WWDC will continue for the rest of the week, but most of the big stuff just got announced. Here's what you need to know!
Today marks the official start of the Apple WWDC 2020 event! WWDC stands for Worldwide Developers Conference, and it’s essentially Apple’s version of Google I/O.
Although the focus of WWDC is software and Apple connecting with the developers that create products for its platforms, the company still made room for a huge (yet unsurprising) hardware announcement. There were no iPhones launched, but there were still some exciting developments.
For all the latest from the Apple WWDC 2020 keynote event, see our summary below! If you feel like watching the whole event yourself, the YouTube video above is the easiest way to do so.
iOS 14: The Apple WWDC 2020 main event
Credit: David Imel / Android Authority
Over the past 10 years, WWDC has been dominated by news related to Apple’s star product, the iPhone, and the software that powers it: iOS. This year, Apple is launching iOS 14, and it spent the majority of the Apple WWDC 2020 keynote talking about new features and upgrades for the mobile operating system.
Interestingly, more than a few of the features won’t seem new to many people reading this, as they have been staples on Android for years. However, Apple did have a few new things to talk about that even us Android users have never seen before.
Check out the summary of the biggest Apple WWDC 2020 announcements related to iOS below.
The newest iOS features:
Home screen widgets: Android users have known and loved widgets for a really, really long time, but iPhone users are just getting started with them. With iOS 14, iPhones will finally support home screen widgets. There will be a newly designed interface for adding and customizing the applets, too.
App Library: Since iOS doesn’t have an app drawer, app icons are scattered all over multiple home screens. It took until Apple WWDC 2020 for the company to finally address this chaos with something called App Library. It takes up the final home screen page and is an auto-curated collection of folders that house all your apps in categories. For example, your social, entertainment, and recently added apps are all categorized so you can find them easily. You can also quickly remove home screen pages now so you can gain access to the App Library quicker without needing to swipe across a dozen pages. It’s not an app drawer, but hey, it’s alright.
Picture-in-picture: iOS 14 will support watching videos no matter what you’re doing on your iPhone. Simply start a video and then perform the home screen gesture and the video will shrink to a small box that floats above all your other apps. As with the widgets mentioned previously, Android has had this for a while.
Default apps: Another thing Android users are used to is setting different apps as default for things like email, calendars, browsers, etc. Apple users haven’t been able to do this before, but now they can — although only with two apps for now. In iOS 14, the email and browser apps can be changed from the default Mail and Safari apps to something else of the user’s choosing.
Siri: With Android 10 on Pixel phones, Google introduced a “new” Google Assistant that was faster and with a less obtrusive design. Siri is now catching up to that as it will (finally!) not take up your entire display when activated. Instead, an animated Siri icon appears at the bottom of the screen, allowing you to see your apps while communicating. Once again, it took until Apple WWDC 2020 for this change to happen, but at least it’s happening.
Messages: The messaging system that everyone on Android wishes they had access to will be getting some big changes in iOS 14. You can now create inline replies to group messages and even add “@” replies (although you don’t need the @ symbol to do so). This will also allow you to customize your notifications so you won’t be bothered every single time someone sends something to the group chat. Instead, you can only be notified when someone directly replies to something you said or mentions you in a comment.
Memoji: There weren’t too many new things related to Memoji at Apple WWDC 2020, but the company did say that there are now more ways than ever to customize the appearance of your avatar. Apple even added the ability to include face coverings since, you know, that’s a thing that’s important now, unfortunately.
Apple Maps: The days of mocking Apple Maps are over, as the company has turned the app into a very capable substitute for Google Maps. This year, Apple Maps will arrive in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Canada. There are finally cycling directions incorporated (but only in a few big cities), and your turn-by-turn navigation can support environmentally-friendly ways of travel.
App Clips: One of the cooler announcements at Apple WWDC 2020 is App Clips. These are ultra-lightweight apps (less than 10MB in size) that will help you at the moment you need them. For example, you could be in a new coffee shop and want to use the restaurant’s app to pay for your drink. Instead of downloading the whole app, you could just bump your phone against an NFC pad, download the App Clip, sign in with Apple Pay, and boom: you’re done. Your iPhone will even automatically alert you if an App Clip exists for the area you are in or the activity you are currently doing.
CarKey: Speaking of NFC, Apple has its sights on replacing car keys using the technology. At Apple WWDC 2020, the company formally announced CarKey which could replace your FOB when it comes to unlocking your car door and starting to drive. It will only work in one BMW that will land later this year at first, but eventually will see wide adoption just like Apple’s Car Play does. The coolest thing about this is that you can easily share your car key credentials with others. You can even restrict them in certain ways once they start driving.
Phone call notification: When you get a phone call, your entire display won’t be dominated by the call notification anymore. Instead, a small widget-like alert will appear. You can easily answer or decline the call here or just swipe away the alert to let it ring.
Privacy: If you are using an app that accesses your camera or microphone, the status
