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Five Cool New iOS 8 Features To Watch Out For

by Milicent Atieno

Five Cool New iOS 8 Features To Watch Out For

The first people to pre-order their iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus will get them this Friday. But the latest mobile operating system from Apple iOS 8 will be live starting this Wednesday.

Users with iPhone 4S, 5S and 5C will be able to download the new operating system for free. But unlike the radical upgrade that was the iOS 7, the iOS 8 comes packed with a handful of new cool features that you are guaranteed to enjoy. Innov8tiv takes a look at the top 5 coolest feature on the iOS 8 OS. They are as follows:

Handoff – The Ultimate Device Continuity

Come this October, 2014, Apple is releasing the latest Mac operating system called, the OS X Yosemite. The new Mac OS will have the tightest integration capability with the iOS 8 that has ever been.

By tight integration I mean you will be able to answer calls from the laptop, reply to texts from desktop computers and move a document you are working on from your iPhone to iPad to desktop computers all in a single swipe. This feature works well with apps such as Safari, Mail, Messages, Calendar, Contacts, Numbers, Pages, Reminders and Keynote.

Siri what song is playing?”

With the new iOS 8, Siri will be integrated with the Shazam app. An app that allows you to recognize a song or media that is playing around you. Whenever you hear a song playing, and you don’t have any clue which song that is, you can ask Siri, “What song is playing?” and the AI digital assistant will give you her well-informed answer.

More 3rd Party Standalone Widgets

Unlike Android devices, Apple has been keeping a strong control on just how 3rd party apps (except its own) appear on its devices. Apple had customized these apps to get a tiny and uniformly sized box for every app, and that was it.

However, the new iOS 8 has become more liberal with the developers and now allows them to create widgets for the iPhones and iPads. Developers will now be able to create simple, standalone apps for various uses, such as weather updates or tracking your data usage. This functionality has been quite popular and existed for a long time on the Android platform will be restricted to the “Today” screen in the device’s Notification Center.

More Parental Control & Family Sharing

It appears Apple is big on family considering it created the new iOS 8 with a lot of consideration for family updates and sharing. The new OS allows up to a maximum of six people to share purchases from App Store, iTunes and iBook without the need of sharing a single account.

The family sharing features allows you to create a family photo album automatically and anyone on the plan can share it. There is also a family calendar that anyone can share, but this feature will probably be used mostly by moms to keep everyone aware about the family. Another is the “Ask to Buy” feature, which is an innovative parental control feature that allows parents to permit or restrict their kids when they want to buy something from the Apple Store.

Changes in Keyboard

It is said that the iOS 8 comes with the biggest changes to the Apple keyboard setup ever since the introduction of the iPhones. Apple has allowed 3rd party typing apps like the Swype; a finger-dragging that has grown quite popular on the Android platform.

Also, Apple native typing system will have some tweaks as well; mostly in the form of QuickType, resembling Google’s predictive text system. This will predict the next word you are typing based on the context of what you have written in the past, thereby allowing you to add the entire word by just tapping once. The system’s predictions will also change based on the type of people you are communicating with or the format you are using (e.g. text vs. email)

Be sure to check out our review of the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and Apple Watch featured previously.

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