Apple Announces New Features, Jumps into BNPL, Others
By Adedapo Adesanya
On Monday evening, Apple announced new additions to its arsenal of products that leaves enthusiasts’ tongues wagging including iOS and new features as well as a dive into an emerging, potential-filled market.
The announcements were made ahead of the Worldwide Developer Conference and Business Post takes you through some of these developments.
The latest operating system (iOS 16) is coming with new features like a customised lock screen which will allow for more customization, plus support for widgets — including widgets for third-party apps. Also, notifications will now “roll in” from the bottom of the screen, while a “Live Activities” API will let developers update notifications in real-time.
Users will now be able to edit or unsend recent messages in iMessage or mark a thread as unread while SharePlay, which lets a user to stream movies in sync, will now extend to iMessage as well as Facetime.
Live Text will be able to translate and replace text it detects in a photo, allowing users to more easily read through something like a menu in a language you don’t know.
Apple is getting into buy-now-pay-later (BNPL). With this, Apple Pay Later will let a customer split an Apple Pay purchase over four payments with zero interest; Apple says it will work anywhere Apple Pay works.
Apple’s big Maps overhaul is coming to a bunch of new cities this year, including Atlanta, Chicago, Las Vegas, London, Sydney, SF, and LA. It’s also getting much improved multi-stop route support.
Apple News will now let you follow news specifically focused on a person’s favourite sports/teams.
For Family Sharing which limits kids’ iPad screentime, kids will now be able to request more time via iMessage.
In addition, users can now have a shared library with family members, meaning that when taking a photo, one can toggle whether a photo goes into the shared library or just your personal library.
The company has reimagined the Home app “from the ground up.” All various devices in different rooms are brought into one screen, including a side-scrolling view of all of your HomeKit-enabled cameras.
CarPlay is also getting a massive overhaul which will support things like speed readouts, fuel gauges, AC control, etc depending on the car in question. Apple says to expect more news here later in 2023.
Other devices including Apple Watch got new additions like the ability to track a few new running metrics, including vertical oscillation (how much a person moves up and down while running), stride length, and ground contact time, among others.
Apple also announced the M2 chip which is a follow up from the M1. Apple says the M2 CPU is 18 per cent faster than that of the M1, while the GPU is 35 per cent faster.
New MacBooks were also announced including MacBook Airs and Pros. These have a 13.6″ liquid retina display, TouchID built into the keyboard and MagSafe support. Apple says it will offer a slim charger with 2 USB-C ports, and that the new MacBook Airs will support fast charging to get the battery to 50 per cent within thirty minutes of charging.
The next major release of macOS will be called “macOS Ventura” which makes it possible to group running apps together; tapping into a group will minimize other apps while putting the selected group front and centre.
Users will be able to pull rich results into a new scrolling view and allow them to do things like quickly preview a found file without actually opening it.
The Mail app is also getting support for undo send, scheduled send, and timed reminders. Search within Mail is getting smarter, automatically correcting for typos and knowing how to search for synonyms, among others.
