Apple announced a lot of new features and innovations across their operating systems, and the Oodle team wanted to share our takeaways with you.

Apple’s Wallet to let you store your ID in a digital form

This is huge if it actually becomes widely accepted. Carrying physical cards that provide detailed access to our identification and finances is pretty terrible if you actually stop and think about it. No encryption. No obscurity. Can be compromised entirely by your wallet simply falling out at an inopportune time like at a concert or in an Uber.

Apple will let Siri process voice requests on the device

FINALLY! When Siri first came out and you used its voice commands to call a friend the feature took 30sec or more, and often just failed. Previously, that same command was processed on the device and happened in 1sec. This is because Siri transmits your message to Apple who uses AI to fulfill your command and sends the answer to your request back to your device, all while using an internet signal. This new on-device feature will not require an internet connection.

Ability to share health data with your families and with healthcare providers

Apple Health (and similar products) are the future of healthcare. The amount of data that can be aggregated from wearable devices, scales, etc., are incredibly helpful. Oodle partner Ryan Hughes' father had major event health last year. Immediately after, he got him hooked up on Apple Health with a blood pressure cuff that allows him to take a measurement and automatically uploads his data to Apple Health. He has used that data with his doctor to be able to show him the charts of where he's been since his last visit and it's been incredibly helpful.

The expansion of this for sharing with healthcare providers will help push this forward even more than the ground it's already attained. Being able to share this info with family, is also helpful. It's a pain sometimes to have to constantly screenshot data and send it via iMessage or something to someone you'd prefer just to have consistent access to help keep an eye on things.

Private Relay Service

We're not active users of Apple Mail but we LOVE this feature. And it honestly might be enough to get us to use Apple Mail for some personal email. We all get an incredible amount of SPAM.

Third-party accessories allowed to add Siri

I'm an avid smart home guy. But smart home in 2021 is really pretty awful. Zigbee, Z Wave, Alexa, Google Home, Siri, Homekit, Smartthings, Wink, Phillips Hue, and a lot more all add their own spin and aren't remotely compatible across the board. The ideal state would be one where you can utilize the smart devices you like, and the voice assistant of your choice, right? Hah. Not a chance. You're either: A) making concessions on the devices, or B) stringing together things with something like Homebridge or other bridging protocols, or C) living with the fact that none of it works like you wanted it too. Apple Home is really really good when you have Homekit supported devices. While there's still the device problem, at least opening up the ability for third parties to offer Siri will help expand Apple's presence in that market and hopefully, pressure smart device manufacturers to more readily adopt Homekit as well.

Facetime links and works on PC / Android

We use FaceTime all the time and have with groups. Being able to include our green bubble friends or those on PC is a nice addition. And sometimes we want to have a group chat, but don't know exactly who will be able to join or when. The Facetime link solves this problem. Blast the link to the group, and everyone can join the party when they're ready.

iPadOS gets features they should have had already had

The last go-around, iOS got widgets and app library. And I guess I just assumed those were on iPadOS, but for some reason, they definitely weren't. So it's cool that iPadOS gets to join the party now. 🤷‍♂️