5 App Updates You’ll Love from iOS 8

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Quick Summary

  • Yapp shares five app-related updates tied to iOS 8 that users should know about.
  • The post helps readers understand practical changes that affect how apps work and feel on Apple devices.
  • iPhone users and app-focused readers will benefit most from this roundup.
Contents hide
1 HealthKit
2 HomeKit
3 3rd Party Widgets
4 App Bundles
5 Inter-app communication
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If you missed Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference on Monday morning, we can catch you up to date.
 
Here are our favorite app updates from the conference, presented by Apple’s CEO Tim Cook from WWDC.

HealthKit

With the rise in fitness apps over the past few years, Apple has designed a new app dashboard to help users keep better tabs on their personal health.

This easy accessible dashboard — which we wrote about in our What the Tech?! series a few weeks ago under the codename “Healthbook” — not only allows you to centralize all of your health and fitness apps to share data, but lets you sync related devices and monitor important daily health metrics to stay on track.

Apple also plans to pair with Mayo Clinic and other major health institutions allowing them to transmit data from your checkups!

HomeKit

Compatibility with the boom of smart home devices has been a huge issue recently. Now, with Apple’s goal to make every home “smarter,” they’ve introduced HomeKit.
 
HomeKit will allow you to setup a more seamless home sync by working with several tech companies. You’ll be able to control smart devices around your house straight from your phone from opening your garage to turning off the lights. You’ll also be able to bundle these actions to create certain moods or modes for your house to be in at once.

3rd Party Widgets

In the past you’ve been able control which apps show notifications in the “Today” section of your phone, but now Apple will allow you to add 3rd party widgets in your Notification Center so you can find the important information you want to know quickly and easily.

App Bundles

Developers will now be able to sell bundles of apps, allowing users to buy multiple games or apps at once and at a discount. This is great for apps that communicate with each other or work together — like Foursquare and their new break-off Swarm, for example. It makes it easier for developers to sell their products as bundles, and for users to get the most out of their apps.

Inter-app communication

One of the most requested features for iOS 8 is finally happening— inter-app communication. App developers will now be able to enable “extensions” within their apps to be used within other apps.

In the past, users have been forced to jump in and out of apps in order to perform similar tasks. By allowing apps to reach out to each other, it looks like you’ll be giving the Home button a lot less action.

What are your favorite highlights from the WWDC presentation of iOS 8? Let us know in the comments!

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