8: TouchID, Healthbook & Improved Maps Make The Draft
iOS 8 will likely look a lot like iOS 7. But don't be fooled: there's gonna be a lot of action in the backend. It's a "mullet strategy"
As Spring approaches each year those that follow tech news will notice there’s a shift in what people are interested in with Apple. That’s because Spring is about the perfect halfway point between when Apple released their last iPhone and iOS and when they’ll release the new versions of both. People know all about iOS 7 and the iPhone 5s by now, but what they’re all really interested in is what comes next – iOS 8 and the iPhone 6.
Details about the codename have begun to leakthrough the cracks. Over at Apple HQ, the first major update since the dramatic overhaul which was iOS 7, is reportedly being referred to as Okemo. No-one can work out exactly why Apple has chosen the title but it seems to be named after a ski resort in Vermont, US.
Apple has also announced its Worldwide Developers Conference will be taking place between June 2 and June 6 2014 in San Francisco. It’s likely we’ll be treated to a demonstration of iOS 8 at that event.
There won’t be any visual change from the Jony Ive designed look of iOS 7, but there’s bound to be a load of big new features to play around with, from a brand new maps system to an in-depth fitness application. Let’s get stuck in and show you what we know about iOS 8 so far.
Don’t Expect A Lot Of Visual Changes
Yeah, I know plenty armchair pundits think Apple needs to totally reinvent and “revolutionize” every single product line every single year, but, frankly, that’s just freaking impossible. Sometimes the next major release of iOS just needs to have some incremental improvements and that is what we’ll most likely see in iOS 8: evolution, not revolution.
Why? Because iOS 7 was the biggest change to iOS since its inception and Apple just doesn’t have the time or manpower to completely redo it every year – nor should they. Now that iOS 7 completely changed the way iOS looks, users can expect its design aesthetic to stick around for at least the next two to three years. And that’s a good thing. Because completely revamping the look and feel of your OS results in a lot of bugs and always having to tidy things up – just look at how buggy iOS 7 still is six months later!
And that’s not Apple’s fault. Any major software maker that puts out a major software update has catching up to do after its initial release. That’s the nature of software. Bugs inevitably occur and, as usage of the new software increases, its creators (and users) find ways in which it could still be tweaked to make it work better.
If you “evolution-ize” your software each year you never have time to work at it long enough to get all the bugs out, or the look and features right. So, with that in mind, I wouldn’t get your hopes up on seeing any major design revamp in iOS 8.
Take the above leaked screenshots that just turned up on Weibo, which are said to be of iOS 8. On the surface it looks very much like business as usual. Take a closer look, however, and you’ll see a series of new icons: Healthbook, Preview Text Edit. As expected the icons are the same, as is pretty much everything else about what you can see in the image.
We know what Healthbook is all about. But what are Text Edit and Preview? Simple: they’re mobile versions of the very same Mac OS X applications. Furthermore, these apps will act as a bridge between your iPhone/iPad and Mac PC, and it’ll all happen inside iCloud.
“The apps are built to serve as tools to view Preview and TextEdit files stored in iCloud by OS X. Apple added iCloud synchronization for Preview and TextEdit with OS X Mountain Lion, but has not yet released iOS counterparts to actually view the synchronized content,” reports 9to5Mac.
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