Apple's iOS 10 update for iPhone and iPad lives up to its milestone
software version number, with the first official details announced at WWDC 2016 in San Francisco earlier this month.
It's
filled with major changes for your daily phone and tablet routine, but
don't worry, all of the new iOS 10 features are for the best - and
absolutely free to download.
The Cupertino company laid out all
of its mobile operating system specs in an all-too-appropriate ten
segments. We break it down even further. Here's what we learned about
iOS 10.
iOS 10 release date
Apple is once again planning a staggered
iOS 10 release date among app developers, public beta testers and then
everyone else who wants to wait for the final version.
Technically, iOS 10 is out right now, launching the same day as WWDC
in beta form to developers. It's not ready for average iPhone and iPad
users who aren't making apps just yet.
Don't worry, you won't have
to wait too long to test out iOS 10 on your own. Apple is planning an
iOS 10 public beta in July, and it'll help squash bugs two months before
the official release date.
That's good news. Last year's public
beta was a success for Apple judging from the smoother sailing of iOS 9,
and it continued that streak with new iOS 9.3 features that also went
through a three-month beta.
If you decide to wait for the final
version of iOS 10, it'll take a while longer due to additional bug
testing. A stable version of iOS 10 should launch alongside the new iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus in September.
iOS 10 compatibility
iOS 10 is coming to your iPhone, iPad or
iPod touch, unless of course you have an age-old phone or tablet that
still uses the 30-pin dock connector or is an older iPod touch.
That's where Apple draws the new line in the sand for 2016. Its
forthcoming mobile operating system update won't support for iPhone 4S,
iPad 2 and iPod touch 5th gen.
It's not a big surprise. In
addition to their non-lightning connections, these devices include 512MB
of RAM and stuck around for iOS 9 when we thought they'd be axed from
that update last year.
iOS 10 raise to wake
Apple
redesigned the iPhone and iPad lockscreen, giving us the biggest
revision since the first iPhone nine years ago. Slide to unlock is gone
and replaced with simple instructions: "Press Home to
open."
What's been added is the ability to raise your iPhone to wake it,
fixing the all-too-common issue of blowing past lockscreen notifications
when you hit the fast TouchID home button.
This is a great solution that we have seen on a select number of Android phones, like the Google
Nexus 6P and
Nexus 5X, and it almost reminds me of flicking my wrist to light up the
Apple Watch.
This is the sleeper hit of iOS 10 that is going to change your daily iPhone routine.
Rich lockscreen notifications
You'll
see that notifications are broken up into bubbles now and use 3D Touch
to show hidden menu actions - just hard press on a calendar invite alert
and you'll be able to accept or decline it.

3D
Touch-enabled iOS 10 notifications work even better for Messages. You
can immediately respond to messages as soon as you pick up your phone,
without ever leaving the lockscreen. It's all done inline.
No more
digging around the home screen and layers of app menus to check vital
information. If you have a doorbell camera notification, you can see
who's at the front door, use the intercom or unlock the door.

This
"peeking at apps" capability via the lockscreen isn't
limited to Apple's first-party apps. Uber is just one third-party app
maker that allows you to hard press on notifications. You'll get live
updates on where your driver is on a map - usually headed in the other
direction.
Clear all notifications button
What may be the
best change to iOS 10 notifications is the ability to clear all of your
old notifications with 3D Touch. Swiping them away one by one or
dismissing them in groups is a time-consuming mess in
iOS 9.

Just
hard press that little "x" icon within the redesigned
(and now dedicated) notifications pulldown menu and tap the
"clear all" box that pops up. Tap it once to just
dismiss the group of notifications.
It's super easy to clear away
expired alerts with iOS 10 and it will please everyone inflicted with
phone notification-clearing OCD.
Control Center is decluttered
The
swipe-up-from-the-bottom Control Center overlay menu has a brand new
look that helps declutters the layout in iOS 10, and it's something
Apple users have been asking for.

It
once again features four app shortcuts along the bottom (flashlight,
stopwatch, calculator and camera app) and moves the fifth Beatle,
Night Shift, to a new, bigger spot above the quartet.
That
fixes an issue where people said having five app shortcuts in that
bottom row, a short-lived idea that came about when Night Shift debuted
in
iOS 9.3, made the buttons a tad too small.

Bigger
AirPlay and AirDrop buttons appear above Night Shift, too, while
toggles for Airplane mode, WiFi, Bluetooth, Do Not Disturb and
Orientation lock are unchanged (except for their new blue hue when on).
But
what happened to the music controls? Slide right on the Control Center,
and there's a dedicated pane for the volume, playback and device output
controls, and even music album cover art.
Lockscreen camera and 'widgets'
It's
easier than ever to flip on the camera with iOS 10 because sliding the
lockscreen right (when Control Center isn't open) automatically
transitions to the camera app.

This
is a camera app shortcut we've seen on several Android phones and it
beats reaching for the bottom right corner, where the camera shortcut
remains in iOS 9. You use the camera app everyday, why not make it
easier to access?
What happens when you swipe to the left on the
lockscreen? Glad you asked a second question. It reveals a new spot for
Apple's Today menu "widgets." It's not as customizable
as Android widgets, but it's new location a big improvement.
Graphical 3D Touch shortcuts
Within
the home screen, 3D Touching app tiles like Activity gives you a more
graphical account of your fitness goals. You'll know faster than ever
that you have to close those daily activity rings.

ESPN
had even richer shortcut information within its 3D Touch menu. It runs
scores and there's a button to easily add a widget. It's even more
graphical, throwing up a drawn out play-by-play interface and video of
in-progress games you're following.
All of this peeking at apps
can be done without leaving the home screen, and it means that 3D Touch
is becoming a little more relevant in iOS 10.
Talk to Siri normally
Two
billion requests a week go through Siri, and it's now going to do
"so much more," according to Apple. With that, they
announced that iOS 10 will open up Siri to third-party developers.

Now
you'll be able to ask Siri things like, "Send a WeChat to
Nancy saying I'll be five minutes late.'" It can be said
variety of ways and still understood by the now-smarter Siri.
In
(very literal) other words, Siri also works just fine if you say it like
"Tell Nancy I'll be five minutes late with WeChat,"
and even "Siri, can you shoot a message on WeChat and say I'll
be five minutes late?"
Siri for iOS 10, all of a sudden,
is going to be a whole lot less "Sorry..." for
miscues. This is thanks to what Apple calls an "intense
API," which even functions in this new way in its multiple
languages.
Siri third-party apps
Besides WeChat, Siri is
ready for other chat apps, like WhatsApps and Slack, and ride hailing
services like Uber, Lyft and Didi in China (which Apple invested in
recently).

Searching
photos through apps like Shutterfly and Pinterest can be done with your
voice thanks to Siri, and you can start, pause and stop fitness
workouts with MapMyRun, Runtastic and RunKeeper.
Siri can also
help you send money to friends with Number26, Square and Alipay, or
start a VoIP call to tell your friend why you're not paying them on time
via Cisco Spark, Vonage and Skype.

This
makes Siri much more useful now that Apple's personal assistant has
broken free of pre-loaded apps, and makes driving a tiny bit safer
thanks to messaging and VoIP integration for
Apple CarPlay.
Siri-influenced QuickType keyboard
Apple's
on-screen QuickType keyboard can intelligently tell the difference
between what you're saying and what computers usually think you're
saying (but not) thanks to more advanced Siri intelligence.

Using
deep learning, it's able to understand the wider context of what you're
typing, influencing the words in the suggestion bar above the keyboard.
It has better context by taking into account the whole sentence, not
just spitting out the next guess based on the previous word.
QuickType
is also adding a handy button for your current location whenever
someone asks "Where are you?" or requests someone
else's contact information. That Contacts app will go further unused.

Locally,
Siri uses deep learning to analyze a conversation and is able to pick
up on you and a friend talking about food, a proposed time and resturant
address, and then pre-fill in Calendar event when you go to add it to
the Calendar app. "Look at that, it's already halfway filled
in," you'll say.
Rounding out the QuickType iOS 10
features is the ability to paste a recent address you looked up without
having to copy it to the clipboard, do the same for movies and
restaurants you've searched and adjust to your multilingual typing.
It's Apple new "easy button" for iOS 10, and it's all about shortcuts to everyday activities.
Photos with advanced computer vision

iOS
10 is going to make use of deep learning so that it'll be easier to
organize photos with what it calls "advanced computer
vision." This is how Apple plans to rival Google Photos.
Again,
stressing that it's done locally, Apple touts the Photos app's ability
to create albums based on face recognition, and can do the same for
object and scene recognition thanks to 11 billion computations. It also
serves up a way to see photos overlaid on a map based on where they were
taken.
Apple plans to take Photos to the next level with
Memories, which are supposed to remind you of events in life by
clustering together photos into trips, people and topics. It seems to
have a nice magazine-style interface I can get behind.
iOS 10
will also let you assemble your captured photos and videos of a
particular memory with a special movie that's cut automatically. It's
customizable, with a number of mood choices and three length options,
just in case you don't want to fine tune it yourself.
Despite the AI-infused deep search and facial recognition capabilities, Apple promises privacy protection.
Apple Maps is way better
iOS
10 fixes my biggest complaint about Apple Maps - its inability to
scroll ahead on a route. Right now, Maps annoyingly springs you back to
your current location whenever you try to look anywhere else.
You'll
be free to pan and zoom around the map with the new Apple Maps update
and the navigation software is also dynamically zooming in and out of
long stretches and complex interchanges.

Maps
for iOS 10 is adding traffic on route to better compete with Google
Maps and expanding its Nearby functionality with more points of interest
that you can find along your route.
Vehicles that supports Apple
CarPlay not only get suggested alternate routes based on traffic
conditions, Maps' turn-by-turn directions can pop up on the instrument
(if they have a screen next to the odometer).
Apple is weaving iOS
10 information from other apps into Maps, like if it knows you go to
work at a certain time, it'll make a suggestion for the route, or make
one based on a calendar event address.
That's just the start.
It's also opening up Maps to third-party developers, so Uber riders can
call, follow and pay for their ride without ever leaving Apple's app.
It's getting there.
Apple Music
Apple Music with iOS 10 is
being redesigned for its 15 million paid subscribers, and it
"allows the music to be the hero," according to Apple.
It lets the cover art stand out.

It
looks to be a much cleaner design, highlighting cover art properly and
suggesting music that you'll like in a more logical fashion. But it's
not going to excite you for iOS 10 if you're not a paid subscriber.
The
Apple Music refresh does add some more depth by way of lyrics (though
it doesn't seem to follow along with the words like other apps do, like
SoundHound do).
The For You tab is does a better job at curating
your personal playlists and it absorbs the Connect tab that we
previously heard was getting a diminished role. Likewise, the 'New' tab
has become 'Browse.'
Apple News
Apple
News is reaching 60 million people every month with 2,000 publications
and it's in for a redesign, too. The For You tab now breaks news into
personalized topics and hand-picked stories by editors.
News for
iOS 10 will also introduce subscriptions so that you can see every issue
of National Geographic or read the Wall Street Journal, periodicals
usually behind a paywall.
Breaking news notifications have been added to this pre-loaded app so that big stories appear right on the iOS 10 lockscreen.
Home app
Apple's
developer-focused HomeKit is coming to end-users with iOS 10 (and also
Apple Watch), and the new app appears right on the homescreen
unsurprisingly called "Home."

It'll
tie all of your home-based IoT gadgets together into a simple interface
and include Scenes to change the mood of rooms in a pinch, no matter
who makes your home's previously fragmented smart tech.
Siri acts
as a shortcut to interact with your home accessories, and Control
Center does too. Two swipes to the right in the Control Center menu
brings up a grid of home accessory toggles.

Also
from the lockscreen, you can peek at home notifications, say, if you
get a doorbell alert. Peek into the notification by hard pressing on the
bubble and a video doorbell like Ring will give you a live camera view.
Phone
Hate
listening to voicemails? Never actually check them? Me too. That's why
I'm excited that the rumored voicemail transcription idea made it into
iOS 10.

It'll
let you know what a voicemail message says via more convenient text
right within the visual voicemail. Apple is also partnering with Tencent
in China to alert iPhone owners there that an incoming call might be
SPAM.

VoIP
is no longer going to take a backseat, as a WhatsApp call, for example,
can be answered right from the lockscreen, just like a normal incoming
call. They'll also be part of your recent and favorites lists.
Messages
Messages
is introducing rich links within a conversation and a live camera view
as soon as you press the camera button. Like emoji's? You're going to
love iOS 10.

Apple
is making bigger emojis that are now three times as large as before,
and the keyboard can now identify words you can easily replace with
emojis via a single tap on each word.
There'll be bubble effects
so you can "say it loud" with a bursting bunch of
text, or say something "gently" with slow-to-exist
texts.

You
can also use "Invisible Ink" that requires the
message receiver to slide their finger over a text or photo. It'll
either be a nice surprise, or horrific shock to your friends.
Apple
showed off an Invisible Ink demo in which a blurry photo turned out to
be a bride-to-be's hand with a wedding ring on it. I'm pretty sure there
are going to be a lot of appendages sent using Invisible Ink.

You
can react to individual messages with expression-driven Tapbacks
(reminds me of Facebook reactions) and write out meaningful messages
with handwritten "digital ink."

With
club disco lights, big emoji and full-screen fireworks for iOS 10,
Messages is one crazy app. But it'll get even more insane in the future
because Apple is opening up Messages to developers with an SDK.

So
far, Apple has shown off integration for licensed Disney stickers, food
ordering services and bitmoji-like expressions provided by JibJab.
More to come from iOS 10
Rounding
up iOS 10, Apple quickly mentioned Notes with multiple users editing a
document, the ability to edit Live Photos without annoyingly relegating
them to stills and a new conversation view for Mail.
On the iPad,
Split View support for two Safari windows has been added, finally
letting you open up dual Safari windows at once on your tablet, you
multitasker, you.
Apple said that despite the deep learning
capabilities of iOS 10, it'll keep that to the silicon on your device
and not invade your privacy. It's been working on something called
differential privacy.
We'll have more on iOS 10, as the developer
beta prepares us for the iOS 10 public beta. When that launches in July,
we'll certainly discover additional features to talk about