Apple opens up Touch ID to developers

Apple has announced that it is opening up its Touch ID fingerprint sensor to third-party developers. Reportedly years in the making, the all-new Touch ID API is available to registered iOS developers, making it easy to integrate Apple's seamless fingerprint reading functionality into their apps without compromising Touch ID's strong security...

iOS 8 supports third-party keyboards

Yes! I was just talking about this in my Samsung Galaxy S5 vs iPhone 5s post, and it's actually here. As I type this with tears on my keyboard, it's almost hard to believe that Apple has opened up its SDK with the ability to use third party keyboards.

This means that you will be able to use third party keyboards like Swype for faster more sensible input for touch screens...

iOS 8 brings widgets to Notification Center

Moving along with Apple's iOS 8 portion of its WWDC keynote, Craig Federighi just introduced widgets. Like the stock widgets we've seen before, iOS 8's widgets will appear in the Notification Center and offer quick information for apps at a glance...

Apple announces all-new SDK for developers

Apple chief executive Tim Cook was on stage at the WWDC keynote today to announce a brand new SDK, or software development kit, for iOS developers. Cook described the new SDK as the biggest release since the launch of the App Store. It contains several new features for iOS that developers can take advantage of, including 4000 new APIs and an app communication framework called Extensibility… 

iOS 8 Photos app syncs full libraries across all devices, adds new search and editing tools

Apple has updated the Photos app in iOS 8 with some great changes. Most importantly, Photos now sync with iCloud—a feature called iCloud Photo Library—so that users can access all of their photos from all devices at any time. In fact, iCloud can store more photos on the cloud that your physical device can hold, meaning you can get to all of your photos and any time courtesy of the cloud.

Even the edits that you make on your devices go up live to the iCloud Photo Library, and sync with all devices, including the Mac. Apple is working on a new build from the ground up photos solution on the Mac, which will be shipping later next year.

You can even upload videos, and save the original and full resolution versions of both photos and videos. This is all possible via a new tiered pricing plan, which is detailed inside.

Apple announces much improved App Store with app bundles/previews, better search and more

In addition to all the goodies outlined earlier, Apple during the WWDC 2014 keynote running at San Francisco's Moscone West has announced a much announced App Store with the new Explore tab, Trending searches, making search faster with continuously scrolling search, the new Editor's Choice label for highlighted apps, app previews with short videos right inside the App Store, app bundles and more...

Apple introduces Family Sharing in iOS 8

Apple has faced a lot of criticism over the years with regards to parental controls on the App Store, especially because of headlines of children racking up thousands of dollars on in-app purchases.

Aiming to eliminate that problem for good, the company has introduced a new feature in iOS 8 called Family Sharing. Apple already has a similar feature in Home Sharing, but Family Sharing takes this feature to a whole new level… 

Apple unveils new ‘Health’ app for iOS 8

As several reports predicted, Apple is getting into the Healthcare industry with iOS 8 by introducing a new app called 'Health.' Health provides an easy-to-access hub where iPhone owners can store and monitor important fitness and health-related metrics.

As explained by Craig Federighi, this is a huge improvement over the current situation, where this kind of information is spread across multiple apps and services. And of course, Apple also introduced HealthKit for developers, which means 3rd-party integration...

Apple updates Spotlight to be much more intelligent in iOS 8

Like its OS X brethren, Spotlight has been updated in iOS 8 to be more intelligent. As it stands now, Spotlight is pretty bland, dumb and can only search for apps and content stored directly on your device.

In iOS 8, Spotlight can provide live search suggestions for apps, Wikipedia entries, movies, songs from iTunes radio, news and more. It's a much more powerful way to perform smart searches on iOS.

iOS 8 improves messaging on iMessage

Apple has made some welcomed improvements in iOS 8 to the Messages app for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. There are several new features that affect group conversations, sharing your location in a message, an attachment overview, sending multiple photos and videos at once and more. Take a look ahead for a detailed explanation of these and other new iMessage features ahead… 

Apple introduces new QuickType input method in iOS 8

Apple has just announced that the iOS software keyboard is getting a boost in iOS 8 with an all new QuickType keyboard which enables predictive suggestions inside iOS Messages and other apps, in a manner resembling the downloadable Google keyboard and other third-party keyboards available for Android.

QuickType is system wide, it learns how you type to different people and supports Continuity for seamless transition between devices...