Chatbots
can order flowers for you on Facebook. An intelligent assistant can
schedule a meeting. Now, a new update for your iPhone will be
packed with new automations
to make our lives easier and maybe even reduce stress, and it won't
cost you a cent when it debuts this fall (unless you need to get a new
iPhone).
This week at a
developer conference in California,
Apple announced iOS 10 and focused mostly on how to make your phone
"think differently" by thinking for you and saving time. There are some
brilliant new updates, but here are the ones that impressed me the most
and offer the most automation.
1. Maps will suggest better routes
This one is long overdue. With hints of the
Waze app
(now owned by Google), the Apple Maps app in iOS 10 will route you
around traffic problems automatically. As a bonus, the app also knows
which routes you typically prefer and suggests those. The app can look
through your calendar as well and suggest routes to a meeting place.
2. Automated text responses
If you're texting with someone, new features related to Quick Type in
the Messages app will suggest more than just the correct spelling. If
someone asks "where are you?" the app can drop in a map to your current
location. If someone asks when you can meet, the app will offer a time
on your calendar for when you are available next.
3. Facial recognition for photos
The Photos app will now recognize people in photos and offer to group
them for you. For example, the app can identify all family members from
a trip to Florida. This feature has been on the Mac desktop for some
time, but the great thing about having it on the iPhone (other than the
fact that we now use smartphones as cameras) is that the processing is
all local to the phone. This means it's more secure because the photos
don't need to be processed in the cloud.
4. Your voicemails, transcribed
Even though it's been available in the
Google Voice
app for years, the iPhone can now transcribe your voicemails
automatically and turn them into text. This saves time because you can
scan through written text much faster than you can listen to a message.
5. Your phone knows when you lift it up
There's no angelic choir, but when you pick up your phone, you won't
need to press a button to turn it on and the screen will shine. The
accelerometer knows when you have raised the phone to look at it, so you
can glance at notifications and then set the phone down to dim the
screen again.
6. Siri can order an Uber
The voice assistant on the iPhone (and iPad) known as Siri is now
much smarter. Apple is now allowing the assistant to work with third
party apps. That means you can ask Siri to order an Uber, send a text in
WhatsApp, or maybe order a pizza using the Domino's app.
7. Automated videos of events
Apple touted a new feature called Memories. It grabs video snippets
and photos, identifies the places and people at an event, and stitches
them into a highlight video--say, after a wedding or birthday party. The
feature lets you tweak some settings to make the video longer or
shorter, or to emphasize the action or quieter moments.
8. Smarter News app will automatically group stories
Another new automation has to do with the revamped News app. The
current version tends to be a mishmash of sources and articles with no
correlation, but the new version will create sections for news stories
on the fly and group them so you can quickly scan through, say, only the
latest business stories.
