The annual Apple WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) held in California is where the company showcases the upcoming versions of its operating systems – iOS, MacOS, tvOS and watchOS.
One of the highlights of the show this year was the upcoming iOS 11 for the iPhone and iPad, which Apple says is the largest iOS update it has released to date.
While there were tons of announcements made at the conference, we narrowed it down to the most important, starting with Siri, the company’s smart virtual assistant.
According to the company, the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence has resulted in a more natural and expressive human voice for both the male and female version. This involves the intonation, pitch, emphasis and tempo.
Instead of voice-only interactions, users will now be able to type to talk to Siri, in the same way they talk to Google Assistant. iOS 11 also brings translations to Siri, with support for Chinese, French, German, Italian and Spanish languages.
In a surprising move, Apple finally introduced the long-overdue file manager app, simply called Files on the iPad.
Previously, Apple had a similar feature called iCloud Drive but it was limited only to the content stored on the company’s cloud storage platform.
Files, on the other hand, allows users to access the actual location of the documents, files, photos and videos that have been downloaded onto the device.
The move is timely as File Manager has been one of the mainstay features in non-vanilla Android phones for many years.