What you need to know about iOS 10

Feature Image Credit: Apple

iOS 10 is here and has landed with a huge splash! Read on for highlights on what's new:

A Major iMessage Facelift

Years after social media took the communication crown by disrupted instant messaging after the days of AIM yore, instant messaging has reclaimed the number one spot for how people interact with one another. Indeed, many chat apps have risen beyond simply facilitating communication to a whole host of other activities. Asia leads this trend, with Chinese WeChat for example becoming one of the most popular apps for - well, everything in China, including buying goods & services, finding roommates, booking rides and even collecting a salary.

1. A new store for iMessage apps lets developers create and distribute applications for another medium - this time inside of one of the most popular apps on the planet. Apple is also adding sticker support, taking a page directly out of the book of other popular messaging apps, including Facebook and LINE.
2. Apple has unleashed its massive cash pile to build the perfect machine learning algorithm to... Recognize words and allows users to translate them into Emojs in order to get in touch with your inner millennial. Let's just cross our fingers that Apple's iMessage doesn't go all TAY Hitler-bot on us.
3. In the next generation of expression after emojis and GIFs, Apple will now let you animate your texts when sending them through iMessage. Not only that, but you can also load full-screen animations that play when a message is received.
4. Support for Handwriting also makes an appearance in the new iMessage.
5. Hidden ink lets you send a blurred image that can be swiped on to reveal the actual image.
6. Tapback lets you tap on an incoming message and send a reply quickly, such as a thumbs up (reminiscent of a Facebook Messenger feature).
7. Multilingual auto-correct now corrects words in different languages located within the same sentence, for all you smart people out there. Jawohl!

Siri: Now Available for iOS Developers

Apple opens up another treasure trove of possibility by allowing developers to tap into Siri as a channel through which to interact with users and their demands.

Smarter Photos

Your photo albums will now include helpful names for collectively describing the group of photos within them. Photo search will also enable you to search using keywords to return results of individual photos.

There's More to Maps

Apple throws more logs on the Apple Maps fire, hoping to steal more users from Google and (Google-owned) Waze, adding the ability to search for destinations along your route, get route-planning suggestions and book through popular services like OpenTable and Uber in the maps app.

ioT

Apple has jumped on the internet of things trend by creating a "home" app, which connects to and controls all your gadgetry around the house.

Context-Predictive Typing

Apple will expand its contextual (e.g. hyperlinking date-sounding words into the calendar) by periodically make suggestions in the auto correct bar depending on the context of what you're typing, such as free times in your calendar when you type the phrase" available at."

Raise to Wake

This handy, new feature lets you wake (not unlock) your iPhone by picking it up rather than pressing a button to see your notifications, just like turning it to or away from your ear on calls.

Rich Notifications

View photos and videos in notification alerts and also gain the ability to reply to messages from a message notification, 3D touch-style. Speaking of 3D touch, Apple is now adding more support for this technology in its own popular apps such as Weather, Calendar and Stocks, clearly trying to show its developers (besides Instagram) how it's done when it comes to leveraging 3D touch, not unlike Microsoft's justification for releasing the Surface.

Redesigned News App

Self explanatory - go check it out for yourself.

Better Music

Improvements to Apple Music include viewing lyrics while listening to music - perhaps it's finally time to ditch Spotify.

Apple Pay - Expanding to the World Wide Web

With this one single act, Apple may raise the annual growth rate of the e-commerce industry; and cause a massive spike in the number of drunken flight purchases to the Bahamas. But hey, couldn't we all use a little more vacation in our lives?

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