Apple announces a host of updated features in its new iOS8 mobile platform operating system

APPLE had a simple message today: Meet your new mobile operating system — we think the two of you will be best of friends.

APPLE had a simple message today: Meet your new mobile operating system — we think the two of you will be best of friends.

Taking a break from tradition of using the annual Worldwide Developers Conference to launch new hardware, the two-hour presentation was big news for those interested in the details of their devices without the excitement of a “one more thing” product release.

RELATED: Apple drives into new markets with CarPlay

But don’t despair about the lack of an iWatch. Well, don’t despair for long. Because here are 10 things to like about iOS 8, which will be available to download on your iPhone (4S and later) and iPad (iPad 2 and later) in spring.

iOS8 ... New look, new features.

NOTIFICATIONS: Instead of just scrolling down from the top to see your notifications, now you’ll be able to interact with those notifications straight away. If it’s a meeting request, you can accept or decline with a swipe. If it’s a message, you can reply without having to switch to Messages app.

Interact with your friends more easily. If you double click the home button on your device right now, you will see the apps you have open, so you can switch to another app or close them. With iOS 8, you also see a scrolling strip of your most recent contacts. Tap a face and you can message them, or send them a photo or email Mail gets better. One of the frustrations of writing a mail in iOS is that you start tapping away on your draft and then realise you want to access a message in your inbox. With iOS 8, you slide the draft down out of the way and go to your inbox, before returning to your message.

With mail, you can also add notations to an image in your email. Draw a badly sketched arrow on an image pointing to something important, and the software turns your bad arrow into a pretty one.

MiniMi: iOS8 on the iPad Mini.

MESSAGES: Apple said today that this is the most popular app — so it makes sense that this is where many of the big changes are occurring.

One of the obvious changes is that you can speak into your phone and send an audio message in Messages that will selfdestruct in a few minutes. If you get a text, you can lift the phone to your ear (yes, a radical idea) and the movement of the phone will initiate a phone call or an audio message. If you’re stuck in one of those group chats that goes on and on, you can mute that message thread or drop out of it.

You can also choose to share your location with a person you are messaging, with that location shared for an hour, a day or indefinitely.

Family matters ... One account, a whole family of settings. Apple has recognised that their device has become a member of the family, and needs to adapt to their varying needs.

FAMILY SHARING: This recognises that more than one person in the house has a iPhone or iPad. If one person has bought an app or music or movie from iTunes, everyone can install it on their device for free. The catch is everyone’s iTunes account has to be registered to the same credit card. One of the features of Family Sharing that is most likely to be a hit is that if a child tries to buy an app on their phone, it can send a message straight to the parent’s device to confirm the purchase.

PICTURE EDITING: There are major improvements to both the ability to edit a photo, with a simple interface hiding advanced editing features, and ensuring your photos are on all of your devices through a new iCloud Photo Library which will also be introduced to the desktop operating system early next year. If you edit the photo on one device, you will instantly see the editing changes on the others..

Picture overload ... Simple editing features have been added to Apple’s photo library.

AIRDROP: At last. When Apple introduced Airdrop, people (well, some

people) cheered with excitement over the ability to send files from one device to another. The cheers stopped short when people realised you could only send files from one mobile device to another, with Macs left out of the equation. The new Airdrop will let you send files to and from Macs, iPhones and iPads.

KEYBOARD: Ask an Android user why they think their phone is better, and often they’ll mention the keyboard, with predictive text and Swype keyboard which lets you type a word by sliding a finger around the keyboard.

Apple announced its own predictive text system. Also, importantly, it announced it would open up the Apple keyboards so that developers could make apps such as Swype to alter it.

Hip pocket and health nerve ... Apple’s new functionality line-up.

HEALTH AND HOME: One of the key points is that Apple hopes to bring different parties together to make your life more simple. In particular, there are the bundles of products you can buy in health and home. If you were an activity tracker and use a Wi-Fi-enable scale and, perhaps, check your blood pressure with a connected device, the new Health app will be a place for all of that information to be collated in a one-stop shop. Likewise, the aim of Home will be that you’ll be able to control your Wi-Fi-connected slow cooker, baby monitor and lighting all in one place. Think of them as a standard that third-party companies will need to follow — or at least that’s the idea.

WiFi CALLING: It seems strange that they haven’t done this before. Let’s say you’re sitting on the couch with the iPad, or at your desk with your MacBook Air and your iPhone rings. Do you (A) run across the room to grab the phone where it’s charging in a power point (in our hypothetical scenarios, iPhones are always charging — it makes it more real) or (B) answer the call with the device you’re using. With iOS 8, it will be B. If all of your devices are nearby (same Wi-Fi network presumably, although that wasn’t made clear), you can use your tablet or computer as like a speaker phone for your phone.

But wait, there’s more. No, Apple didn’t say that today but we will.

SPOTLIGHT: This gets better in iOS 8 — type a word and it will give you a quick Wikipedia result and news articles. We’re tipping Handoff to be popular — start typing a text or email on your iPhone and you can switch to completing the message on your Mac or iPad.

TITLE: NND MultiPromo Smart Homes Interactive