever since the company refocused the Apple Watch as a health and fitness device this ecosystem has been a big focus. This year’s updates include a walking steadiness measurement meant to track the timing and and length of your steps, and notify you if it things that you’re deviating from the norm. There are new trends reports that will give users long term reports on things like sleep patterns, heart rate info, and steps, and can alert you to changes in those trends, be it positive or negative.
Apple is also now giving users the ability to share their health data with those they trust. There is functionality to share data with health providers, though that feature will likely be US only. There is a family sharing function that allows a user to share select health data with family members. It allows for family members to get notifications if the status of their loved one changes, for example something like an irregular heart beat. Apple says all of this data is fully encrypted and cannot be read by anyone, not even them.
Watch OS 8
watchOS is getting a relatively minor update this year. It includes more fitness activities to track, a photo frame watch face that allows you to set a portrait photo with text as a watch face, and an upgraded photos experience for those who love looking at their photos on a watch’s screen. Other small features are weather app updates, always on display updates, and multiple concurrent timers. Big stuff.
watchOS 8 is coming to all watches from the Series 3 forward, and is available as a developer preview today. It also has a public beta coming in July with final release this fall.
Siri, HomeKit updates
Siri got a few updates as well. Apple will enable Siri to work on some HomeKit enabled devices, in the demo it showed Siri voice commands working on an Ecobee thermostat. The functionality appears to require an Apple HomePod on the network, it is likely that the homepods will act as a hub for it. The company has also said it will support Matter when it launches later this year. Matter is a smart home control standard that has the backing of Google, Amazon, and Apple, among others. If the dream is realized the Matter standard should allow all smart home networks to work together instead of the patchwork we have now.
Also, Siri will now work offline with no internet connection. For a company that is privacy focused and likes to talk about how many siri requests don’t go out to the internet to work, the fact that siri wouldn’t work without an internet connection before this announcement was… amusing.
iCloud Updates
Apple updated the featureset of the paid iCloud subscription, now called iCloud+. iCloud Plus includes something that Apple is not calling a VPN but sounds exactly like a VPN. This VPN likely won’t help users trying to get around geolocation fences, but Apple claims that it does add extra privacy and security. iCloud+ also includes unlimited storage of video from HomeKit connected security cameras, which is a nice feature add. Apple was happy to point out that they are keeping the prices of iCloud+ the same, however it is worth pointing out that Apple’s iCloud Drive storage prices are the highest among the major players in the space. Extra features are nice, but Apple storage limits on iCloud are comically low, and this does not address that.
There is also a new feature that helps users unlock their iCloud account should they forget their password or otherwise lose access. Users can select a trusted contact that can receive a one time code that they can then share with the user of a locked out account, which enables the user to restore access. This is an interesting tool, and could be genuinely useful.
Miscellaneous
The miscellaneous section of the miscellaneous post seems redundant, but a couple small things worth mentioning are the weather app getting updates Apple Maps gets updates that include better, more detailed maps in Canada and complete 3D maps in select cities mostly located in the USA. There are more privacy focused features, including more robust protection from ad targeting, masking a user’s external IP address from websites, and blocking tracking in emails, though it is unclear how that will be accomplished.
That was a lot, and I’m sure there’s even more I’m missing. These are just the things that caught my attention. There will be much more to say on most of this in the coming months.