Enhancing User Experience

HERE ARE THE MOST CRUCIAL ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM APPLE’S ANNUAL DEVELOPERS’ CONFERENCE FOR ITS USERS

- Tushar Kanwar

ASIDE FROM two gorgeously crafted and expectedly exorbitantly priced pieces of pro-grade hardware, a lot of what Apple announced at its annual Worldwide Developer Conference in San Jose recently has a very real impact on existing consumers across their Mac, iPhone, iPad, Watch and TV platforms. Here’s our breakdown of the most crucial announcements and why they will matter to folks like you and me.

iPad gets its own OS

With the all-new iPad OS, Apple has acknowledged the need for a tablet-specific version of iOS that caters to the growing ‘iPad-as-laptop-replacement’ market. And boy, what a difference the new platform makes on the iPad! The home screen now packs in more apps closer together, and there’s now the ability to pin widgets to the home screen for always-available access to shortcuts and information. With the tablet’s larger screen, there’s finally the ability to use a split-screen view of the same app open in two windows, say if you’re working on two Excel sheets or two emails at the same time. Folks who spent a lot of their time working on the web will cheer the new enhanced version of the Safari web browser that now allows desktop-style browsing as well as a downloads manager. Yet, the biggest cheers will be reserved for the new Files app, which introduces support for USB thumb drives and camera imports directly via USB cables, a move which will take the iPad closer to replacing an increasing number of everyday tasks on your PC/Mac.