
Apple Introduces iOS 8 - J-H
http://www.apple.com/ios/ios8/
======
untog
Call/SMS integration is great. It's worth noting that Google had absolutely
everything they needed to do this _years ago_ , and just... didn't. Hangouts
is still inferior to iMessage today. It's a real shame.

Edit: this extensibility stuff might be enough to tempt me back to Apple from
Android, at last. Third party keyboards, too (I've gotten quite attached to
the Android swiping stuff). Honestly, at this point, I'm not sure what keeps
me on Android. I confidently predict that iOS Active Notification usage will
be far higher than on Android, even though Android has had it for years.

~~~
georgemcbay
"It's worth noting that Google had absolutely everything they needed to do
this years ago, and just... didn't."

This is so true and so sad. Google Voice, why are you so almost great and so
neglected?

I have to say though that my disappointment in Google Voice is quickly being
matched by my disappointment in Google Maps which actually was great but
continually gets less so with each release.

~~~
bane
I would have agreed with you except I'm actually liking the very latest bump.
Telling me which lanes to get into to make an exit? Brilliant. I think it's
also taking traffic into account now.

~~~
greggman
Telling you which lane to get in is like a 12 year old feature of car
navigation systems isn't it? I certainly remember the car navigation systems
in rental cars from 12 years ago having that feature.

Same with taking traffic into account, especially in Japanese systems which
have done that since like 2004.

If Google finally got around to adding those features that's great but hardly
worthy of "brilliant" praise for something that's been around for years.

~~~
_pmf_
> If Google finally got around to adding those features that's great but
> hardly worthy of "brilliant" praise for something that's been around for
> years.

We only do that if it's Apple, right?

------
sz4kerto
There are two big things here:

Health: it's stepping on the toes of many partners, but might be
groundbreaking. It's extremely hard to crack healtcare, it's very closed,
defensive system of people and bureaucracy, Apple might just have the power to
do it.

Extensibility: intents are basically _the_ reason Android can work so much
better in many cases than iOS. I hope MS will bring it to WP very soon.

~~~
daigoba66
Per Microsoft: "App contracts and extensions" have existed since day one:
[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/windows/apps/hh46490...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/windows/apps/hh464906.aspx)

Per Healthcare: that is a really exciting new feature and there is a LOT of
potential here. But I wonder how successful it can actually be in the grand
scheme of things. I.e. not everyone can have or wants an iPhone.

Edit, expanding a bit:

On the flip side, I am huge advocate for personal health records
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_health_record](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_health_record)),
but no one really knows about them and no really uses them because they don't
work with your doctor. I don't think Apple has even remotely come close to
solving the overall problem of integration and usefulness, but maybe it will
get more people interested and thinking about the concept of a personal health
record.

~~~
threeseed
Expect health devices to be the new hot space for the next few years.

Yes Apple will have an iWatch but they would be more than happy having
hundreds of dirt cheap equivalents that integrate seamlessly with the iPhone.

~~~
nextweek2
Really? It's my understanding that those with the least amount of money have
the greatest need for healthcare. How is Apple with its premium product going
to help those that cannot afford their products?

A cheap Android device could be used to help monitor the health of an elderly
relative, however do you really perceive people leaving the latest iPhone with
their dementia stricken parent?

Are expectant mothers going to be happy with having wireless transmissions
constantly next to their unborn child (regardless of safety records)?

Are nurses going to have sterilised iPads for for the ward, where fluids are
abound?

Health monitors haven't taken off because people do not care enough to want
constant monitoring.

------
eertami
I don't have an iPhone, but I just can't understand why the keyboard cannot be
lowercase when you're writing in lowercase. I just don't understand the
motivation.

~~~
omnibrain
And I don't understand why they can't cram the punctation marks (at least full
stop and comma) on it. And I have an iPhone...

~~~
Cenk
Typing two spaces turns into a full stop and a space.

~~~
joezydeco
I think you and I are the only two people left on the planet putting two
spaces after a full stop/period.

~~~
danoc
It removes the first space and adds a period instead.

------
dpcan
Still no user accounts on iPad. The only thing I want, and 8 versions in, it's
still not there. Why I can't create a login for my kids on my iPad that hides
my mail, calendar, certain games, etc? I don't understand why this isn't
possible.

~~~
wan23
They announced new family features today that imply that they think each
family member should have his/her own device.

~~~
dpcan
Like I'm going to get my 5 year old an iPad. Not happening.

I let him use mine, and when he logs in, I want him to see a few educational
apps... and that's it.

When we're at functions, we see parents let their kids use their iPads all the
time, and they are always checking in to see if they've opened their email, or
certain games, etc.

Maybe just a "Kids" login. It has NOTHING but a few apps of choice show up.
Doesn't have to be a full user-account system, just a pseudo login that hides
almost everything.

~~~
sentenza
Oh man, I wish more services had a kids login/kids button. Watching videos
with my daughter really messes up my youtube recommendations.

YT: "What do you want to watch? Some blood-drinking metal band from eastern
Europe? Some fine ladies playing beach volleyball? Richard Hammond racing ice-
cream trucks on fire? Or Bob the Builder?"

------
jwcrux
I'm personally excited about the possibility of creating an "Emergency Card"
([http://www.apple.com/ios/ios8/health/](http://www.apple.com/ios/ios8/health/))
that's accessible from the lock screen.

Currently, I use a screen-shotted contact screen as my wallpaper for my ICE
contact - just in case the worst were to happen. This will let me put more
information, and might even let me have a wallpaper again!

~~~
cheeseprocedure
Wouldn't it be more sensible to just carry that information in hard copy?

If you're hit by a car and your phone is smashed...

~~~
unphasable
Why not both?

------
RivieraKid
"Huge for developers. Massive for everyone else."

"Completely new. Completely Mac."

I find meaningless slogans like these really disgusting and annoying. And it's
not just Apple, every second startup does this.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
The fact that it is so widely used should tell you that it is effective.

Here is a small primer on the psychology of slogans:
[http://www.adslogans.co.uk/ww/prvwis11.html](http://www.adslogans.co.uk/ww/prvwis11.html)

~~~
dfc
Did you really link to material on an ad company's website in order to provide
evidence that advertisements are effective? Would you expect anything other
than "ads are useful and effective" from an ad company?

More importantly when OP said the slogans were annoying/disgusting, it was a
statement of OP's personal opinion. OP never said in general the public finds
these slogans disgusting/annoying.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
An ad hominem if I have ever seen one! To answer your question though, yes as
it gives a simple, researched and concise explanation as to why these are
useful and might make the commenter think that they aren't as "meaningless" as
they seem.

~~~
dfc
I am not sure why you interpreted my comment as an ad hominem but I sincerely
apologize for offending you, that was not my intention.

------
slipshod
Totally on a tangent here, but I find myself disappointed, again.

I'm a long time hobbyist programmer, got my start back in the days of Apple
IIe, got my first Mac in 1984...and I'm still not switching back to iPhone
until I can write my own software and run it on my own phone without paying
Apple for the privilege.

I'm waiting for two simple words: "Unknown sources". Guess I have to wait some
more. Not sure how low Apple's market share will have to go before they start
allowing it.

Can't say I love programming for Android, Java just doesn't feel right to me,
but I'm sticking with it as long as I can write my own software, run it on my
phone or tablet, share it with others, even sell it without Google's
permission.

~~~
Terretta
I think you missed that the App Store is an iPhone afterthought -- the
original, still supported, intent was to support HTML5 apps installed to your
home screen.

You can write your own software, run it on any iOS device, share it with
others, even sell it without anyone's permission.

Here is a PacMan style game, for example:

[http://mrgan.tumblr.com/post/257187093/pie-
guy](http://mrgan.tumblr.com/post/257187093/pie-guy)

If that's not "hobbyist" friendly, I don't know what is.

~~~
mikeash
It's an awful way to program. You don't get a choice of languages. There's no
debugger. There isn't even an easily accessible console log to print to. It's
like trying to assemble a watch, in the dark, while wearing mittens. You can
do it, but it's not terribly fun.

There's a reason that there was a massive developer outcry at the "sweet
solution" of HTML5 apps, causing Apple to release a native SDK instead.

~~~
simscitizen
You can actually attach desktop Safari's Web Inspector to both Mobile Safari
and webviews running on a remote iPhone and get debugging, console logging,
etc. The native stuff still has much better tooling, but the situation with
webviews isn't as dire as you imagine.

~~~
mikeash
Oh, that's nice! Looks like it's new with iOS 6. So, it _was_ awful for a long
time, but that is indeed a substantial improvement.

------
dang
We changed the url for this story from
[http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/02/apple-introduces-
ios-8](http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/02/apple-introduces-ios-8). If we pick
the wrong url, happy to change it again, so let us know. The goal is to have
one discussion about each significant announcement, and have the best url for
each.

~~~
jrochkind1
I like the techcrunch url better, thanks for including it in the comment at
least.

A third-party editorial review is much more useful to me than a marketting
brochure.

------
Osmium
So so happy to see the SceneKit API make it to iOS. Even though 'minor'
compared to some of the other announcements, it was the number one thing I was
looking for in today's keynote, and it was nice to see it featured. Can't wait
to start using it.

~~~
ja27
That's the most useful thing I saw for my current development.

The integration, widgets, etc. will open up a lot of new possibilities too.

I'm not too excited about Swift but it looks like it could speed up the code,
compile, load, test cycle.

------
moyaRD
Impress by All the announcements for developer in the WWDC. But taking the
perspective of a enduser, there are key features i was hopping to get in iOS 8
that i didn't:

-Spotlight Integration For third Party Apps.

-Multi-User Support Or Guest Mode

-iMessage For Android

-App Trials

-Fixing The Music App ( Artis-Album View is broken)

-Third Party Default Apps

~~~
culturestate
Can you expand a bit on what you mean by "third-party default apps?" I'm not
sure I know any users who are particularly vexed that Apple doesn't allow
carriers to load up their devices with crapware.

~~~
anonymfus
Probably it was about ability of third party apps to register itself as
default handlers of protocols, mime types and file extensions.

------
jevinskie
Wow, real dynamic linking. Xcode even let me do so when targeting 7.1. Does
anyone know if you will be able to submit apps to the AppStore that use
dynamic frameworks while still deploying to < iOS 8?

------
the_watcher
HealthKit and HomeKit are both really exciting (probably going to look at
smartlocks now in particular). However, I'm easily most excited about being
able to leave a group text.

------
J-H
The new texting suggestions in QuickType are awesome (if it works as
suggested).

~~~
27182818284
Swiftkey already learns quite well. For example, I often type "Hey what's
going on?" and it has now learned that if I type "Hey" it should suggest
"what's" and so on, so in 4 taps I have the whole sentence.

What it doesn't have, is the context-aware switching. That is something really
neat about the new keyboard. Switching context from a meeting being
"postponed" to "boring" is great.

~~~
maaaats
And the keyboard on Windows Phone is also really great, especially in WP8.1.
So Apple needed to improve the keyboard, they were already far behind the
competition.

------
sigzero
You can finally leave group MMS! That is awesome.

~~~
RandallBrown
Can you leave group MMS or just group iMessages?

~~~
keehun
I think all those features mentioned like attachments and sharing location and
leaving/adding people to a conversation is a strictly-iMessage featureset. iOS
Messages app doesn't even work well with Android phones in group texts. They
way they package up the text is totally different.

------
jordan0day
The family sharing looks like a great idea that is way overdue. Hopefully it
works as easily as the marketing material indicates.

------
samirmenon
This was interesting:

"Touch ID- For the first time, you’ll have the option of using Touch ID to
sign in to third-party apps — there’s no need to enter a password. Your
fingerprint data is protected and is never accessed by iOS or other apps."

Will this be used significantly by developers?

~~~
Cthulhu_
It depends. For secure applications? I doubt it; fingerprints is
identification, not authorization. Bank apps and the like won't consider it
secure enough.

------
bitsoda
Apple's iOS support for older products has been stellar, though I'm betting
iOS 8 will be the last update the iPad mini, iPad 2, and iPhone 4S receive --
they will have had a good run of four years (except for mini) by the time iOS
9 is released.

------
nachteilig
It wasn't made clear in the keynote and the page doesn't mention it--I hope
this includes sharing contacts with "Family Sharing". That'll be huge for
helping my older family members keep a coherent address book.

------
gnopgnip
The do not disturb sounds great. Does this mean the recipient or the sender
sets it?

~~~
ciniglio
Recipient I think

------
FPSDavid
I have to say, I'm pretty impressed with the amount of stuff they've packed
into iOS 8. Looks like it'll be more than enough to easily rip me away from
jailbroken iOS 7.

------
yalogin
The extensions for apps look very promising. I don't think Android intents
provide this kind of deep integration between apps. But I would wait for some
one to confirm that part.

~~~
etherealG
i can confirm that intents are this deeply integrated in android. more so
because they are custom, any app can fire or register an intent, so they don't
need to be something baked into the OS from the start.

i do like the ideas for extensions apple presented, but they all seem to
specific. the android intents i use day to day are way past this.

------
Jordan15
Sounds minor, but I would have loved to have been able to change the SMS
screen so I could have a black background instead of a white one. Is it that
hard to do?

~~~
scrumper
I set up the accessibility feature called Invert Colors and assign it to a
triple tap on the home button. That works great for things like Mail and
Messages, especially first thing in the morning when my eyes are tired and I
don't want my retinas seared by a crisp white screen.

------
MasterScrat
Mobile Safari now has WebGL enabled by default. How the hell isn't that bigger
news?!

Look eg here to get an idea of what it means for webapp:
[http://www.photonstorm.com/html5/a-first-look-at-what-
ios8-m...](http://www.photonstorm.com/html5/a-first-look-at-what-ios8-means-
for-phaser-and-pixi-js-hint-bunnies-lots-of-them)

------
ZanyProgrammer
I was really hoping for split screen multitasking (which Windows 8 on tablets
does a good job of). I heard it was possible, but was having problems getting
it out the door in time. I _really_ hope it comes out in the final version of
iOS 8, because that's the one thing that would tempt be to get a Surface over
the next iteration of the iPad.

~~~
pandatigox
I think there's a jailbreak thing for that

~~~
mikeash
While jailbreak hacks are really cool, you can't really base any long-term
decisions (like hardware purchases) around them, because jailbreaks are so
unpredictable. It's a crapshoot as to whether any given OS version will have a
jailbreak, and who knows how long it will take. Even if you wait for the
jailbreak to be released, there's no real guarantee you can _keep_ it. The
next OS release will probably break it, and even if you refrain from
upgrading, it's likely that you'll eventually be forced to upgrade due to a
hardware failure, OS corruption, inadvertent button press, massive widespread
security hole, etc. And good ol' Apple doesn't let you install older OSes
after new versions come out, even on hardware that supports them.

------
y14
The mac integration for calls is great.

~~~
will_work4tears
It does seem to have promise. I didn't catch all of the details, was there a
demo? Was it able to say, switch a call over to your mac with the ability to
do something like FaceTime?

~~~
k-mcgrady
They did a demo call with Dr. Dre. They didn't showing switching a call
between devices. I did notice a video button on the call on the Mac suggesting
you might be able to switch from audio to video (presumably FaceTime).

------
ksk
I have read through the entire text on that page and I still have not found
the answer to the question "What makes iOS 8 the world’s most advanced mobile
operating system?".

------
samuelb
Download iOS 8 for every device. (I'm downloading at 4MB/s)
[http://i.trackr.fr/tutoriel-telecharger-et-installer-
ios-80-...](http://i.trackr.fr/tutoriel-telecharger-et-installer-
ios-80-beta-1-12a4265u-liens-ipsw)

------
nicolime
Share the latest about Swift here! Be part of the biggest page for the
language. Looking for admins now.
[https://www.facebook.com/swiftofficial](https://www.facebook.com/swiftofficial)

------
d1cd
The attention to deal is mind boggling. If you missed the presentation, they
said how many time they spent just trying to design a proper trash can.

------
espitia
Really, what does android have on ios that mainstream user would want?

------
exodust
"Coming This Fall"

Let me get my US-centric conversion calculator out... Fall > Autumn, carry the
one, add 2, and oh look it's "coming this Spring".

------
Istof
I am surprised that we see more then one submission about iOS 8 on this site
(if you take into account the curation)

------
pmelendez
>"Plus, it also knows who you’re talking to, which is crazy. By knowing who
you’re talking to, it will send up predictions that are right for the type of
conversation you have with that particular person."

This is a bit scary... This means that Apple not only knows who I talk to but
now actually maintain an index on how I talk with everyone. 1984 is getting
closer and closer.

~~~
g5pw
Well, they said that data will reside on your device only (no default internet
access for custom keyboards, too).

