Apple event: The best of iOS 10 and MacOS Sierra that’ll force touch your heart this week

Apple users keep an eye out for the September event every year. That’s when feature updates are announced. Last year, the iPad Pro was showcased at the fall event. From what we know, there are quite a few distinct developments with iOS 10 and MacOS Sierra. All of this is besides the iPhone(s) expected on the 7th of September.

From the interface I’ve had with the latest operating systems by Apple – iOS 10 and macOS Sierra, here are my observations on how it would change the way you interface with your Apple phone and computer.

iPhone

Access within the lock screen

A lot’s been said about the lock screen on iOS. Some find it pleasant, some, ridiculous. On its part, Apple wants to make it easier to do more from the lock screen itself. And this year, the iPhone lock screen has been redesigned.

You can now access multiple functions and features from within the lock screen. Night Shift, among its newest features has received prominence. You can now swipe between functions. On the lock screen, swipe from the right to draw the camera app.

iMessage gets an important overhaul.

iMessage is more like an ecosystem now. Third-party applications can be a part of the iMessage conversation without leaving the conversation. Clearly, iMessage is moving far beyond just being a messaging application. It is turning into an ecosystem by itself.

If you ever planned an evening dinner, you’d know the planning phase is the most daunting. It’s now easier to collaborate and plan an evening out. Now within a group conversation, you could arrive at a venue without getting into a repetitive back and forth. All you need to do is simply share the conversation, and let your friends voice back their thoughts. You could drop map locations, and collaborate to arrive at a mutual decision.

With the possibility of third-party developer support, the restaurant could enable direct booking of a table from the iMessage chat window itself.

Universal clipboard

Why didn’t anyone think of this before? Ever been through the phase where you’re putting a presentation together, find an interesting quote or images while browsing on your phone? The first thought to come to mind is probably save the image on your phone, email it to yourself for use later, or may be even use a third party app like Evernote? With universal clipboard, you can now simply copy the image, quote or whichever creative element you discovered on the iPhone that you want to use in your document or presentation you are working on a Mac. When you head over to the Mac, all you need to do is paste on the Mac, and you’re done.

Adobe Creative Cloud, also brings in a similar function that enabled you to bring in your creative resources from one device to the other, but with a universal clipboard, it makes it easier to gather all your thoughts together without getting lost in the tonnes of distractions. As it is said, sometimes the laziest moments are the most creative moments.

Understanding images and visual content, ability to focus on stories. Contextually search for images, people, places. And create visually stunning stories with mood and tempo to suit the conversation you want to participate in.

3D Touch gets important.

3D touch is now taken to even more features and applications. You can add widgets. The iPhone 6s and 3D touch brought the ability to instantly perform a function without first initiating an app. With iOS 10 and the expected iPhone 7, 3D touch will enable widgets that can give you information at long press.

For example, with the Weather app, you could display the local weather conditions. Similarly, if you are a sports fan, you could follow the key highlights of an important tournament by simply long pressing on the icon without having to go through the process of initiating the app itself.

MacOS

Siri on the Mac

Siri on the MacBook is a welcome. By clicking on the link or hitting a keyboard shortcut (fn + Spacebar) you could initiate Siri. With Siri, you can now have intelligent search queries. You could search contextually, or even do natural language processing.

For instance, ask Siri to ‘search for all the documents you worked on last month’ as a query, and it’ll display all the document files present in the Document folder. You can reply ‘Just the presentations.’ And Siri understands the context to only display PPT and similar file extensions.

Intelligent Search

The intelligence that Siri brings to the Search on macOS extends to images and similar search queries. You could now search for ‘pictures of dogs’ and Siri uses image recognition algorithms to find all the relevant images that contain dogs in it to diplay. You can then add in a query that says, ‘just from last month’ and Siri would filter it out in time for you.

Continuity meets Apple Watch

For quite a while, the Apple Watch didn’t make entire sense to me. The price didn’t warrant just telling me how many calories I burnt and giving me notification of messages I received on my wrist. I noticed whenever I checked my notifications during meetings, it was perceived I was waiting for the meeting to end.

Coming back to the context of macOS though, a very interesting feature is seamless user authentication. If you are wearing an unlocked Apple Watch on your wrist while you open the screen of your Mac, you would be pleased to see it unlock seamlessly.

The Apple Watch tracks your bio signature from your heart rate, which is considered a unique signature to authenticate you and sign in to your macOS system.

Universal clipboard

This is among my favourite features to be introduced in macOS. While writing articles, especially from events, I realize that I click numerous photos. And when I need to use them in the copy, I need to first transfer them to the computer for use as I type. A quick work around I used to use was to either email them or use some cloud sync service.

With Universal Clipboard, I could simply hit copy on my phone and paste on my Mac! It sounds fun to read, but watching it in action is quite exciting I must say.

All said and done, it’s hardware that excites. It’s hardware that evokes desire among the millions of customers and fans out there. Somehow, it’s the renewed focus on the OS experience that’s getting my attention.