Biggest Mobile Announcements from Apple WWDC 2016

Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) was yesterday and many of Apple’s greatest, including CEO Tim Cook, took to the stage to bring us up-to-date on all things Apple in 2016. These announcements included updates to the Mac, iPhone, Apple Watch and Apple TV OSes and the conformation of rumors that will open up Siri and iMessage to outside developers. They also announced various redesigns and changes to Apple News, Music and Maps.

According to The Verge, a lot of these announcements are geared toward making moving between Apple devices easier which is a welcome relief to everyone, especially for enterprise users who need to move accounts across various devices throughout the day. Here are some of the top mobility announcements to come out of this year’s WWDC:

The “biggest iOS release ever” is coming our way. This release will include redesigns of crucial apps, new notifications and an expanded role for 3D Touch. A new feature called “raise and wake” will wake the lock screen when you lift your phone, revealing redesigned notifications that you can interact with using 3D touch.

iMessage is getting a well earned update that will include the ability to write notes with your finger and developers are now getting the chance to access iMessage so they can develop apps to use within messaging. In addition to the iMessage updates, we will also be getting voicemail transcription which will automatically transcribe voicemails and offer them up like texts.

The most exciting development of WWDC comes from Siri. It was rumored that Apple would be releasing Siri to outside developers, but it was confirmed yesterday. This means that developers can now add Siri functions into their apps. This includes the development of enterprise as well as consumer apps. QuickType will also bring Siri to the keyboard by learning context through Siri. This will allow Message help with text responses and you will be able to look things up stright from the keyboard instead of going into the web browser or another app.

The Apple Watch gets updated with the third version of the watchOS. The most significant improvement this update brings is it’s much faster load time which makes it seven times faster than the previous version. This update could prove useful to enterprise workers who would use wearables, but my be prevented because of slow load times and blocky navigation. Speaking of navigation, part of this update will improve the UI and include a new dock feature accessed by the side button. This will allow users to scroll through apps easier.

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