Apple WWDC 2016: iOS 10 improves on Siri, Messages and Privacy

Here is how iOS will give more power to the user

Siri: Apple has just opened up Siri for third-party developers. So you can now ask Siri to call you a cab on Uber or book you a meal on Zomato. Siri interacts directly with the app and is not limited to using the knowledge available natively on iOS. While what Apple showcased was a mere demo, you can rest assured that by the time iOS 10 is live there will be many new ways to use Siri.

In fact, with these newfound capabilities, Siri has the ability to take on the advent of bots. It can now do pretty much everything bots are doing, maybe in a more natural way as it is voice-based.

Also, Siri finally finds its way into macOS. This move is a bit reactionary, in a way countering Cortana, the Windows 10 personal assistant.

See our live coverage of WWDC Keynote

Messages: iOS 10 will be the biggest thing to have happened to messaging so far. It adds emotions and character to messages, which haven’t changed much since emojis. Messages now come with support for handwriting, rich links, larger emojis, more powerful text and full screen messages. And, if you haven’t been using too much emojis, iOS can now suggest which all words can be replaced by emojis.

However, the biggest development here is Apple’s move to open up Messages too to developers. There will be an Apps icon below each message from now, letting you add anything from a customised GIF to a money coupon to your message.

There are now apps for iMessage and it will be open for developers.

This again seems to be Apple’s way of taking on the increasing power of third-party messaging apps like Facebook Messenger. However, it remains to be seen if these new features are good enough to make people use the native messenger more.

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Privacy: Apple seems to be veering towards differential privacy with iOS 10. This new cutting edge technology will link each user’s data to their actual profile and will be customisation of privacy features, for the first time in scale.  Apple wll also using APIs from third party apps like WeChat and TrueCaller to alert users about potential spam calls, a great feature for users on China and India.

Photos: iPhone users swear by the photos they take. But with so many photos being clicked, it has been becoming harder to find the photos you need. iOS 10 will add layers of people and places on top of photos by auto tagging photos and then adding them to maps of where they were taken. Apple will use advanced computer vision to create a new feature called Memories. With this iOS 10 will be able to create albums based on events with auto-tagged faces and locations thrown in. It will also be able to create movies of multiple durations on its own with easy editing options.

Widgets: Though announced as part of iOS 9, widgets seem to be getting a new lease of life with iOS 10. Apple is working on add graphics and even video to widgets, putting good use of 3D touch as well.

Others: There are quite a few small tweaks that will make life easier for users. Apple plans to use Siri’s knowledge to make multi-lingual typing easier with predictions thrown in. When a message comes in, there will be intuitive reply options ready using Siri’s intelligence.

Disclaimer: The writer is in San Francisco at the invite of Apple, which is paying for travel and accomodation.