WWDC 2012 had two major annoucements, iOS6 and new MacBook Pro line up. As we had predicted today, the announcement went exactly as we said. None of our prediction was wrong.
Scott Forstall, Senior VP of iOS took the stage and blew everyone’s mind with the shiny new iOS6.
iOS6 has 200+ features, tons of Siri features added i.e. Siri is much smarter now, Mac and iPhone integration with almost all the basic Apps, Notification Center update, and a brand new Maps app.
Lets go through each of them one by one
SIRI
- Siri can now launch Apps.
- Siri supports bunch loads of new languages and support has extended for more than 60 countries.
- Siri also have a collaboration with Rotten Tomatoes to give you everything you need to know about movies, showtimes and movie reviews.
- Siri can now answer everything about Sports, right from last night’s scoreboard to a players’ statistics.
- Siri integrates with Yelp for restaurant reviews and OpenTable for reservations.
- Siri now has hands-free in-car system integration with a lot of car manufacturers like Mercedes, Audi, BMW, Chrysler, Toyota, Land Rover, Jaguar etc and would roll out slowly in the next 12 months.
Passbook App
- One place to keep all your passes together, boarding pass to movie tickets. All your passes can be kept safe in one single app. It collects information from all your tickets, cards and is location enabled this makes it smarter to use it when its needed.
MAPS
- Google Maps gets replaced by Maps.
- Maps now has turn-by-turn navigation which is vector and voice based by Siri.
- Siri integrated to ask for directions and all the snazzy stuff you can do with Siri and Maps.
- Maps integrates with Yelp.
- Apple is building its own traffic service which provides anonymous, crowd-sourced and real-time incident reports.
- 3D Maps and satellite view has insane details and everything loads quickly.
- Flyover is a new feature in Maps which gives 3D view of all the buildings and places.
Phone App Update
- When you get a call, you can choose to decline it and add a reminder to call that person later. You can also text them back if you are busy, or add a reminder to text them back later.
- ‘Do Not Disturb’ mode added. Messages and calls won’t disturb you, you would still receive all of them but screen won’t light up or give any notification. You can add some contacts to favorite and only receive their calls even when DND is ON.
- DND would also understand if a person calls more than twice, it might be an important call and the DND for that person gets disabled immediately and you would get a call.
- Facetime is now allowed even on cellular network.
Facebook Integration
- This is exactly the same as Twitter integration we had seen in iO5.
- Facebook contacts can be integrated with your regular contacts.
- Facebook calendar would sync with iOS calender.
- Once logged in, you have instant access to all apps which allow Facebook login and automatically makes Share button available everywhere to share on Facebook.
- Developers would be allowed to add Facebook access in their apps easily.
- iTunes and App Store has deep Facebook Integration to display likes and share apps or anything from iTunes store.
- A new VIP feature added to highlight mails from people you really care about and important mails reach that section.
- Documents can be password locked in mail and mail threads can be refreshed with pull-to-refresh.
Safari
- Safari data from Mac now syncs with iOS‘s Safari browser, opened tabs to Offline reading lists. Everything from Macs’ Safari can be synced with your iOS Devices’ safari.
Photos
- Photos can now be shared with everyone or with a group of friends over iCloud, they are even allowed to comment on such shared photos
Notification Center
- You can now tweet or update the status from the notification center.
- Tap to Tweet and Tap to share are added for Twitter and Facebook.
When can we get?
The iOS6 beta is released already. You can download it from the developer page. The final iOS6 would be released by this fall.
iOS6 supports following devices
For more details check iOS6 Preview