Getting to grips with iOS 11
The World Wide Developers Conference from Apple did not disappoint when it came to software , with iOS 11 being rolled out in Fall of 2017 we are currently on the 5th Public Beta which if you are brave you can install and test on your iDevice now.
iOS 11 brings great new features to the iPhone , iPad, Apple Watch, and Apple TV with closer integration with macOS High Sierra also due for release in Fall of 2017.
As well as the usual refinements to the icons and graphics iOS 11 promises to make the tasks you already do faster and easier to complete with new more creative tools for photos and videos complete with new augmented reality integration.
iOS 11 is set to take multitasking on the iPad to a whole new level with new support for drag and drop between apps rather like you can do on your Mac.
The way you manage settings has been made easier to use and more powerful to boot with a complete redesign of the control center. The control center in iOS 10 can be far from plain sailing whereas the control centre in iOS11 has neatly grouped the controls together meaning you no longer need to swipe left or right to find the controls you need. With some refinements to the controls themselves such as volume and brightness making them more touch friendly rather than ported versions of the macOS interface.
iOS 11 introduces organized notifications which could help if you are as confused as I am between the notifications in the Notification Centre and the notifications on the lock screen.
Apple Pay now has person-to person support , this is done via the iMessage apps making it easy to send money to family and friends. If you are chatting with a contact in iMessage and they decide to make a group purchase for say theatre tickets or cinema tickets and they use an app to make a purchase they can send you an iMessage to let you know exactly what you owe them. This looks like a great feature and I’m sure we will have a how to on using it when iOS 11 is out of BETA.
iOS 11’s App Store has also been treated to a redesign with a Music App inspired theme, hopefully this will not cause the same confusion as it did me with the Music App redesign. Some features being touted include automatic video play as you scroll over the advert (not sure this sounds like an improvement), a Today page with an app of the day and a game of the day for download within the App Store, as well as Hints and tips on how to use apps from the App Store.
The Photos and Camera Apps with video being captured in the new HEVC format which is the successor to the H.264 format which offers twice the compression as before as well as other new features see :https://jonbrown.org/blog/high-sierra-nearly-here/ . Photos will also be shot in a new format High Efficiency Image Format (HEIF) “Heef” if you’re looking for the correct pronunciation. These are still high quality formats albeit more heavily compressed and Apple promises they will be backwards compatible for example when you share to Facebook or use Airdrop to share these images the device will automagically use a fallback format such as JPEG.
Overall image quality is to be improved with optical image stabilisation however this may only be for the iPhone 7 and higher, True Tone flash and High Dynamic range (HDR) which is already selected as default in the camera app. Those of you with an iPhone 7 or above will get better support for depth information.
The machine learning for iOS 11 has been improved allowing you to search for certain activities such as outdoor or nights out through to specific events such as weddings! Live photos will receive support for trim , mute , loop , and bounce. This will make creating animated GIF’s easier as the Loop feature will allow a video to be analysed to create a seamless loop. Photos will also include more effects, further mimicking shots that currently have to be taken with a traditional camera.
The do not disturb feature in iOS11 has been extended to support driving using either Bluetooth to connect to your car or measuring the doppler effect via the iDevices built in WIFI. The screen will go black and notifications will no longer flash up on the screen, sounds like a great feature to me!
As ever we will let you know as more features become available for iOS11 but it looks like a really good update for your iDevices, Apple is publishing the latest news about iOS 11 here.
