Yesterday, Apple gave a Keynote address to kick off WWDC, its annual developer conference. There were lots of announcements about lots of different types of products, but today I'm going to focus just on the next version of the operating system for the iPhone and iPad called iOS 14 and iPad OS 14. (My guess is that both will be released around October 2020.) There are a lot of improvements coming, and I'm very much looking forward to this update. Here are the new features that I am most looking forward to and which I think will be the most interesting to attorneys and other professionals who use an iPhone or iPad.
Widgets on the iPhone Home Screen
In addition to showing apps on your iPhone home screen, you can also place widgets of different shapes and sizes around your app icons. This looks like a great way to show useful information in a place where it is easy to see the information.
You can stack up to 10 widgets in a single location. You can swipe through to find the widget you want. And if you select the Smart Stack widget, Apple will place the most relevant widget on top based upon the time of day, your location, and what you are doing — such as News in the morning, your calendar during the day, and the Activity widget at night.
The new widgets will also be available on the iPad, but it appears that you don't have the flexibility to place them wherever you want on the screen, which seems like an odd omission. Instead, they all go on the left side of the first screen, just like the current today view. You do gain the ability to put two smaller widgets side-by-side in that same space, and you can arrange and stack widgets within that part of the iPad screen.
App Library on the iPhone
I have a large number of apps on my iPhone. On the first two screens, I remember where the important apps are located. Beyond that, I don't really know where any app lives. Is it on page 3 or page 5? Top or bottom? I don't know, so I just have to hunt for the icon or do a search.
With the new App Library, you decide how many initial screens you want to manage – for me it would probably be just two — and then everything after that can be on a hidden screen. How do you find them? After swiping past the first screen or two (depending upon how many you keep) you then see the App Library. Apps are sorted by category into folders, and the apps you use the most are near the top, but there is a big search bar at the top making it easy to just search for the app you want. And when you search, the iPhone shows you a big long list of every app listed alphabetically, giving you a quick way to locate the app you need.
This looks like a great feature and I cannot wait to use it on my iPhone. Unfortunately, it appears that the App Library will only be available on the iPhone, not the iPad.
Compact Calls
Currently, if you are using your iPhone and someone calls you, the entire iPhone screen shows you that someone is calling. In iOS 14, the notification is less obnoxious. A small banner notification appears at the top of the screen with buttons to accept the call or hang up, but you can continue to see almost all of your iPhone screen while the banner is up there.
This feature is also on the iPad, so if your have your iPad configured to take calls from your iPhone, the notification is less obnoxious. The same compact notification is used for other apps like FaceTime and certain third party apps.
Better search
The App Library feature makes it easier to search for an app on an iPhone. But Apple has also improved the general Search feature on both the iPhone and iPad to take up less screen space and to provide many more useful suggestions, presented as you are typing your search terms.
iPad interface improvements
On the Mac, there are many apps that have a sidebar on the left to show additional controls. For example, in Photos on a Mac, the Sidebar gives you a place to click to see Photos, Memories, Favorites, People, Places, Recents, Imports, Recently Deleted, and many different albums. In iPad OS 14, many apps will gain a similar sidebar. This should make it much faster and easier to use these apps, and if you don't want the sidebar you can just dismiss it. Apple says that this Sidebar is coming to the apps Photos, Notes, Files, Music, Shortcuts, Voice Memos, Contacts, Mail, and Calendar. (Some iPad apps like Files and Notes already feature a sidebar, but it looks like it will be improved in iPad OS 14.)
Another feature inherited from the Mac and PC are toolbars with pull-down menus in certain situations. And instead of using the small date picker from the iPhone, the iPad now has its own date picker with a full-size calendar.
With these and other improvements, the iPad interface will be more powerful and also easier to use.
Improved Apple Pencil support
I love using my iPad Pencil to take notes and annotate documents on my iPad Pro, and support for the Pencil will get even better in iPad OS 14.
First, Apple is added a feature called Scribble that lets you write by hand in any text field. Thus, when your Pencil is already in your hand and you need to enter some text, you don't need to put down the Pencil and then type on the on-screen keyboard or an external keyboard. You can just handwrite in the text field and the iPad will automatically convert your handwriting to text. When I saw the demo of the feature, it reminded me of what the Apple Newton always wanted to achieve in the 1990s, although the technology of the time wasn't quite up to the task.
I think that this is going to make a big difference for me whenever I sit down with my iPad Pro and my Apple Pencil to annotate documents — something that I do just about every day in my law practice. My Pencil will already be in my hand for the purpose of highlighting and scribbling notes in the margins, and seems very efficient to use that same stylus whenever I need to enter a quick word or two.
Apple also made it easier to work with handwritten notes. You can d0uble-tap to select a word or double-tap again to select a line, very similar to the gestures that you would use when working with printed text. Or you can select an entire paragraph. Apple uses advanced machine learning to make sure that just the words are selected and not the drawings next to the words.
After you have selected one or more words, you can paste them elsewhere as typed text. And if Apple recognizes the type of data that you handwrote — such as an address, phone number, etc. — Apple will give you appropriate options to work with that data.
Apple says that you can also circle a word to select it or scratch a word to delete it. I'm not sure if this is just for handwritten text or if it also works on printed text.
iPad OS 14 also gives you better handwriting. Well, sort of. If you draw a shape, like a line, and then keep holding your Pencil down, Apple will turn your handwritten line into a perfectly straight line. The new technology can handle a line, curve, square, rectangle, circle, oval, heart, triangle, star, cloud, hexagon, thought bubble, arrow (an outlined arrow, a line with an arrow at the end, or a curve with an arrow at the end), or a continuous line with 90º turns. Apple also made it easier to add space between two areas where you have writing, moving things down so that you can write above them.
These look like great features, and I presume that they will be implemented in third-party apps like GoodNotes. For example, in GoodNotes, you can currently draw a perfect square by first tapping the shapes tool and then drawing a square and then tapping the pen tool to go back to your regular pen. It would be nice to switch from handwriting to drawing shapes without having to change tools.
Pinned Conversations in Messages
iOS 14 and iPad OS 14 will introduce lots of new features in Messages, but the one that looks most useful to me is Pinned Conversations in Messages. Currently, your most recent conversations go to the top of the Messages app. This is nice, but often when I open Messages I want to text someone like my wife or my son, and it is a pain to have to search for where I last texted them. With this new feature, I can pin my conversation with my wife to the top of Messages so that it is always quick and easy to send my wife a message, even if she was not the last person with whom I texted.
Translation tools
iOS 14 and iPad OS 14 will make it easier to communicate with people who speak a different language and easier to work with webpages in a different language. Safari will add the ability to translate a webpage in seven different languages (English, Spanish, Chinese, French, German, Russian, and Brazilian Portuguese).
A new app called Translate gives you and another person the ability to have a conversation with the iPhone acting as a translator. You can even download a language directly on the iPhone so that all translation is done on the phone itself, keeping the conversation private and away from a server. Apple's new Translate app sounds very similar to Google's own Translate app, and I look forward to comparing them to see which one works best.
AirPods improvements
I use my AirPods all the time with my iPhone and iPad, but it is a pain to have to switch them between those two devices. Last year I shared a tip for using the Shortcuts app to ease this process, and I still use that shortcut almost every day, but I still wish there were a better way. in iOS 14 and iPad OS 14, Apple says that AirPods will automatically switch over to whatever device you are using. That sounds amazing, and I cannot wait to see how it works in practice.
Apple also described a Spatial Audio feature for the AirPods Pro that will make it seem like sounds are in certain locations around you. For example, something on your left will only play in the left ear ... unless you turn your head, in which case it will switch to both ears or the right ear so that the sound seems like it is continuing to come from the same location. It will be interesting to see what Apple does with this technology. It could provide a richer experience for watching a movie, it could be used for interesting 3D-audio experiences, and it could be used in connection with other directional technology like Maps or the widely rumored AirTags to help you to go in the right direction to find something.
AirPods are such a fantastic accessory, and I love that Apple is coming up with creative ways to make them better.
Shortcuts improvements
If you use the powerful Shortcuts app on your iPhone or iPad, there will be lots of improvements in the next few months. You will be able to organize Shortcuts into folders, disable confirmation dialog boxes, copy and past actions, use new automation triggers, and more. And it also works on the Apple Watch.
...and the rest
These new features are more than enough to make me excited to use the new software, but this is truly just the tip of the iceberg. Apple lists the major new features for the iPhone on this page and for the iPad on this page. Apple also has a more detailed list for the iPhone and a more detailed list for the iPad. On those pages, you can learn about Siri improvements, Maps improvements, improvements to the Home app for having a better smart home, using your iPhone as a car key to unlock your car, CarPlay improvements, Camera improvements (such as shooting photos 90% faster at up to four frames per second and better Night Mode), a new technology called App Clips, improvements to Photos (including captions), improvements to Reminders, improvements to Notes, on-device dictation to improve privacy, the ability to search for emoji, and much more.
It's nice knowing that, in just a few more months, our iPhones and iPads will get some major improvements.
