What’s new at WWDC 2022?
It’s that time of the year again. The announcement-filled Apple WWDC, including hardware reveals, new features for the Apple ecosystem, operating system updates and much more, has just concluded.
Apple has always been one of a kind with their design, and this year is no different. The new Macbook Air is everything we could expect: a simple, thin, lean-looking laptop powered by the new M2 chip.
The new iOS 16 operating system comes with an all-new customizable lock screen. But even though users can now personalize their lock screen, it retains that characteristically simple Apple design.
From this link you can check out all new features introduced with the release of iOS 16, but in this blog post we want to take a peek at three features that can benefit your business.
This year, we are especially interested in three features: Live Activities, Web Push for Safari and Passkey.
Live Activities
It can be crucial for your business to provide real-time information to the customer.
And sometimes, the customer needs to be able to subscribe to some specific type of information and get updates without further interruptions. This is where the new Live Activities feature comes into play.
Live Activities let you feed real time information from your application to users, even when their phone is locked. The information is displayed in your customized widget on their lock screens.
You can feed them any kind of information you want, such as how their workout is going, the score of a sporting event, news updates, food delivery tracking, taxi arrival, or whatever you can think of. No need to send multiple individual notifications anymore.
Web Push for Safari
Previously Apple has tried to steer companies and developers to create more native mobile apps. They have stayed behind on the newest web technologies with Safari and in a way forced the industry to use AppStore. But now, Apple is finally starting to step up its game with web apps and progressive web apps.
Apple announced that Safari will start to support web push on the newest macOS Ventura. This allows companies to reach out to the customer and remotely send push notifications whenever the user has the browser open – regardless of whether or not the user is on the website.
As it is a step to the right direction, we still have to wait some time for it to come on iOS and iPadOS. Apple promised that web push will be available on iOS and iPadOS next year. Let’s hope it’s closer to the start of the year and not the end!
Passkey
We are using passwords almost everywhere, and if you want to stay secure, you need to come up with multiple different and unique passwords. And as the amount of different services increases, so does the number of accounts and, hence, the number of passwords you need to create. It will soon be virtually impossible to remember all of the passwords you have created.
Even if you come up with the most secure passwords and remember them all, you are still vulnerable to malicious hackers and social engineering. Servers can be hacked or users can be tricked to give up their passwords on phishing sites.
As you grow your business and gain more customers, you need to make sure that they are safe. To that end, Apple has introduced a new sign-in standard called Passkeys – an all-new way to handle logins without passwords.
Instead of user-created passwords, Passkeys uses powerful cryptographic techniques and biometrics built into your device to secure the accounts.
Passkeys cannot be phished because they never leave the device, and hackers cannot trick users into sharing them with fake sites or applications. Passkeys cannot be leaked, because they are not saved on servers, and everything secret is stored on your device behind biometric authentication.
And it is not only for the Apple users. Apple has worked with Microsoft and Google to ensure cross platform support for Passkeys.
Conclusion
WWDC 2022 introduced us to many new features and updates, a lot of them accessible right away and the rest coming later this year. For example, in addition to the things discussed above, a bunch of improvements were announced to existing features like parental controls and privacy tools.
As this was just scratching the surface to leave you with our key takeaways. We encourage you to take a look at all the rest. Or contact us. We will be happy to help you grow your business and push it to the next level.
