Apple put a stake in the ground Monday, aiming to school rival mobile technology companies with some flashy new features.
Programmers got a preview of Apple's latest software products at WWDC, the company's annual developers conference, held Monday in San Francisco, California. The luxury hardware company included a slew of new options aiming to pit Apple as an innovative consumer services provider on pace with Google's Android, Snapchat or Facebook.
Here are some of the most exciting features of iOS, coming this fall:
1.See voicemails before you listen
Apple's new mobile operating system, iOS 10, adds voicemail transcription, so users can read rather than listen to their messages. While that's already available on other services, like Google Voice, Apple's new version will also flag users if a voicemail is spam.
2.(Part A) Text people money
iMessage will also have a "drawer" of related apps, one of which could include Square Cash — that means that users could pay each other via text, the way that Snapchat's Snapcash, Facebook Messenger and PayPal's Venmo allow.
2. (Part B) Emoji-fy
A fun offering ties for second place. It's no secret that smiley faces and other emojis have taken over messaging. Now, iMessage will automatically highlight words that can be replaced with an emoji and "emoji-fy" your texts. Plus, the images that are now three times bigger than in the past.
3. Invisible ink
The invisible ink option lets users send an obscured message, which can be viewed by temporarily swiping across the image.
The option is designed to let users express "something personal," or "a surprise" an executive said, and works similarly to ephemeral messaging app Snapchat.
4.Tapbacks
Anyone's who's used social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter knows that not every interaction requires a written reply. Sometimes, for instance, you would simply "like" or "favorite" something to acknowledge it. Tapbacks allow that same kind of behavior in Messenger, allowing you to "thumbs up" or "heart" a message.
5. Apple Music messages
In the new operating system, users will be able to listen to a song inside the iMessage app via an Apple Music link.