The Big Changes Coming to Your iPhone, iPad and Mac
Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference keynote showed off major updates.
5 min
Apple is hosting its annual Worldwide Developers Conference virtually for the second year in a row. I tuned in from home for the Monday keynote, where company execs outlined a slew of new updates for Apple devices due this spring via iOS 15, iPadOS 15, WatchOS 8 and MacOS Monterey.
The most exciting announcements are aimed directly at improving our experiences at home, where much of our work and play will continue even after the pandemic. FaceTime will get Zoom-like talents, plus the ability to share videos and music with other video-chat participants. And there are more iOS and watch features designed to increase focus and reduce stress.
The event is where Apple historically has expanded its walled garden, by announcing capabilities that will keep customers within its tightly locked hardware-software ecosystem. Sure enough, to get the most out of the newest Mac features, you will need an iPad, an iPhone and maybe even a second Mac. However, the company countered that narrative with a few other announcements: FaceTime now works in web browsers, so you can start up a video chat with people on Windows and Android devices, too. And Siri can be spoken to via other manufacturers’ HomeKit devices (though you will still need to own a HomePod).
In any case, the event is a reminder that Apple’s garden can be a pretty nice one. Many changes, available by way of a free software update in the spring, ought to add functionality to aging devices, including the six-year-old iPhone 6S. Some, of course, are reserved for only the newest Apple products. Here’s a breakdown of the most interesting announcements.
Chat and Productivity
FaceTime, Apple’s video chat app, is getting features already popular in competitors: blurred backgrounds, grid view for group calls, background-noise reduction, screen sharing and meeting links. The new functionality is available on both iOS and Mac devices. And, for the first time, Android and Windows users can join a FaceTime call via a Chrome or Edge web browser.
When there are multiple people on screen, the audio will sound like it is coming from the direction of the person who is speaking on screen. That feature—along with the Portrait Mode blurred background—is available only on iOS devices with A12 Bionic chips or newer, and 2018 Macs or newer.
In addition to sharing what is on your screen in FaceTime, you also can watch a video or listen to audio together. For now, supported apps include Disney+, TikTok and Hulu. Notably missing: Netflix.
Content shared in Messages will now show up in relevant apps. For example, if someone texts you photos, the images will be grouped in a new “Shared With You” tab in your Photos app. But images the app detects as memes or screenshots will be left out.
On the iPad, you still can manage two apps at the same time using Split View and Slide Over (as well as the single-app Full Screen). But instead of having to remember how to make that happen, a new pop-up menu will let you quickly switch between the setups. And a bottom “Shelf” lets you move between different windows in supported apps such as Safari and Pages.
For those with both an iPad and Mac, you can use your Mac’s mouse, trackpad and keyboard to control what is on your iPad, and even drag and drop files between them.
Safari gets a new feature that might convert you from Chrome or another browser: Tab groups, which can be easily accessed from Safari on any of your devices, let you store clusters of related websites.
The most productivity-boosting feature may involve extending your Mac’s battery life. That’s right, “low power mode,” found in iPhones, will be available in MacOS Monterey.
Focus and Mindfulness
The Away message is back, in the Messages app. When you turn on Do Not Disturb, Messages contacts will be able to see you have gone dark in their in-app conversations with you.
Notifications are getting smarter. You will be able to set up different focus modes, such as “Personal” or “Work,” which allow notifications from specific sets of apps and people for a custom duration (or even location). When you turn on a focus mode on one device, it will apply to all your other compatible Apple devices, too. In theory, it is designed to limit distractions—but it will likely take some tinkering to ensure that urgent calls from VIPs still come through.
If you want to be less bogged down by notifications, you can set all non-time-sensitive pop-ups to be bundled into a daily delivery.
AirPod Pro Improvements
My personal favourite announcement? Find My AirPods is finally useful—as long as you have Apple’s pricier buds. If you have AirPods Pro or Max, you can soon ping your earbuds—even if they are closed in their case. (Previously, this only worked if the buds were out of their case.) A new separation alert will also send you a notification if you leave the ’Pods behind in an unfamiliar location.
Conversation Boost is a capability designed for people with mild hearing loss. It focuses the AirPods’ audio on the person talking in front of you, and has controls to further reduce ambient noise.
The headphones also can be located through the global Apple Find My network, and their surround-sound audio mode, called Spatial Audio, which was formerly only compatible with recent iPhones and iPads, also will be available on Macs with the M1 chip.
On-Device Smarts
On-device artificial intelligence has many benefits over systems that depend on cloud processing. It is faster and more secure since, for instance, your voice commands don’t have to travel to company servers to be interpreted.
In its keynote, Apple showed off some Siri requests, such as setting a timer or switching to dark mode, that can work without an internet connection. Systemwide translation of text in languages such as Mandarin, Spanish and French, and Live Text—which can recognize text and numbers in photos or even live via the camera—also work on the device. They do require devices with the A12 Bionic chip or a newer processor, however.
Family-Wide Health
The Health app is where you will find data such as daily steps, heart rate and sleep. The coming version will allow you to share that data with others in your family. The thinking is that you can monitor an aging parents’ stats, and let them know if you are concerned, for example, about an increase in resting heart rate.
More Privacy Protections
Built-in privacy features have long been a part of Apple devices. But, for the first time, the company is including new privacy capabilities as part of its paid iCloud storage plans—now called iCloud+. Private Relay will act like a virtual private network, or VPN, by encrypting all your website traffic. The user is assigned an anonymous IP address, and the address of the destination website is encrypted. Apple says it doesn’t even know which site you are visiting.
The company also announced features that don’t require a subscription. Your driver’s license can be encrypted and stored in the Wallet app. The Transportation Security Administration is even working on using the digital IDs for security screening. However, it will initially only be available for license holders in select U.S. states.
The new version of the Mail app will block invisible pixels that collect information when you open an email. And a new settings page, called the App Privacy Report, shows how frequently apps use data such as location, access to the device’s microphone or contacts. It also will provide potentially creepy extras, such as all of the third-party domains your apps interact with.
As usual, Apple has targeted this massive software drop for the spring, which we expect to mean the September/October time frame when new iPhones traditionally arrive. The company didn’t announce any new hardware Monday, and we aren’t expecting much until the spring, when these new features—especially the ones that only work with the latest and greatest Apple gear—will drive up the temptation to upgrade.
Reprinted by permission of The Wall Street Journal, Copyright 2021 Dow Jones & Company. Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Original date of publication: June 7, 2021
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Terrible commutes. Expensive child care. Employees explain why they will keep working from home.
4 min
What’s still keeping American workers out of the office?
At a time when restaurants, planes and concert arenas are packed to the rafters, office buildings remain half full. Thinly populated cubicles and hallways are straining downtown economies and, bosses say, fragmenting corporate cultures as workers lose a sense of engagement.
Yet workers say high costs, caregiving duties, long commutes and days still scheduled full of Zooms are keeping them at home at least part of the time, along with a lingering sense that they’re able to do their jobs competently from anywhere. More than a dozen workers interviewed by The Wall Street Journal say they can’t envision returning to a five-day office routine, even if they’re missing career development or winding up on the company layoff list.
Managers say they will renew the push to get employees back into offices later this year. The share of companies planning to keep office attendance voluntary, rather than mandatory, is dropping, according to a survey released in May of more than 200 corporate real-estate executives conducted by property-services firm CBRE, one of the largest managers of U.S. office space.
A battle of wills could be ahead. The gap between what employees and bosses want remains wide, with bosses expecting in-person collaboration and workers loath to forgo flexibility, according to monthly surveys of worker sentiment maintained by Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford University economist who studies remote work.
Escalating expenses
One reason workers say they’re reluctant to return is money. Some who have lost remote-work privileges said they are spending hundreds, or in some cases thousands, of dollars each month on meals, commutes and child care.
One supercommuter who treks to her Manhattan job from her home in Philadelphia negotiated a two-day-a-week limit to her New York office time this year. Otherwise, she said she could easily spend $10,000 a year on Amtrak tickets if she commuted five days a week.
Christos Berger, a 25-year-old mortgage-loan assistant who lives outside Washington, D.C., estimates she spends $2,100 on child care and $450 on gas monthly now that she is working up to three days a week in the office.
Berger and her husband juggled parenting duties when they were fully remote. The cost of office life has her contemplating a big ask: clearance to work from home full time.
“Companies are pushing you to be available at night, be available on weekends,” she said, adding that she feels employers aren’t taking into account parents’ need for family time.
Rachel Cottam, a 31-year-old head of content for a tech company, works full time from her home near Salt Lake City, making the occasional out-of-town trip to headquarters. She used to be a high-school teacher, spending weekdays in the classroom. Back then, she and her husband spent $100 a week on child care and $70 a week on gas. Now they save that money. She even let her car insurance company know she no longer commutes and they knocked $5 a month off the bill.
Friends who have been recalled to offices tell Cottam about the added cost of coffee, lunch and beauty supplies. They also talk about the emotional cost they feel from losing work flexibility.
“For them, it feels like this great ‘future of work’ they’ve been gifted is suddenly ripped away,” she said.
Parent trade-offs
If pandemic-era flexible schedules go away, a huge number of parents will drop out of the workforce, workers say.
When Meghan Skornia, a 36-year-old urban planner and married mother of an 18-month-old son, was looking for a new job last year, she weeded out job openings with strict in-office policies. Were she given such mandates, she said, she would consider becoming an independent consultant.
The firm in Portland, Ore., where Skornia now works requests one day a week in the office, but doesn’t dictate which day. The arrangement lets her spend time with her son and juggle her job duties, she said. “If I were in the office five days a week, I wouldn’t really ever see my son, except for weekends.”
Emotional labor
For some, coming into the office means donning a mask to fit in.
Kenneth Thomas, 42, said he left his investment-firm job in the summer of 2021 when the company insisted that workers return to the office full time. Thomas, who describes himself as a 6-foot-2 Black man, said managing how he was perceived—not slipping into slang or inadvertently appearing threatening through body language—made the office workday exhausting. He said that other professionals of colour have told him they feel similarly isolated at work.
“When I was working from home, it freed up so much of my mental bandwidth,” he said. His current job, treasurer of a green-energy company, allows him to work remotely two or three days a week.
Lost productivity
The longer the commute, the less likely workers are to return to offices.
Ryan Koch, a Berkeley, Calif., resident, went to his San Francisco office two days a week as required late last year, but then he let his attendance slide, because commuting to an office felt pointless. “I’m doing the same video calls that I can be doing at home,” he said.
Koch, who works in sales, said his nonattendance wasn’t noted so long as his numbers were good. When Koch and other colleagues were unable to meet sales quotas in recent weeks, they were laid off. Ignoring the in-office requirement probably didn’t help, he said, adding he hopes to land a new hybrid role where he goes in one or two days.
Jess Goodwin, a 36-year-old media-marketing professional, turned down an offer to go from freelance to full time earlier this year because the role required office time and no change in pay.
Goodwin said a manager “made it really clear that this is what they’re mandating right now and it could change in the future to ‘you have to be back in five days a week.’”
Goodwin, who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., calculated that subway commutes to Midtown Manhattan would consume more than 150 hours annually, in addition to time spent getting ready for work.
Goodwin’s holding out for a better offer. She said she would consider a hybrid position if it came with a generous package and good commute, adding: “And I would also probably need something in my contract being like, ‘We’re not going to increase the number of days you have to come in.’”
Chris Dixon, a partner who led the charge, says he has a ‘very long-term horizon’
Americans now think they need at least $1.25 million for retirement, a 20% increase from a year ago, according to a survey by Northwestern Mutual
