Apple announces News app and updates to Notes and Maps
At the WWDC keynote on June 8, 2015, Apple announced updates to two of its apps along with an all-new piece of software called News. The updates to Notes and Maps, along with the News app, flesh out the capabilities of the Mac and iOS devices, making them even more capable of helping you live your life and keep up with what’s important to you.
In the updated Notes app, you can put even more information into your entries.
You can add photos, make sketches, and even use the share sheet in Safari to add Web clips to your notes.
An all-new attachments view shows you your photos, map links, Web page links, and more.
Apple’s Maps app has serviced more than 5 billion requests, and has seen 3.5 times higher usage than the leading competing mapping program for iOS.
In the latest update, Apple has focused on providing information about public transit options. The new map shows various public transportation options, as well as allowing you to tap on a station to get information about what routes pass through that stop. The step-by-step directions take into account travel times on public transit, as well as walking time between stations. Apple has even taught Siri all about transit, so the personal assistant will give you public transit options when you ask for directions. Finally, tapping a merchant in Maps will tell you whether or not that location accepts Apple Pay.
Transit directions will initially be available in Baltimore, Maryland; Berlin, Germany; Chicago, Illinois; London, U.K; Mexico City, Mexico; New York City, New York; Philadelpha, Pennsylvania; San Francisco, California; Toronto, Ontario, Canada; and Washington, DC. In China, transit maps will be available for Beijing, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Wuhan, Xi’an, Zhengzhou, and more.
The brand new app for iOS is News, which creates a personalized feed just for you with all of your articles and stories in one place. The app never tracks your information, and sends no data at all to third parties, so your news reading is truly private.
Articles can come from anywhere, but the best articles come from a new format Apple has developed. The new Apple News Format offers rich typography, beautiful imagery, fun animation, videos, rich infographics, and more.
The app allows you to swipe to get to next article, much like in Flipboard. It brings together magazines and newspapers, and you can bookmark articles to read later. While the app first has you set the topics you want to follow, Apple has made it easy to find new things to read about. An Explore tab allows you to find suggested topics, and the search page will let you find even more great content to mark among your favorites and follow. The Favorites tab allows you to see every topic or media outlet you’re following, and make changes.
Photo mosaics take image galleries to the next level. You can tap to zoom in on the photos. News will be available on the iPhone and iPad, with initial news availability in the U.S., U.K., and Australia.
