The Apple Apps &new things

The Apple Apps

In addition to supporting Dark Mode, many of Apple's default apps have been rebuilt for iOS 13.

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 Here's a rundown of what's new in the iOS stock apps. Most of them display a new splash screen explaining their new features when you first run the updated versions.

Notes and Reminders. The Notes app has a new gallery view that's reflected on macOS as well. The Reminders app's updates are even more extensive. Now, when you create a reminder, you can simply type what and when you want to be reminded, and the app parses your intent and turns it into a task. A line of machine-learning-powered suggested activities and situations sits close at hand, and the app can even prompt you if you start texting with a person you tagged in a reminder.

Finally, a swipey keyboard! Hiding in plain sight is a new feature on the Apple keyboard: QuickPath. Instead of tapping out messages letter-by-letter, you can now drag a finger between keys to spell out words. Otherwise, the keyboard looks identical to its predecessor. If you're not impressed, that's probably because you've been using this feature on Android (or even previously on Windows Phone) for the better part of the last decade, or as a third-party extension for the iPhone keyboard. Regardless, we're glad to see that Apple finally offers this input technology at the OS level, and happy to report that it works great.

Photo via Apple

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New Photos stuff. Apple's default Photos app gets a major overhaul in iOS 13. Your collection of photos is divided up by tabs for All Photos, Days, Months, and Years. As you move from one section to the next, Photos shows you different machine-learning-powered previews that try to take context into account. The Years section is topped off with photos from exactly a year ago; tapping a year opens separate cards based on months and locations.

All Photos shows you, well, all your photos, just as it did in iOS 12 and earlier. The Days section is where you see the most dramatic changes. Photos ditches the tired grid of square photo thumbnails for a mixture of different-size rectangles. This mosaic effect is much more visually interesting than a plain old grid, and is livened up more by auto-playing videos and Live Images—which are terrible in every other context but actually work quite well here.

Notably, the app now removes pictures of receipts, whiteboards, duplicate images, screenshots, and other "junk" photos from some views to make viewing your pictures more enjoyable. Everything is still there, and fully visible from the All Photos tab, but the curated view really does make for a better experience.

We weren't overly impressed with the changes to Photos in iOS 12. They paled in comparison with Google Photos, the default photo organizing app on some Android devices. That service can identify the same person from babyhood to adulthood, as well as offering very specific searches, such as for particular dog breeds. Back then, Apple Photos just didn't compare, but things look better in iOS 13. The automatic pruning and contextually aware machine learning make the stuffy old camera roll engaging. We still think Google has Apple beat on photo search, but the reinvented iOS Photos app is actually a joy to look at.

Also on the photography side of the house are changes to the Portrait Lighting tool. You can now adjust the levels to make it appear as if a virtual set of lights has moved closer or further from your subject. A redesigned photo editor simplifies tweaks to your pictures, and you can make those same adjustments and apply filters to video.

Siri Shortcuts app. When we reviewed iOS 12, Siri Shortcuts completely blew us away. They work somewhat like Automator on the Mac, letting you create little programs of your own. That might be humdrum on a desktop, but it's unheard of on iOS. It's definitely not the kind of thing people would use day-to-day, but it's enormously powerful, and there has never been anything like it on iOS. Back in iOS 12, Shortcuts was an optional download, but Apple is now bundling the Shortcuts app with iOS 13 and including some tools that attempt to match your activities to existing Shortcuts. Like most machine-learning experiences, this will take some time before it really delivers results. That said, the Shortcuts app is more approachable than before and impressively easy to use on the small screen.

Photo via Apple

Updated Apple Maps. Lastly, Apple Maps has been upgraded with oodles more detail, as well as Look Around, similar to the Street View found in Google Maps and Streetside in Bing Maps. To Apple's credit, the Maps app has evolved in leaps and bounds since its initial release. Google is still the leader in this area, but Apple remains undeterred. Apple will be rolling out its improved maps of the US throughout the year, while Google has basically shot 360-degree photos of every inch of inhabited land on this planet. Apple's Lookaround is beautifully implemented, as you expect. A binocular icon takes you to the 360-degree photo that you can move around and zoom in with your fingers. There's no inside view of venues, however, though it does offer indoor mapping of malls and airports.

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