iOS 11 and Mac OS High Sierra
As if taking a short pause after releasing the stuffed with new features of iOS 10, this year Apple focused mainly on technical improvements, and "tightened up" the places in which iOS was not very convenient.
So, for example, the control center has been significantly redesigned - a small menu with buttons for quickly turning on WiFi, Bluetooth and other functions, called up by swiping from the bottom of the screen.
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It has grown significantly in size and has been reorganized, even the music player, which in iOS 10 occupied a separate screen, fit in. But most importantly, support for 3D Touch has appeared: by pressing any control element with effort, you can call up an additional menu with advanced functions. For example, turn on tethering or AirDrop with two taps.
Personal assistants are becoming an integral part of modern smartphones - so Apple has seriously refined Siri. Now the assistant (or assistant, as you like) sounds more natural. New intonations have appeared, vocabulary has grown. Now you can communicate with her not only by voice, but also by text, by typing requests in the window. Siri even learned how to translate text - you can easily ask her what dish is popular in China, and she will pronounce its name in Chinese.
Another welcome but welcome innovation is the ability to transfer money to another person via Apple Pay. The function is built right into iMessage: we open messages, select the addressee and the amount, put our finger on - voila, the funds are sent to his account.
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Fans of Live Photos were allowed to edit "animated pictures": change the animation (for example, loop it like in "GIFs", or play it backwards) and change the main photo. And photos in general began to take up less space - thanks to new compression algorithms. The owners of the iPhone 7 Plus were not deprived: now the pictures in portrait mode should be of better quality, especially at night.
Apple Music has a social element: you can see what music your friends are listening to or recently listened to and show off your playlist. But the update to iOS 11 on the iPad will be the largest in the history of Apple tablets.
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The Dock on the desktop, where your favorite applications usually "hang", will become similar to its counterpart from Mac OS. First, many more applications can now be placed there. Secondly - and this is important - you can call it with one swipe from the bottom from any screen, no matter whether you are watching YouTube or sitting in a browser. From there, the desired application can be simply pulled out on the screen with your finger, opening it in split-screen mode. No more constant returns to the desktop. Thirdly, the Files application appeared - a file manager for iPad. With its help, you can search for files in the tablet memory, manage them, group documents by folders. The program works not only with native iCloud, but also with third-party cloud storage, such as Google Docs and Dropbox. iOS remains a closed system,however, working with documents on the tablet is now critical.
The so-called drag-and-drop feature, which is familiar to every PC user, is debuting on Apple tablets. Now you can open the gallery and drag the selected picture with your finger to another, for example, in "Notes". Or click on the link and "take" it to the body of the letter you are typing. No more highlight-copy-paste. The functions of the digital pen have also been improved. Now you can use Apple Pencil to select text on pages in the browser using standard tools, and then create PDF files from them. Useful for those who often make notes. The system is now also able to recognize handwritten text: after writing something by hand, you can then find the text using a simple search. All in all, iOS 11 is a timely and important update for a device that continues to lose popularity year after year. Can,it still can't replace your computer - but iPad has never gotten around to that goal so quickly.
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Mac OS High Sierra, the update for Apple's desktop operating system is mostly technical. Mac OS is "moving" to the new file system APFS (Apple File System), which should increase the speed of computers on it and optimize work with files.
Safari now has an annoying ad blocker that will automatically hide annoying banners of some "Horsepower" chasing you all over the Internet. Plus the browser itself will become faster. Photo is now better at recognizing faces, so finding photos should be even easier.
The rest of the innovations concern developers - it should become much easier for them to create applications and virtual reality programs for Mac.
New iPad Pro
The iPad lineup includes a new tablet - iPad Pro with a diagonal of 10.5 inches. However, it is not much larger than the "regular" Pro or Air 2 with a 9.7-inch screen. The enlargement of the display without sacrificing the dimensions became possible thanks to the reduced frames - they were reduced by as much as 40%.
A key feature of the new tablet is its unique 120-hertz screen. It is capable of displaying not 60 frames per second, as almost all mobile devices of our time, but 120. This means that you will see twice as many frames of animation when scrolling through the pages and moving objects will seem "alive", the picture will become very smooth. The effect is quite difficult to describe in words, but those who have ever seen how 144 Hz monitors work will be able to understand how everything will look. The difference is visible to the naked eye.
IOS will be able to decide on its own with what update frequency to work. When watching static content, it will be 24 hertz, when watching a video - 60, when drawing or playing games - the same 120. This will save battery power and not overload the system unnecessarily. The increased scan rate has dramatically decreased the touchscreen response time when using the Apple Pencil - it is only twenty milliseconds, the best on the market. So drawing should be even more comfortable and enjoyable.
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The iPad Pro is powered by a six-core A10X processor and is arguably the most powerful tablet to date. As well as the best tablet in terms of photography: the cameras here are from the iPhone 7. Both the main and front cameras have the same optics and aperture - all to be honest. The battery life has not changed - 10 hours. The new iPad Pro will go on sale next week. The price for the basic version with 64 gigabytes and without LTE-module is 46,990 rubles.
HomePod
The most unexpected and perhaps the most interesting device of yesterday evening was the first HomePod wireless speaker. Interesting in large part because Apple has never had a device like this before.
HomePod is Apple's Amazon Echo, and that's actually good news. Inside the speaker is Siri, which, as they said during the presentation, has been turned into an actual “audio expert”. The assistant can not only give instructions and ask him to set an alarm or a reminder, but also ask musical questions: who plays the guitar in this or that song, in what year the Beatles debut album was recorded and what is the name of Adele's single topping the charts. In addition, Siri will be able to control smart home systems, and if you have a pair of smart bulbs in your house, you can turn them on and off simply by commanding your HomePod.
Visually, the Apple speaker is most similar to a Mac Pro covered in soft cloth. But they promise us first-class acoustics. Inside the HomePod, there are seven tweeters - tweeters - and according to Phil Schiller, they are ways to gently reproduce all the nuances of music - from backing vocals to various stereo effects.
In addition, the speaker is able to “scan” the surrounding space, changing its acoustic properties depending on its location in the room. This means that it will sound the same no matter where it is placed.
HomePod will go on sale in December in black and white for $ 349.>
