Are you ready for iOS 12?

We’ve been working more and more with clients on their mobile strategies, from proof of concept Apps to Chat interfaces to fully fledged medically approved devices. As part of our services we need to keep on top of developments in the mobile space and the release
Apple is due to release iOS 12 mid Sept and along with it their 2018 devices (iPhone XS Max?). With all new OS releases there are new features to support and device releases often add new requirements for app layouts or additional functionality.
Recently Apple has done a good job in prepping developers beforehand of upcoming changes during their June WWDC events, but there’s always surprises when new hardware is announced (ie. iPad, or iPhone X’s notch and corners). These can leave developers scrambling, with the week after the announcement where all is revealed and the actual release being the busiest period.

iOS 12 is due to support all devices that can run iOS 11 so that goes back to the iPhone 5S. It’s major consumer facing message is of speed and stability so expect most people to upgrade to this release. You won’t hear many stories of the deliberate slow-down of old devices that often appear after an iOS update, many older devices will feel snappier which will speed up adoption.
All of Apple’s new phones are due to feature a notch and rounded corners so those Apps that have been holding out updating their interface will need to do so soon. All new App updates must already support the new interface so that should be number one priority for any update. Any apps that fail to get updated will soon drop off user’s devices altogether. Also expect new large screen sizes for iPad devices, so if you still have any hard-coded resolution variables in your code, now is definately the time to remove them.
What’s New?
I won’t go into the features for consumers (Memoji, Group FaceTime, Screen Time, Notifications, Dark Mode) but will outline what I feel are the relevant announcements for developers.
Siri Shortcuts

A stand-out feature for iOS devices going forward is the ability to automate common tasks and link them to Siri commands. These aren’t as full featured as they could be, but an App to keep track of regular user actions and these surface up to the system to automate or repeat could be game changing for device interaction. From an App point of view you need to surface user actions using NSUserActivity, which you should be doing already, it’s been available for 2 years!
If it works as expected when released in the autumn, it will mean users will truely have a ‘personal’ assistant, where actions and commands they use won’t have any meaning on another users device. It won’t have any profound impact on individual app’s use, but be sure that apps that don’t support this interaction model will be left behind for those that do.
Notifications
Notifications are due for a big overhaul, so if your app is reliant on Notifications be sure to look at adopting to the new features and philosphies. Users will find it easier to mute or un-subscribe from notifications which could affect certain apps. Major features include interactions with custom Notification Views and grouped notifications. Look at both your APNS server and app side for fully supporting the new functionality.
Machine Learning
Machine Learning is a main focus area for Apple and this year they didn’t disappoint with new features and performance improvements in their ML toolkits. Firstly they announced CreateML that allows a simple interface for creating and refining models locally that can then be used immediately on a real device. This includes leveraging existing on device models for object recognition, and quantisation so your custom model may only be a few mb, rather than 100mb. Support was enhanced for ML on macOS, including utilisation of external GPUs. Other features include text detection, natural language extraction including sentiment analysis and better integration of Turi Create (open source model creation, somewhere in-between Create ML and TensorFlow)

Business Chat
Previously a US only feature, it’s now possible to utilise Apple’s iMessage platform to link up businesses with customers (through a CSP platform such as LivePerson). Sitting in between a chat-bot and a service agent the deep integration with the system and ability to link to instant payments and authorisation make this an interesting solution for businesses, with Apple actively seeking partners.
Privacy and Device Usage
These are big themes in this years event, covering everything from monitoring and limiting app usage to limiting web tracking in Safari. iOS has a whole suite of tools to limit usage on the device, reworked reminders to ensure that only the messages you want will reach you. Other improvements include inbuilt password management with automatic strong passwords (make sure your login forms support Safari’s password input and generation). In addition there are enhanced privacy protections to macOS apps to access areas like contacts and shared cookies.
Safari will now prompt when tracking cookies are following you around the web. This means developers will have to be careful what sharing modules and JS they include on their sites, otherwise users are going to face a barrage of tracking requests whenever someone visits their site.
Safari updates: https://developer.apple.com/safari/whats-new/
AR
This was the headline feature of this years keynote, announcements included shared and persistent AR experiences, object recognition, improved performance and rendering and better face recognition (along with tongue recognition 😛) There’s lots of potential here beyond the Lego game demo from the keynote, especially when you combine a realtime video feed with object recognition and ML, text recognition or Barcode/QR scanning.
They’ve also integrated AR throughout the system, so both apps and websites can display 3D and AR experiences without having to worry themselves with the implementation details.
Design
For designers there wasn’t a lot announced during the WWDC Keynote but there are always plenty of interesting sessions throughout the week. The biggest change was perhaps the introduction of a Dark Mode for MacOS that’s coming in the Autumn. There’s also hints of a dark mode in the iOS 12 so perhaps that will be announced with the new devices. The Human Interface Guidelines documentation has already been updated with Dark Mode information https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/macos/visual-design/dark-mode/. They are well worth a look if you haven’t seen them as they cover everything from icon design to typography on all Apple platforms as well as provide template files for Sketch and Photoshop for all devices. The coveted Apple Design Awards for 2018 have been announced https://developer.apple.com/design/awards/. These showcase best in class designs on the Mac, iPhone and iPad platforms; a great source of inspiration.
Other Titbits
One of the biggest announcements was something that isn’t going to be released until 2019. Apple are combining the UI frameworks used for developing iOS Apps into macOS, so that an iOS App can be ported to macOS easily. They’ve been using these tools internally and some of Apples apps (Stocks, News) are built using this technology.
Apple maps JS framework was released. Rumoured to be cheaper and more performant than the Google equivalent, might be worth a look: https://developer.apple.com/maps/mapkitjs/
Mojave will be the last OS to support 32bit Apps, all Apps will be required to be 64bit from next Autumns release.
OpenGL and OpenCL support is being deprecated from future Macs. Apple are pushing forward with their Metal support rather than adapting to a open source alternative.
What’s Next
The summer is a good time to take a step back from day-to-day development and take a look at your App from a high level and see what user facing and system features that will improve the experience of using your App.
It’s still not too late to do this, but if you’ve not given your app much love recently there a few easy wins that will improve it immensely. Take a look at https://developer.apple.com/ios/ and see what’s appropriate for your app.
Watch the announcement live https://www.apple.com/au/apple-events/ and remind yourself of what’s new in the WWDC videos https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc2018/
We’ve been exploring all these features at Servian, so if you want to find out more then find us on our dedicated Mobile Page.

