- The best. - Best.
- Best. - Best.
- Great. - Great.
- Great. - Great updates.
- [Joanna] It was that time again.
Apple's superlative mania
or what the company calls
its Worldwide Developers Conference.
At the virtual event,
the company announced updates to.
- Our new release is iOS 15.
- watchOS.
- iPadOS 15.
macOS Monterey.
- [Joanna] The updates are coming this fall
to all your gadgets and of course,
Apple highlighted all the features as.
- The incredible, incredible, incredible.
- [Joanna] But not everything can be incredible
and great and the best
because well, that's not how it works.
Here's my list of what I actually think
will be the best features,
plus a few nods to what's more on the meh side.
Number one, improved Zoom features.
I mean FaceTime, but you can understand the confusion
since FaceTime in the upcoming iOS, iPadOS,
and macOS upgrades has a grid view
and blurred backgrounds
and noise cancellation.
- Me too.
Let me fix this.
Better, right?
- [Joanna] Just like Zoom
but what Zoom doesn't have is SharePlay.
This FaceTime feature let's you watch video
or listen to a song with the person
on the other end of the call.
For video sharing, it will work with Disney+,
Hulu, TikTok and more.
Seems exciting but oh, Netflix, where art thou?
Also big, FaceTime links,
which lets you send a link to others
to join a FaceTime call,
even if they're on Android or Windows.
Number two, Focus features.
- Focus is a new way to match your device
to your current mindset.
- [Joanna] Now you can set a mode
to block out notifications you don't wanna see
during different times of the day.
You set this up
and can customize what gets through.
Apple will also use on-device learning
to suggest apps and people
to let through or block during those times.
Frankly, it all looks a bit confusing.
Even better, when you put your device
on Do Not Disturb,
it can inform others that you're busy,
just like an old school away message.
Number three, Find My AirPods Pro and Max.
Sorry, no regular AirPods for this.
Those now work with Apple's Find My Network, which means.
- [Narrator] Your AirPods simply send out
a secure Bluetooth beacon
that can be detected by other Apple devices.
They can relay your AirPods' location to the network
and then back to your Find My App.
- [Joanna] If you lose them close by,
you can play the sound
and use the proximity feature to find them,
plus there's a new separation alert
if you leave your AirPods behind.
(phone beeping)
Number four driver's license.
So your Apple Wallet has already had your credit cards
or your transit cards.
Now it can have your driver's license.
- This fall, you'll just scan your driver's license
or state ID in participating US states.
- [Joanna] But that's the big question.
What are the participating US states?
Apple wouldn't say yet.
Apple says the TSA's also working to accept this
so you could use your phone's ID at the airport.
Pretty cool.
Number five, Weather.
Don't lie, you use your iPhone's Weather app possibly more
than any other app
and you know it can be a lot better.
The new version will have full weather maps
and will make sure it's always sunny
wherever you are.
Just joking on that last part.
Apple has a lot of power
but not that much power.
Number six, easier iPad multitasking.
You no longer need to remember some combo
of secret swipes to multitask on an iPad.
An icon shows up at the top of the screen
where you can tap to put something
on the side of the screen or in full screen mode.
Number seven, on-device speech recognition.
Siri can now do a lot more:
launch apps, control music, change settings
without ever using an internet connection
because it processes all the information on the device,
as long as you have a recent iPhone or iPad.
That means that those tasks
should be a lot faster too.
It definitely looked a lot faster
in Apple's recorded demos.
- Open Photos.
Open Calendar.
- [Joanna] I will have to try that out for myself.
Number eight, digital legacy.
This one is near and dear to my heart.
A new feature in the Apple ID controls
will let you assign a legacy contact,
so if you were to die,
that person could access your Apple account,
including photos and other information.
This is something other companies,
including Google and Facebook have had for a while.
Number nine, Safari tab groups.
In macOS Monterey, and iOS 15,
Safari lets you group tabs together.
So say you have a bunch of tabs you wanna save
around your next trip.
You can save them on this side bar.
I use a similar feature in Microsoft's Edge browser
and I love it.
This really may get me to go back to Safari.
And speaking of Safari and iOS 15,
the address bar is moved to the bottom.
That's gonna take some getting used to.
Number 10, lots of privacy.
It's hard to pick just one privacy feature.
There's a new service called Private Relay
that encrypts all your traffic in Safari.
To get it, you have to pay
for another iCloud service though,
which is called iCloud+.
Another that doesn't cost extra,
the App Privacy Report,
which is located in settings.
- [Narrator] You can see how often apps use
the permission you've granted
to access your location, photos,
camera, microphone, contacts and more
during the last seven days.
- [Joanna] That sort of stuff used
to require special software to see.
So yeah, those are my top picks.
But some of the other stuff,
like improved photos on a tiny, tiny watch screen
or a feature that tells me
when to get off the train
or interactive memories
where you can add music to photos
for an instant video, I'm not so sure.
I look forward to testing it all
before these operating systems are released in the fall.
In the meantime, just remember,
every feature cannot be.
- The best. - Best.
- Best. - Best.
(playful music)