After naming the macOS with mountain names, now Apple is naming it with island names in California. The later version of macOS is called Catalina. Catalina is an island situated in California. Apple launches a few new features and new apps for the latest version of the macOS Catalina.
Project Catalyst: Port Your iPad Apps To Your Mac
First of all, Apple launches a new feature for the developers called Project Catalyst. During last year WWDC, Apple announces they are working on a way to bring iPad app to the Mac. Today, they have finally announces through Catalyst, developers can ports their iPad apps into Mac within few clicks in the Xcode. During the demo session, Atlassian demo their Jira app for Mac. According to Atlassian, it took just few days to fully port their iPad app to the Mac.
iTunes Is Replaced With These Three Apps
After 18 years finally, Apple pulls the plug out of iTunes. In the new macOS Catalina, you could not find the iTunes app from the Dock. What Apple has done is it separates iTunes and introduces three different apps which are Apple Music, Podcasts, and Apple TV to the macOS Catalina.
Sidecar: Extend Your Desktop With iPad
One of the unexpected features which Apple announces for the macOS Catalina is the Sidecar feature. It allows you to use your iPad as the secondary display for the Mac. There is already third-party application on the Mac App Store such as Duet Display. However, everything changes when Apple announces its own feature.
Voice Control
Apple always thinks ahead for disabled people who use Apple devices. macOS Catalina now allows the disabled people to control their Mac entirely with their voice. It is one of the accessibility feature, where the disabled people can talk using the numbers which pops up on the screen. For example, if they want to send a message to a person, they can talk to their Mac and then a few numbers will be shown. From there, they have to say the number and the specific actions will occur. Take a look at the video below to understand more about this new voice control feature.
Find My App Come To The Mac Too
Apple is bringing the Find My app to the macOS Catalina too. Basically, it combines the Find My Friends and Find My iPhone apps into a standalone application. Next time when your Mac gets stolen, you can track it even the device is off. The technology behind is through Bluetooth. The Mac will send a secure Bluetooth beacon to the nearest Apple devices around the area. Then this information will be relayed back to your account.
In conclusion, these are the top highlighted features which we personally feel interesting. There are more features in the macOS Catalina which you can use it once Apple rolls out the macOS Catalina during the fall this year. Check out the official website for more information on the macOS Catalina.
Apple Watch has been one of the most used smartwatches today. When Apple launches Apple Watch Series 4, its sales skyrocket because of the watchOS 5 which comes with tons of features. Now, Apple is not stopping there. Apple announces its new watchOS 6 during today’s WWDC event. Here is the list of features of the watchOS 6 which we think all Apple Watch users are going to love it.
New Watch Faces
With the new watch faces, you can see more insightful information at a glance. You can customize the existing watch faces color to even gold color. These watch faces can be used for more functionalities or for better design purpose. According to Apple, there are many watch faces which can be switched according to your mood.
Apart from that, Apple also introduces a new feature to tell you the current time. Apple uses the Taptic Engine inside the Apple Watch to let you know the hour on your wrist. You can even set a chime for your Apple Watch so that every hour it will give a bird chirping sound. Apple also allows you to use your two fingers to tell out the time loudly by holding two fingers on the watch face. This feature will really help those disabled people to know the time easily.
Siri Gets Better For the Apple Watch
Apple has already integrated Siri into the Apple Watch last year itself. This round, Siri is getting better. You can start asking Siri questions such as “What’s song is this?” and Siri and Shazam will help you to tell what song is playing. You can even ask questions to Siri and it will respond to you directly by providing website links.
Apple Watch Get Its Own App Store
Previously, if you want to download apps for your Apple Watch, you have head to the Apple Watch app on the iPhone. From there only, you can search for the apps and download them. Using the watchOS 6, Apple Watch gets its own App Store where you can get the new app directly from your Apple Watch.
Other than that, Apple is also including three new apps for the Apple Watch which are the Audiobooks, Voice Memos, and the Calculator app.
The calculator app is one of the most awaited apps in the Apple Watch. You can even calculate your bill tips directly from the calculator app in the Apple Watch too.
Activity Trends
Apple allows you to check your daily activity trends on your iPhone. The current watchOS 5 shows the activity ring mainly. Now, with the Activity app, you can view your progress over time. If the metrics shows upwards that means you are achieving your goal. Unless if it shows downwards you need to work to turn it around. If you are not performing your exercise well, the Apple Watch even suggest you how to get you back on your track.
Cycle Tracking: Something Useful For Women
Apple is launching a new app called Cycle Tracking for women. This apps helps the women to gain better insight about their menstrual cycle so that they can know better about their overall health condition. This app also helps the women to track weird symptoms during their menstruation cycle.
Moreover, women can easily tap on the Cycle Tracking app to keep track of their daily menstrual cycle. Part of it is, Apple allows you to add the flow information, record symptoms such as headaches and cramps.
All this information will be used to predict your next period or fertile window will be starting. All these information are completely available as a graphical chart in the all-new redesigned Health app on your iPhone
Hearing Health: Care More For Your Earing
Apple is also introducing a new feature for the watchOS 6 called Noise. This built-in app gives you noise information. Assuming you are working on a construction site when the noise level reaches, your Apple Watch will notify you to move away from the site. With the all-new watch faces, you can directly measure the noise level from your watch face.
In conclusion, these are the amazing features which Apple announces today during the WWDC event. You can find more information about watchOS 6 on their official website. Apple will start to roll out the new watchOS 6 during the fall.
One of the unexpected launches of today’s event is the iPadOS. iPad has been part of iOS since the beginning era of iOS. Now Apple is making huge changes to the iPad by splitting the iOS to form a new OS for the iPad called iPadOS. This means tons of new features is heading towards the iPad alone.
The software it uses is still the same iOS 13, however, the iPad will have additional features where only the iPad is capable. Let’s list out the mind-blowing features that you can get from the iPadOS.
Slide Over And Split View
With iOS 12, Apple has already improved the multitasking feature. Now with iOS 13, Apple introduces Slide Over and Split View to the iPad. Using the iPad, you can switch to your favorite apps seamlessly without interrupting your other task. Assuming you are writing an email and you need to insert the attachment to it. Previously, you have to click on the Insert Attachment and then have to go look through it. However, now things changes. You can slide over the apps from the bottom right as shown in the image below.
When you are swiping from the bottom right this is how you can find for your favorite apps.
Just like in your desktop, you can work on two documents side by side with the new Split View feature.
A Newly Redesigned Home Screen
Although the iPad has a large screen, Apple did not make use of its large screen display. We are sure some of you might be disappointed of it. Today, Apple announces a newly redesigned home screen which make uses of the whole large screen display. Apple is adding a new feature called Pinned Widgets. This means you can pin all your favorite widgets into the Todays View panel. You can glance at it by swiping on the left of the Home Screen. As there are a lot of iPad apps which supports widgets, we are sure many of you will be using this feature most of the time.
Apple Pencil Gets Faster
Apple Pencil has been part of the iPad now. Previously only the iPad Pro supports the Apple Pencil. Now, the normal iPad also supports the Apple Pencil. When Apple launches Apple Pencil in 2015, everyone mocks it because of the price is expensive. However, later on many of the iPad users started to adopt to the Apple Pencil. Today, if you notice most of the designers and architects are using the Apple Pencil as their daily tool for working purpose.
Apple is making its Apple Pencil faster which has a 20ms latency previously. With the upcoming iOS 13, the Apple Pencil latency reduces to 9ms by using its advanced prediction algorithm. As the Apple Pencil gets faster, Apple has also redesign its tool palette.
Full Page Markup
Apple is taking screenshot feature to the next level by allowing its users to screenshot the entire webpage content. This includes documents and email. Apple also allows you to use the markup feature by using the Apple Pencil. Whenever you are having a business meeting with your customer or client you can use the Apple Pencil to markup the content.
Sidecar: Second Screen Support For The iPad
Apple is also introducing a brand new feature for the iPadOS. It is called Sidecar. Sidecar is a feature which will allow the iPad to connect to the latest macOS Catalina as a secondary display. It supports both ways via the cables or via wirelessly. However, it only supports at a distance of 10 meters only.
In order to for you to use this feature, you need the latest macOS Catalina. With the Sidecar, you can turn your iPad into a drawing tablet for your Mac.
Faster Text Editing
Another mind-blowing feature Apple announces today is the new faster text editing feature. iPadOS comes with several hand gestures which allow you to easily copy and paste content without looking through its magnifying glass. Using your three fingers, you can pinch in to copy and pinch out to paste. You can see those actions in the videos below.
Other than that, you can even swipe left with three fingers to undo the mistake and right to redo the actions. Previously, Apple only allows shaking your device to undo an action. Now with this feature, you don’t have to shake your device again.
In conclusion, these are the mind-blowing features Apple announces for the iPadOS. There are more features where you can find out from its official website. The iPadOS will be rolling out to everyone coming fall this year.
Yesterday when we wrote an article on the “What to expect at the WWDC 2019”, we tried our best to provide all the predicted features coming to the iOS, macOS, and the watchOS. Today, the D-day finally arrives as Apple announces tons of software features at the WWDC 2019. For now, we will list all the iOS 13 features which we felt you will fall in love with.
Again Improved Performance
Apple seems to be focussing on the performance of iOS. Last year, when Apple announces iOS 12 it promises to improve the performance of the older iOS devices. Today, Apple says it will continue again to improve the performance of iOS devices. Features such as Face ID will be 30 percent faster to unlock your iPhone. Apple also says apps launching will be twice faster than in iOS 12.
Dark Mode
One of the most awaited features is the Dark Mode feature. The new iOS will finally support system-wide Dark Mode where background colors are black and grey. When we look at it, it really looks very pleasant. This feature will help to preserve the battery life of the iOS devices.
Apple’s Own Swiping Keyboard
Apple finally announces its own swiping keyboard called “Quick Path”. It allows you to swipe through the characters to write your message easily. There are already many 3rd party keyboard applications such as SwiftKey, Swype, Gboard on the App Store. Although, it is a bit late for Apple to launch their own keyboard we believe many people will start to love this feature once they start to use it.
Apple Reinvents Its Reminder App
Apple announces yesterday after a few years finally it has reinvented the Reminder app from scratch. This app is the entirely new app in iOS 13. If you notice the image below, their Reminder app now looks like the Mail app. Apple is adding “Today”, “Scheduled”, “Flagged” and “All” filtering options. Apart from that, Apple is integrating its AI into the Reminder app. Next time, when you add your contact to your Reminder app, the AI will remind you when you message the specific person in the Messages app.
A New Redesign Apple Maps
One of the apps from Apple which is not used by most of the iOS users is its Apple Maps app. This is because Google Maps is more widely used by everyone and its more reliable than Apple Maps. If you take a look at everyone iPhones, Google Maps is the replacement for the Apple Maps.
Now, Apple is rebuilding its Apple Maps app. After has travelled for more than 40 million miles to collect millions of locations data. You are going to love the new Apple Maps. The new Maps app has a new feature called Look Around, which in Google Maps is Street View. When Apple demo’s this feature at the WWDC event, the Look Out feature is one of the best in the Apple Maps app. Rather than swiping through like in the Google Maps, you just have to hold on your screen with your finger and it works seamlessly.
Apple says the completely new redesign Apple Maps will be available in the US by end of 2019 and worldwide in 2020.
Sign In With Apple
Each of today’s Apple announcement, Apple mainly stresses on its user privacy. Every time, when you open an app, you need to click on either Sign In or Sign In with Facebook or Twitter. Today, Apple announces “Sign in with Apple” feature which will not collect a single of your information. This allows all your credentials to be completely confidential. Even your email address is protected too as Apple encrypts it into a private email address.
Memoji Sticker
Other than that, Apple also announces Memoji Sticker. You can even set your Memoji as your profile picture too. If you have used the Bitmoji app, you might know how the Memoji Sticker works. With your own Memoji, it creates a sticker packs as shown in the image below. You can use it throughout all the applications inside your iOS devices such as Mail, iMessage and even third-party apps such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. We are sure, all of you going to try this feature by creating your own Memoji Stickers.
Editing for Photos and Videos
Apple finally hears the voices of its consumers. Apple creates a new editing interface for the iOS Photos app. Same as the other Android devices, now you can edit any of your photos setting such as the contrast and the saturation.
For the first time ever, you can edit videos too on the go. Imagine sometimes when you record a video, even you record the video by turning your iPhone to a landscape mode, sometimes the video is recorded as portrait mode. We know how difficult is it when you watch it after recording the video. Now, with iOS 13, you can rotate your video immediately directly on your Photos app.
The other feature of the Photos app we think you will love is the new UI. The new Photos app uses machine learning technology to remove all the duplicated pictures. It also removes the clutter images such as the screenshots. So next time when you view your photo album it will look like walking down the memory lane.
Find My
As expected, Apple announce the merging of the Find My Friends and Find My iPhone into a single new app called “Find My”. The new feature of this app is totally mind blowing. For the first time ever, you can track your missing devices even they are offline. How it works is, using the secure Bluetooth beacon it sends signal to the other Apple devices surrounding and it relays back to the Apple. Then Apple will send this information back to you. According to Apple, this whole thing is totally end-to-end encrypted.
External Storage
Like finally, Apple announces external storage to the iOS 13. The all new iOS 13 now can transfer files between your SD cards or your USB thumb drive. You can import those files into your Files app directly.
In conclusion, these are the main features which we think you are going to fall in love with. There are more features on the iOS 13 which we will review it once we get our hands on the iOS 13 public beta in July. Apple announces the developer preview is available today to all with paid developers account. The official release of iOS 13 is on the fall this year. Check out Apple iOS 13 website for detail preview of the features.
After the United States government puts Huawei into its Entity List, Huawei had to face lots of issues. The whole blacklist is due to the security of its networking equipment. Today, Huawei is officially selling off its undersea cable operations including reducing its smartphone productions orders with Foxconn.
According to TheVerge, Huawei Marine System is the one who lays its undersea fibre optic cables between different continents. From its website, it states that Huawei lays more than 50,000km of undersea cables. Since Huawei was caught spying, it has been very difficult for them to win business. According to the International Cyber Policy Centre, Huawei is really having a hard time to negotiate deals to build undersea cables because of the blacklist issue.
Image from CNN
At this moment, Hengtong Optic-Electric which is another Chinese company is buying the share of the submarine cable operation. Other than that, according to the news from South China Morning Post, it seems Foxconn is stopping a few production lines for Huawei phones. However, earlier before the Huawei was in the blacklist, Foxconn reported hiring new staffs to help to produce more Huawei phones.
In conclusion, Huawei business seems to drop due for being blacklisted by the United States government.
The United States listed Huawei Technologies in its Entity List a few weeks ago. Later on, a lot of US tech companies started to back off from Huawei. The first one was Google and then followed by Intel and Qualcomm. Now, we are hearing that China is planning to come up with their own list.
According to China news outlet Sina reports, China might be coming up with its own blacklist. We are expecting Apple, could be the first one to be included in the list. The spokesperson of China’s commerce ministry says the companies on the list will not be allowed to do any business with Chinese companies.
At this moment, there are no companies added to its list yet. But companies like Google will not face issue even its added into the list. This is because China has already blocked Google a long time ago. The United States government has already provided a temporary license for Huawei to allow them to continue doing their business in the United States for 90 days period.
In conclusion, looks like its time for China to take revenge on the United States. This whole issue will be resolved only if the United States government removes Huawei from the Entity List.
Early morning today, Google Cloud service faces service outage throughout the US and Europe. Users have reported facing difficulty accessing YouTube, Gmail and Google Drive. Other than that, 3rd party services such as Snapchat is affected too.
Most of the users from Malaysia did not face any issue from any of the Google services. Upon checking the DownDetector website, we can assure you the service outage affects the United States, Europe, Japan, and Australia only.
In conclusion, Google Cloud took at least five hours to be fully recovered. Google has told to TheVerge, that it will make the improvement so that such an issue does not occur again.
The day has finally arrived. In less than 20 hours, Apple will be kicking off its 2019 WorldWide Developer Conference at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California. Every year, during this event, Apple will be announcing its new version of iOS, macOS, and watchOS. During the 2018 WWDC, Apple mainly focuses on the performance of its previous generation devices such as the iPhone 6. This round, Apple might be focussing more into power saving features.
iOS 13
Back when Apple launches the iOS 7 in 2013, it changes the whole new design on its software. Later on, Apple made minor changes to the software without changing the whole design. This year also we can expect the same to the iOS 13. The most confirmed feature we can expect would be the Dark Mode for iOS 13.
Dark Mode is a feature where every tech companies are implementing it to their applications. Basically, it switches the normal white interface to a black interface which protects the eyes from being damaged. Last year, Apple has already added the Dark Mode feature on its macOS 10.14 Mojave. According to 9to5Mac, the user can turn on this feature via the Settings app or via the shortcut button in the Control Center.
Image from 9to5Mac
Other than that, Bloomberg also reports that Apple iOS 13 which codenamed “Yukon” will also be focussing on animations for its multitasking and closing apps. There could be minor changes to the Apple widgets to give a cleaner look to the widgets panel. We also can expect a new swipe-based keyboard to the iOS 13. It will allow the users to swipe across the letters in the keyboard to type the word. There is already an app called SwiftKey which has a similar keyboard swiping feature. Apple could add this feature as an internal app.
Previously, there is a rumor that Apple might combine both the Find My Friends and Find My iPhone apps into a single new app. The name is not reveal yet but according to Bloomberg, internally its called “GreenTorch”. Honestly, we personally feel this both app is actually redundant. This is because, both apps are doing the same actions which is locating a person or a device. Two month ago, Mashable reported that Apple is working to launch its own tracking dongle which will track any of your items including your car keys by attaching a dongle as a key chain.
Image from Mashable
That’s the overall feature of iOS 13 we can expect from today’s event.
macOS 10.15
First of all, we can confirm Apple will be sticking on the scenic location names for the macOS 10.15. Next as expected, Apple might be killing off iTunes from the macOS by introducing the standalone Apple Music app for the macOS. Apart from that, Apple also will be introducing the Apple TV app to the macOS too. Another app Apple could launch for the macOS is the new Podcasts app.
Next Apple is focusing is to bring the iPad apps to the macOS. During the last year WWDC, Apple has already announced its plan to bring iPad application to the Mac. The main goal is to allow the developer to migrate their iPad apps to the Mac without rewriting their applications from scratch again. According to Mashable, Microsoft tried the same strategy a few years ago by introducing Universal Windows Apps. However, its strategy didn’t work out as expected. Could Apple strategy fail too? We have to wait and find out today.
watchOS 6
Promisingly, Apple Watch is the #1 smartwatch used by people in the world. If you get on the subway train, you can easily notice almost 50% of the passengers wear the Apple Watch on their wrist. We can expect the next watchOS 6 to include its own App Store. Until today, Apple Watch apps can only be found on the iOS App Store. Now, Bloomberg confirms this rumor. This makes the watch more independent. Users don’t have have to open their iPhone to download apps for their Apple Watch.
Image from Bloomberg
Personally, the next feature is the one we have been waiting to use it for a long time. Apple could launch the calculator app for the watchOS 6. It would really easy to make calculation on the watch rather than taking the iPhone to do the calculations. Moreover, we also can expect Apple to introduce two new health apps for watchOS 6. The first one is called Cycles. It is an app to track the female menstrual cycle. The other app is called Dose. This is like a reminder app which reminds the user to take their medicine. Last but not least, Apple might announce a new watch faces for the Apple Watch.
In conclusion, these are all the features we are expecting Apple to announce during today’s event. We will be covering the live updates on our page. Stay tune today at 1.00 a.m MYT for the event to commence.
iTunes is the macOS single app which allows you not only to listen to your favorite song but to sync your iPhone and iPad too. iTunes is also used as a place to buy or rent movies from the iTunes Store. As Apple is having its upcoming Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) on June 3 in San Jose, rumors saying Apple is ready to kill off iTunes.
According to Bloomberg, Apple will be removing iTunes from the macOS. To replace iTunes, Apple could launch three new apps for the Mac. These apps have already been in iOS for more than three years. We are guessing these three apps are Apple Music, Apple TV+ and Podcast app.
Apple launches iTunes back in 18 years ago. It has been long time Apple is maintaining the whole iOS devices through the iTunes. Personally, we feel it is really good for the future to let go off iTunes. This is because, it is really hard to transfer your data within your Mac. If you take a look at Windows ecosystem, you can directly transfer pictures to your computer by drag and drop. However, you still need to use the iTunes on the Windows computer to transfer musics.
In conclusion, we are excited to see how Apple could be changing the iOS syncing. We will be covering the WWDC live event update on our blog on 4th June 1 a.m. Follow our blog for the live updates.
