With WWDC 2018 right around the corner, the rumours for upcoming announcements regarding iOS12 are getting narrowed down further and further to the most probable predictions. Here are some of the major updates market analysts are expecting.

• Smarter Siri
• Digital Health Software
• Upgrade with ARKit
• Apps with Near Field Communication or NFC

Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference, or WWDC 2018, is all set to take place in San Jose. The annual four-day event will span from June 4^th to June 8^th and will carry a lot of exciting announcements, with predictions flying around the industry in anticipation for the event.

The actual event is now only a few days away, so after a long time to predict what may be announced, only the most probable ones are being circulated in the market now. As mentioned above, the most important announcement would be to do with Siri.

It is noteworthy that despite being the pioneer in the introduction of voice-enabled assistants, Apple’s Siri is lagging behind competition such as Alexa and Google Assistant. We’ve discussed how with the hiring of Google’s AI head, the company may now gain pace in the enhancement of Siri’s capabilities. And that’s what most of the analysts are predicting too.

Indeed, despite the large variations among the predictions, the most prevailing common theme is around Siri, that it’s going to steal the lime light in this year’s conference.

The second most important predicted announcement for the iOS 12 would be about the introduction of the Digital Health tool. As a recent report in Bloomberg states how engineers at Apple are working on an initiative called Digital Health, the aim of which is to encourage people to bring more balance in their life by minimising the use of their gadgets. Google too has recently released a similar tool in its annual conference I/O 2018 that calculates how much time a user spends on their smartphones, including details of the apps that they are using the most.

To bring more light to the topic, Tony Fadell, a former senior executive at Apple has said, “We need to have tools and data to allow us to understand how we consume digital media. We need to get finer-grain language and start to understand that an iPhone is just a refrigerator, it’s not the addiction.”

Another most prompted prediction with iOS 12 is about the enhancement in the system’s AR capabilities and the introduction of ARKit 2.0.

In last year’s conference, they introduced ARKit as the official tool for the development of AR application for the smartphone. Since then a lot of the advancements have happened in the area of augmented reality, and it is inevitable that Apple will have something significant along these lines. In fact, CEO Tim Cook himself has emphasized its potential by stating in an interview that, “AR is going to change the way we use technology forever.”

Another predictable announcement, that didn’t get as much media attention as others, could be about the enhanced use of the NFC chip that has been a part of the iPhone hardware ever since the year 2014. With the introduction of iOS 11 last year, the company has already given a limited access to the chip to the third-party iOS app developers, and this year may bring more features that will enhance the functionality of certain apps, like the ones that may allow users to unlock their hotel rooms with their iPhones.

A report by Tech Radar revealed that a similar functionality has already been in use by Apple employees who use it to unlock rooms at the company’s headquarters.

Other than that, there will obviously be some major performance optimisation updates. Apple has already learnt its lessons from the negative feedback of iOS 11 and battery issues, that users will not condone any performance hindrance, even when implemented with good intentions. Let’s see which of these predictions will get realized in the event, and what else Apple will bring out for its users.

Resources

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/31/apple-digital-health-to-fight-iphone-addiction–report.html

https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/31/17413190/apple-ios-12-digital-health-iphone-time-used-rumor

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-31/apple-to-tout-digital-health-ar-features-at-software-conference

https://www.techradar.com/news/ios-12-could-let-you-unlock-your-hotel-room-with-nfc