Any geeky apple fan will know that Apple are currently holding their 2014 Worldwide Developers Conference. It kicked off yesterday with their opening keynote, the highlight of the conference for those of us interested in the future of iOS – the operating system that iPhones & iPads run on.
Basically, on Monday Apple gave everyone a sneak preview of what your phone will be able to do when it updates in the Autumn, and developers can get their hands on the beta version now, to start developing apps to work with the new version.
So, was there any good news for parents in the announcement? Yep, there definitely was… the big news for those of us who have tech-savvy kids is their new “Family Sharing” functions.
Basically, you can have up to 6 members of your family all sharing the same content – as long as each is linked to the same credit/debit card. One person buys a book, or an app, or an album, and you all get to have that same content on your device. It will work for TV shows and movies too.
No more switching accounts to download things on each other’s devices, and no more buying the same app twice by accident because you’re logged into the wrong Apple ID in the App Store. No more sharing passwords!
Kids will be able to request to buy something on their devices. These requests pop up on their parents devices, and they can allow it or deny it. This should be great for giving you more control over your children’s spending.
You’ll also all be able to share a family calendar; great for organising everyone and knowing where everyone needs to be every day! Family photos can all go in a shared photo album, and it’s going to be easier to keep track of your “Family Sharing” devices using the “Find My Friends” and “Find My iPhone” apps.
The new built in photo editing tools are great too; really simple to use but very clever “under the hood” – the Light adjustment allows you to change the light level in your photo with a very easy swipe, but it’s actually automatically adjusting the levels for brightness, contrast, exposure, highlights and shadows to get that effect. Similarly, when you adjust the Colour you are actually adjusting both the contrast and vibrancy levels. I’ve had a play with this on my iPhone and it’s really quite clever.
More photos will be available to you on your devices; stored in the cloud at full resolution, and not just limited to the last 1000 photos in your photo stream. Handy for blogging parents on the go, I’ve often cursed when I realise the photo I wanted for a post is more than 1000 photos ago… I do take a lot!
Messaging between family members will be more fun too, with really easy spontaneous photo, video and voice recording options making it easier to capture and send something quickly. Auto destructing files mean that you’ll no longer have to go through and delete large message attachments that are eating up your storage space.
I think Apple have done a good job to make iOS more family friendly!
Normally I’m not very impressed with the updates but this looks great – Family Sharing is long overdue but very welcome! x