Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (or WWDC if you want to save a bunch of letters) hits on Tuesday and we fully expect the company to spill the beans on a great many things, including iOS 12 - the next major update for its mobile OS. In preparation for the event, here's what you should be looking out for in particular.
In the immortal words of Sonic: gotta go fast
For iOS 12, Apple's decided to pump the breaks on the new features front, instead focusing on bug fixes and performance. That's not to say there's nothing new in iOS 12, just that the obsession with shinies is taking a back seat (as we'll discuss in a moment).
It's no secret the release of iOS 11 was bumpy, with everything from poor battery life to dodgy auto-correction plaguing its debut. Apple is clearly looking to avoid a similar debacle with 12.
The real-world gains are hard to determine right now and will certainly be device-dependent, but I'm all for anything to slow the deluge of "I updated my phone and now it runs like crap" posts on forums across the internet.
Apple targets phone addiction with "Digital Health" initiative
We always joke about being attached to our smartphones 24/7, but with iOS 12, Apple is taking the idea of phone addiction seriously, according to a report by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
It's not an app, more of an "initiative", writes Gurman, one that Apple is pushing ahead with to better understand how we use our smartphones, as well as the repercussions this use has on our well-being:
Apple engineers have been working on an initiative dubbed Digital Health, a series of tools to help users monitor how much time they spend on their devices and inside of certain applications.
These details will be bundled into a menu inside of the Settings app in iOS 12, the likely name of Apple's refreshed mobile operating system, according to people familiar with the plans.
You can already do this to a degree by looking at your battery stats, but providing greater detail and making us more aware of our smartphone habits is a good thing.
Augmented reality gets the go-ahead
Pokemon GO, Niantic's flash-in-the-pan success based on Game Freak and Nintendo's juggernaut IP, showed there's a massive market for augmented reality apps — you just need the right combination of elements.
While it might not trigger an AR revolution, Apple's ARKit will get a 2.0 refresh with iOS 12. Says Gurman: "...internally, the company has been planning a new mode that would let users play AR games against each other in the same virtual environment. Another mode allows objects to be dropped into an area and virtually remain in place."
As far as Apple is concerned, AR is here to stay. Whether or not developers continue to embrace it remains to be seen.
Lifeline for iPhone 5s owners
When you're sitting on older generation iPhone and iPad hardware, there's always the risk with every major iOS update that your device will be excluded from the list of eligible gadgets.
Once that happens, you're doomed to a slow death as your favourite apps gradually move to higher version pastures.