Showing posts with label Features. Show all posts

Use Siri on the Mac, Access Your Desktop from Anywhere, Copy and Paste Between Devices & Rediscover Favorite Memories in Photos

a major update to the world’s most advanced desktop operating system, with new features that make the Mac smarter and more helpful than ever. Siri is now on the Mac with brand-new capabilities to help with the things users do every day on their desktop. With Siri, users can look up information, find documents, pin or drag and drop search results, and even adjust system preferences. Seamless integration with iCloud makes everything from your Desktop and Documents folder available on your iPhone and iPad so you always have access to the files you need. Universal Clipboard allows you to copy content, including text, images, photos and video from one Apple device and paste it in another. Apple Pay comes to the Mac in Sierra so it is even easier to shop securely and privately online. And Photos now helps you rediscover your meaningful memories, organize your library and perfect shots like a pro.

macOS Sierra brings Siri to the Mac.

“macOS Sierra is a major update that makes your Mac smarter and more helpful than ever with improvements to the apps you know and love and great new features throughout,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “With macOS Sierra, you can get information, find files and multitask using Siri, access your Desktop and Documents from anywhere, copy and paste between Macs and iOS devices, and rediscover precious memories in Photos.”

Siri Debuts on the Mac
Siri on the Mac is now just one click away. The familiar features of Siri are now on the Mac with brand-new capabilities specifically designed for the desktop. Easily accessible from the Dock, menu bar or keyboard, Siri lets you use your voice to search for information, find files and send messages. For example you can ask Siri to locate a specific document you worked on last night, add a meeting to your calendar or start a FaceTime call. With Siri on the Mac, you can also drag and drop items from Siri search results into your documents or emails, pin Siri search results in Notification Center to keep an eye on information like sports scores or stock prices, and even adjust system preferences, set reminders and search your Photos library. With its debut on Mac, Siri is now on all four Apple software platforms — iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS — and handles two billion requests per week across 36 countries.

Siri helps you quickly locate information.

Your Desktop and Documents on All Your Devices
With macOS Sierra you can automatically have all the files on your Desktop and in your Documents folder on any Mac, iOS device or even PC. You simply save your files on your Desktop or within your Documents folder as you usually do and you will have them everywhere you need them. You can access your files on your iPhone and iPad in the iCloud Drive app and on iCloud.com or the iCloud for Windows app. And when you log into a second Mac, your files are automatically on the Desktop and in the Documents folder, exactly where you saved them.

Automatically get access to your documents on any device.

Copy and Paste Between Devices
Continuity across your Apple devices also gets better in macOS Sierra. With Universal Clipboard, the contents of your clipboard are available across all your Apple devices via iCloud. You can easily copy and paste text, images, photos and video between your Mac and your iPhone and iPad.

Tabs in Almost Every App
To help you navigate your Desktop with more efficiency, macOS Sierra takes the popular Tabs feature from Safari and makes it available across Mac apps that support multiple windows, including Maps, Mail, Pages, Numbers, Keynote and TextEdit, and even third-party apps. With Tabs you can browse multiple locations in Maps without losing your place, copy and paste between Pages documents in full screen, or quickly jump between multiple email drafts in Mail.

Picture in Picture on the Mac
You can now keep an eye on one thing while working on another. macOS Sierra lets you float video from Safari or iTunes in a window over your desktop as you work, and even resize, drag and pin video to any corner of your screen. The video stays put when you switch spaces, so you’ll never miss a thing.

Shopping on Your Mac with Apple Pay
Users love to shop online using their Macs and with macOS the shopping experience in Safari is now even better. Apple Pay on the web makes it easy to make secure and private purchases when shopping on participating websites. You no longer need to share credit or debit card numbers with an online merchant and actual card numbers are not stored on your device, nor on Apple servers. Just look for the Apple Pay button at checkout on many of your favorite shopping sites and complete your purchase with Touch ID on your iPhone or by using your Apple Watch. Strong encryption protects all communication between your devices and Apple Pay servers, and Apple Pay does not track your purchases.

Make secure and private purchases in Safari.

Rediscover Memories with Photos
The new Memories feature in Photos helps you rediscover favorite and forgotten moments deep in your Photos library by automatically creating curated collections of occasions like a first birthday party, wedding or family vacation. With new advanced computer vision, Photos now understands the people, places and things inside your images using on-device facial, object and scene recognition and location information to group images into albums. The People feature automatically groups your photos into Albums based on who is in them. Places now displays your photos on a world map so you can see where they were taken. And, perfecting your photos like a pro is now even easier with the new Brilliance tool, which pulls in highlights and adds contrast to enhance details throughout your images.

Photos helps you rediscover forgotten moments.

Additional macOS Features

Auto Unlock lets you simply walk up to your Mac while wearing your authenticated Apple Watch and be automatically logged into your desktop.
Optimized Storage frees up space when your Mac starts getting full by storing infrequently used items in iCloud and reminding you to delete used app installers, and even clearing out duplicate downloads, caches, logs and more.
Messages makes conversations more interesting, now allowing you to preview web links and watch video clips within the app, post reactions like a heart, thumbs up and more directly onto a message bubble with Tapback, and use bigger emoji for more message impact.
Apple Music in iTunes makes it even easier to discover new music and browse exclusives and new releases.

Messages on macOSSierra
Tabs on macOS Sierra

Notifications with Siri
Apple Music on macOS Sierra

Privacy in macOS

Security and privacy are fundamental to the design of Apple hardware, software and services. iMessage and FaceTime use end-to-end encryption to protect your data by making it unreadable by Apple and others. Services like Siri and Maps send data to Apple’s servers, but this data is not used to build user profiles, and Photos uses on-device intelligence to organize your images using facial, object and scene recognition.

Starting with macOS Sierra, Apple is using technology called Differential Privacy to help discover the usage patterns of a large number of users without compromising individual privacy. In macOS Sierra, this technology will help improve autocorrect suggestions and Lookup Hints in Notes.

Availability
The developer preview of macOS Sierra is available to Apple Developer Program members at developer apple starting today. Mac users can sign up for the macOS Sierra Beta Program today and download the software starting in July at beta program The final version will be available for free from the Mac App Store this fall. For more information, visit sierra preview Features are subject to change, and some features may not be available in all regions or all languages.

Siri Finder Search

Siri Drag and Drop

Apple Pay

How to download iOS 10 beta right now

Apple announced the availability of iOS 10 Developer Preview, the latest version of its operating system software for iPads and iPhones.

It's pre-beta, which means that it's a very early form of the software, so there could be bugs and other problems that (hopefully) won't be in the final version.

So, the Developer Preview, and the iOS 10 beta that will follow, won't be for everyone – and we wouldn't recommend downloading it if you rely on your iPhone or iPad every day. You'll be much better off waiting for the final release of iOS 10.

Not ready to upgrade just yet? Check out our collection of guides on how to use iOS 9

If you've got a Mac as well, then you can download macOS Sierra beta right now, which is the latest operating system for desktop Apple devices, and has been designed to work exceptionally well with iOS 10.

At the moment the iOS 10 beta is only available for developers. If you're not a developer then you can join the Apple Developer Program, which includes a signup fee of $100 (about £69, AU$140).

That's quite a steep price to pay if you want to try out the early version of iOS 10. If you don't want to spend any money, then Apple also announced the public beta of iOS 10 will go live in July - and that will be free.

However, if you want to try out the latest features for your iPhone or iPad, then read on to find out how to download iOS 10 beta right now in its Developer Preview form.

How to enroll in the Apple Developer Program

If you're desperate to try out the iOS 10 beta while it's in the Developer Preview and don't mind spending money then you'll need to sign up to the Apple Developer Program.

Head over to the Apple Developer Program enrollment webpage, which will show you everything you need to sign up.

If you're signing up as an individual you'll need an Apple ID, and provide your basic personal information. Click the 'Start Your Enrollment' to begin and then follow the instructions. Remember, you'll need to pay $100 (about £69, AU$140) to enroll.

Downloading the iOS 10 beta

To download the beta version of iOS 10, go to the Apple Beta signup website. Click Sign up, then enter in your Apple ID email address and password, sign in and tap 'Accept'.

Now on your iPhone or iPad go back to the Apple Beta website at beta.apple.com, tap the iOS tab and tap on "Download profile", then "Install". You may need to enter in your passcode and then tap "Restart" to reboot your device.

iOS 10 release date, news and features

Apple's iOS 10 for iPhone and iPad is out in beta today

Apple's iOS 10 update for iPhone and iPad lives up to its milestone software version number, with the first official details announced at WWDC 2016 in San Francisco earlier this month.
It's filled with major changes for your daily phone and tablet routine, but don't worry, all of the new iOS 10 features are for the best - and absolutely free to download.

The Cupertino company laid out all of its mobile operating system specs in an all-too-appropriate ten segments. We break it down even further. Here's what we learned about iOS 10.

iOS 10 release date

Apple is once again planning a staggered iOS 10 release date among app developers, public beta testers and then everyone else who wants to wait for the final version.

Technically, iOS 10 is out right now, launching the same day as WWDC in beta form to developers. It's not ready for average iPhone and iPad users who aren't making apps just yet.
Don't worry, you won't have to wait too long to test out iOS 10 on your own. Apple is planning an iOS 10 public beta in July, and it'll help squash bugs two months before the official release date.
That's good news. Last year's public beta was a success for Apple judging from the smoother sailing of iOS 9, and it continued that streak with new iOS 9.3 features that also went through a three-month beta.
If you decide to wait for the final version of iOS 10, it'll take a while longer due to additional bug testing. A stable version of iOS 10 should launch alongside the new iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus in September.

iOS 10 compatibility

iOS 10 is coming to your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, unless of course you have an age-old phone or tablet that still uses the 30-pin dock connector or is an older iPod touch.

That's where Apple draws the new line in the sand for 2016. Its forthcoming mobile operating system update won't support for iPhone 4S, iPad 2 and iPod touch 5th gen.
It's not a big surprise. In addition to their non-lightning connections, these devices include 512MB of RAM and stuck around for iOS 9 when we thought they'd be axed from that update last year.

iOS 10 raise to wake

Apple redesigned the iPhone and iPad lockscreen, giving us the biggest revision since the first iPhone nine years ago. Slide to unlock is gone and replaced with simple instructions: "Press Home to open."

What's been added is the ability to raise your iPhone to wake it, fixing the all-too-common issue of blowing past lockscreen notifications when you hit the fast TouchID home button.

This is a great solution that we have seen on a select number of Android phones, like the Google Nexus 6P and Nexus 5X, and it almost reminds me of flicking my wrist to light up the Apple Watch.

This is the sleeper hit of iOS 10 that is going to change your daily iPhone routine.

Rich lockscreen notifications

You'll see that notifications are broken up into bubbles now and use 3D Touch to show hidden menu actions - just hard press on a calendar invite alert and you'll be able to accept or decline it.

3D Touch-enabled iOS 10 notifications work even better for Messages. You can immediately respond to messages as soon as you pick up your phone, without ever leaving the lockscreen. It's all done inline.
No more digging around the home screen and layers of app menus to check vital information. If you have a doorbell camera notification, you can see who's at the front door, use the intercom or unlock the door.

This "peeking at apps" capability via the lockscreen isn't limited to Apple's first-party apps. Uber is just one third-party app maker that allows you to hard press on notifications. You'll get live updates on where your driver is on a map - usually headed in the other direction.

Clear all notifications button

What may be the best change to iOS 10 notifications is the ability to clear all of your old notifications with 3D Touch. Swiping them away one by one or dismissing them in groups is a time-consuming mess in iOS 9

Just hard press that little "x" icon within the redesigned (and now dedicated) notifications pulldown menu and tap the "clear all" box that pops up. Tap it once to just dismiss the group of notifications.
It's super easy to clear away expired alerts with iOS 10 and it will please everyone inflicted with phone notification-clearing OCD.

Control Center is decluttered

The swipe-up-from-the-bottom Control Center overlay menu has a brand new look that helps declutters the layout in iOS 10, and it's something Apple users have been asking for.

It once again features four app shortcuts along the bottom (flashlight, stopwatch, calculator and camera app) and moves the fifth Beatle, Night Shift, to a new, bigger spot above the quartet.
That fixes an issue where people said having five app shortcuts in that bottom row, a short-lived idea that came about when Night Shift debuted in iOS 9.3, made the buttons a tad too small.

Bigger AirPlay and AirDrop buttons appear above Night Shift, too, while toggles for Airplane mode, WiFi, Bluetooth, Do Not Disturb and Orientation lock are unchanged (except for their new blue hue when on).
But what happened to the music controls? Slide right on the Control Center, and there's a dedicated pane for the volume, playback and device output controls, and even music album cover art.

Lockscreen camera and 'widgets'

It's easier than ever to flip on the camera with iOS 10 because sliding the lockscreen right (when Control Center isn't open) automatically transitions to the camera app.

This is a camera app shortcut we've seen on several Android phones and it beats reaching for the bottom right corner, where the camera shortcut remains in iOS 9. You use the camera app everyday, why not make it easier to access?
What happens when you swipe to the left on the lockscreen? Glad you asked a second question. It reveals a new spot for Apple's Today menu "widgets." It's not as customizable as Android widgets, but it's new location a big improvement.

Graphical 3D Touch shortcuts

Within the home screen, 3D Touching app tiles like Activity gives you a more graphical account of your fitness goals. You'll know faster than ever that you have to close those daily activity rings.

ESPN had even richer shortcut information within its 3D Touch menu. It runs scores and there's a button to easily add a widget. It's even more graphical, throwing up a drawn out play-by-play interface and video of in-progress games you're following.
All of this peeking at apps can be done without leaving the home screen, and it means that 3D Touch is becoming a little more relevant in iOS 10.

Talk to Siri normally

Two billion requests a week go through Siri, and it's now going to do "so much more," according to Apple. With that, they announced that iOS 10 will open up Siri to third-party developers.

Now you'll be able to ask Siri things like, "Send a WeChat to Nancy saying I'll be five minutes late.'" It can be said variety of ways and still understood by the now-smarter Siri.
In (very literal) other words, Siri also works just fine if you say it like "Tell Nancy I'll be five minutes late with WeChat," and even "Siri, can you shoot a message on WeChat and say I'll be five minutes late?"
Siri for iOS 10, all of a sudden, is going to be a whole lot less "Sorry..." for miscues. This is thanks to what Apple calls an "intense API," which even functions in this new way in its multiple languages.

Siri third-party apps

Besides WeChat, Siri is ready for other chat apps, like WhatsApps and Slack, and ride hailing services like Uber, Lyft and Didi in China (which Apple invested in recently).

Searching photos through apps like Shutterfly and Pinterest can be done with your voice thanks to Siri, and you can start, pause and stop fitness workouts with MapMyRun, Runtastic and RunKeeper.
Siri can also help you send money to friends with Number26, Square and Alipay, or start a VoIP call to tell your friend why you're not paying them on time via Cisco Spark, Vonage and Skype.

This makes Siri much more useful now that Apple's personal assistant has broken free of pre-loaded apps, and makes driving a tiny bit safer thanks to messaging and VoIP integration for Apple CarPlay.

Siri-influenced QuickType keyboard

Apple's on-screen QuickType keyboard can intelligently tell the difference between what you're saying and what computers usually think you're saying (but not) thanks to more advanced Siri intelligence.

Using deep learning, it's able to understand the wider context of what you're typing, influencing the words in the suggestion bar above the keyboard. It has better context by taking into account the whole sentence, not just spitting out the next guess based on the previous word.