The latest iOS 8 news

Ashleigh Allsopp looks at what we can expect to see

The release of iOS 7 caused a buzz among the 
Apple community in 2013, as it came with a 
radical redesign, bringing a new look and feel 
to the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch software. Now 
that the excitement has died down a little, users are 
looking to the future, imagining what could be in 
store for the next version of iOS, presumably called 
iOS 8 if Apple’s naming convention continues.
We’re certainly excited about 2014 as a whole 
for Apple, not least because CEO Tim Cook has 
revealed on multiple occasions that the company 
has “big plans” that it believes we are going to love.
Speculation about iOS 8 - which is believed to be 
codenamed “Okemo” after a ski resort in Vermont - 
skyrocketed as February 2014 arrived, with reports 
that Apple is working on a ‘Healthbook’ app for the 

new operating system, which could change mobile
health and fitness tracking for good.

Touch ID

During Apple’s earnings call for the first quarter of
2014, CEO Tim Cook spoke about Apple’s Touch
ID fingerprint sensor, which was introduced in
September 2013 with the iPhone 5s.
“The mobile payments area in general is one
that we’ve been intrigued with - that was one of
the thoughts behind Touch ID,” he said. “But we’re
not limiting ourselves to that. I don’t have
anything specific to announce today, but you can tell by
looking at the demographics of our customers
and the amount of commerce that goes through
iOS devices versus the competition that it’s a
big opportunity on the platform.”
Cook’s comments suggest we should look out for
new services that work with the Touch ID
in future versions of iOS.

Notifications

One of the areas of iOS 7 that we
expect to get addressed in iOS 8 is
Notifications. We think that it feels a bit
clumsy at the moment. For example,
replying to an iMessage requires
the launching of the app, rather than
a simple dialog box as in OS X’s
Notification Centre.
We’d like to see a universal control to
clear all of the past notifications at once.
In iOS 7, the user has to manually

delete each app’s entries.
We love Sam Beckett’s interactive Notifications
concept, as shown below. It’s a perfect example of
what we’d like to see in iOS 8 when it comes to the
Notification Centre.
We’d also like to be able to quickly unsubscribe
from app Notifications that we’ve accidently signed
up to within the Notification Centre.
Apple made an interesting acquisition in 2013, for
a small software house called Cue. Cue specialises
in smart assistant programming. With Google Now
becoming an increasingly impressive service on
Android, it’s possible that Cue could be how Apple
will catch up. It could help Apple add smarter push
notifications, providing us with the information we
need when we need it.

Siri

We’re sure that Apple will bring some new features
to Siri, the voice-activated virtual assistant, with
iOS 8. It looks like we’ll be getting more voices
within Siri in the UK. We
currently only have access to
a male voice, but the iOS 7.1
beta suggests we’ll be getting
a female voice for Siri, possibly
even before iOS 8 comes out.

Control Centre

We loved the addition of Control
Centre with iOS 7, and we think
Apple could take it even further
in iOS 8. Perhaps it will give
users more control over the
Control Centre, by letting them
decide which apps they want
easy access to.

Multiple accounts

A sought after iOS feature from Apple is the ability
to add additional accounts to iPads and iPhones.
For iPads that are shared among a family, this would
allow each member to have their own private iOS
account, particularly useful for parents with young
children for better parental control.

Multitasking

Apple made some changes to Multitasking in iOS 7,
but we’d like to see these changes go even further.
Split screen is something we’d love to see in iOS 8,
as it would increase productivity significantly and is
a feature we’re constantly craving while using our
iPad. We’d also like to be able to close all of the
open apps at once.

FaceTime

FaceTime hasn’t seen much love from Apple in
recent updates, apart from the addition of FaceTime
Audio. We’d like to see Apple introduce the ability to
call multiple people at once in FaceTime, for group
calls. Skype already o ffers the ability to conduct
group calls, so the addition of the feature for
FaceTime would be a big plus for Apple users.

Default apps

We’ve been saying this for years, but we’d like to
delete the annoying Apple default apps that we’re
not interested in or never use. It’s unlikely that Apple
will grant this wish, though.

Subscription service

An interesting idea shared with us by a colleague is
the introduction of an iOS iTunes Store and/or App
Store subscription service. The service could allow
users to pay a set fee per month to get access to
unlimited films, TV, books, apps and more (think
Netflix or LoveFilm). We think this would be a brilliant
idea that we could imagine many Apple users
signing up to if it’s priced right. It would be a huge
blow for competitors, though.

Default third-party browser

Many of our colleagues use Apple Macs, but
almost none of them use Safari as their default web
browser; most favour Chrome or Firefox instead.
So why does Safari maintain such a stranglehold
on iOS? Because you still can’t make a third-party
browser the default. We’d love to see Apple add
the ability to change the default browser to a third
party one in iOS 8.

Customised autocorrect

Since before iOS 7, we’ve
been asking for the ability
to turn o autocorrect
on an app-by-app
basis, to prevent those
embarrassing errors we
so often see.

Battery life

Battery life issues plague
iOS users. We asked our
readers what they’d like
to see in iOS 8, expecting
whizzy features but it was
battery life that took the top spot. One of the ways Apple could
help preserve battery life is to
add a battery emergency feature to devices. How
about a set of customisable actions set to kick in
when your iOS device reaches 20 per cent power?
Instead of just popping up with the warning, the
device could be programmed to automatically
lower the brightness, switch o 3G, Bluetooth and
location services, and generally do everything in
its power to stay alive.

iTunes Radio in the UK

Since its release back in September 2013, UK Apple
users have been waiting for iTunes Radio, a new
service from Apple that allows you to stream any
song available on iTunes. It’s possible that we’ll see
iTunes Radio launch in the UK before iOS 8, though,
with some rumours pointing to an early 2014 launch.

Release date

Apple has traditionally used its Worldwide
Developers Conference to unveil new versions
of iOS, so we expect that tradition to continue
this year. WWDC is usually held in June, but we’ll
update you as soon as we find out specific dates
for the conference. While we expect iOS 8 to be
shown o for the first time in June, it’s unlikely to
be released to the public until the next generation
iPhone comes out, probably in September. Between
June and September, iOS 8 is likely to be in beta
form for developers to test and begin working on
their apps ahead of the public release.