Apple focuses on continuity for latest software features
During his keynote presentation at Monday's World Wide Developers Conference, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi called the company’s newest employee, Dr. Dre, in order to demonstrate how a Mac can now double as a telephone.
In fact, thanks to the new features in the next iteration of Apple’s desktop operating system, OSX Yosemite, simply clicking on a phone number displayed on a web page while browsing is all that’s needed to place a call and turn a computer into a smartphone.
The latest update to the operating system, which will be released this autumn as a free download, also features something called Hand Off. If you start working on one Apple device and then approach another – so composing an email on an iPad and then walking up to a MacBook – the half-written mail is there on the desktop, and vice versa. The system also works with documents created in Apple’s productivity software and the whole thing is automatic.
Perhaps the cleverest feature of all is the new ability to automatically create a personal hotspot. Say you’re working on a notebook at a café and its wifi goes down, the notebook will automatically connect to your iPhone, even if it’s in a pocket on standby, and leverage its network. No need to set preferences or set a password.
Likewise, if the phone rings but you’re on your computer, the call appears on screen. Apple’s current desktop OS, Mavericks, offers a similar feature for iMessages (texts sent between Apple devices) and for FaceTime, Apple’s video calling app, but now the feature has been opened up so that users can text and voice call friends with Android and Windows phones too.
