Widgets on the iPhone homescreen
Looks great, with a clever API similar to watch complications. Curious to see how much functionality is possible in a widget (or allowed by App Review).
Crazy that pinning widgets to the homescreen is not available in iPadOS. I would be very surprised if this is not coming in a future beta.
Picture-in-picture on iPhone
It’s a shame that YouTube won’t support this.
Cycling directions in Apple Maps
Cycling directions are the only reason I have Google Maps installed on my phone. This new feature in Apple Maps surpasses Google’s implementation with elevation information and annotations on the route options like “less busy” and “fastest”.
App Clips
Apple pitched this primarily as a quick way to collect payments for things like parking meters and scooters, but users can also access an App Clip on the web.
I wonder if App Review would allow an App Clip that serves as a demo of an app. It would be awesome to make an App Clip of the main memorization modes in Learn Your Lines for users to try out from the promo website.
Something to look into.
Handwriting and Scribble in iPadOS
Handwriting recognition in all standard text inputs is something I’ve wanted ever since I got an Apple Pencil, so I’m very excited to try this out. Curious to see if there are new APIs for handwriting recognition.
Airpods automatically switch between devices
I have no faith that this will work reliably, but it would be great if it did.
macOS Big Sur visual redesign
I did not see this coming, but so far I’m enthusiastic about the redesign. Especially as more apps share UI code between iOS and macOS, it is a huge waste of time for developers to make arbitrary visual differences to the UI on the Mac.
There’s a lot to consider about the details of the actual implementation here, so the jury is still out on this one.
Transition to “Apple Silicon”
Very interesting on an academic level, but I’ll be much more excited when they announce new hardware. I’m unreasonably curious about what they will call the new CPUs when the products are launched, since “Apple Silicon” must be a placeholder.
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Overall, this was a very enjoyable set of announcements sparking many ideas for things to incorporate in my existing projects. And while I would have loved to be there in person, the pre-recorded presentation was very entertaining and excellent.
