Everything You Need to Know About Apple's New iOS 15!

 Apple's WWDC held on the 21st of June witnessed the announcement of iOS 15, which brings about a whole myriad of new features and improvements. The WWDC is held every year by Apple, and just like last year, it was fully virtual this year as well. In addition to iOS 15, Apple announced MacOS, WatchOS, and iPadOS.

This year Apple added a lot of unique and practical features to its software update. Let's have a look at them!

Facetime

Facetime got some major updates. With COVID-19 and the huge impact it had on the world around us, video calls have become an important part of everyone's life. Keeping this in mind, Apple announced that Facetime will now have SharePlay. This new feature will allow you to stay on the Facetime call and lets you share your screen with the person you're on the call with.

You can now watch movies, listen to music, and watch tv shows, together with the person you're calling. Apple has taken screen sharing to a new level with SharePlay. 

Apple has also added Spatial audio to Facetime. This would enhance the audio experience and will make it sound like the audio is coming from the direction they're speaking from. This feature will also help in the reduction of background noise.

 Facetime now has a new grid view that looks very well organized and neat for group video calls. Previously. Facetime would enlarge the video of the person who is speaking and would shrink the others.

Last but not the least, you can now send links to your Facetime session just like you can for Zoom meetings. Also, Facetime calls are still end-to-end encrypted by Apple. 

Messages

Messages app now has a feature called "Shared with You". This feature will contain all the links, images, and content in a separate section in each app. Pictures, Web Links, Podcast Links, and News articles sent on the Messages app will also appear in the designated app.

In addition to that, multiple pictures sent at the same time through this app will appear in a group format similar to what we see on Whatsapp. 

Notifications

Notifications are now redesigned with more rounded corners and can now be put into a summary. This feature allows for the most important notifications to be displayed first followed by the least important ones. Notifications are also bigger and display a more prominent picture of the app.

Maps

The Maps app now has more detail than ever. Apple enhanced the detail of the app and it can now detect roads, neighborhoods, trees, and buildings all with so much more detail. It puts much more detail on 3D landmarks and has a new dark mode. It also has a new driving feature that now shows turn lanes, crosswalks, and bike lanes.

One of my favorite features is it has immersive walking instructions where you can use augmented reality to get step-by-step directions. At the event, they showed an example of getting out of the subway station and not knowing where to go. Now you can just take a short AR “video” of your surroundings and it will show detailed instructions on where to go. It can also show public transit stations and transit times.