Top Insights from Apple’s WWDC 2018
Apple's 2018 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), an annual showcase of the tech giant's new technologies and products, held its keynote yesterday in much quieter fanfare than years past. While less focus was on the release of new products and hardware than in the past, 2018's WWDC highlighted the company's renewed focus on security and stability of their operating systems (close to the hearts of PE employees), improved technologies, development tools and features.
Doubling Down on Performance
Apple is "doubling down on performance," said Craig Federighi, SVP of Software Engineering. On a practical level, Apple is actively working to ensure that iOS feels faster. Their new mobile OS, iOS 12, will run on the largest range of supported devices yet, stressing Apple's desire to deliver better performance. Specifically, Apple highlighted performance enhancements on older models of both the iPhone and iPad. iOS 12 pushes iPhones to a new level, with apps launching 40% faster and the camera opening 70% faster on older devices. These speed enhancements are important for developers who aim to create high-performance apps while also appealing to consumers, who crave ever-faster smartphones in their pockets.
Time to Put Your Phone Down
Technologic addiction is rampant and not going anywhere. According to Common Sense Media, 50% of teens feel that they are addicted to their mobile devices. It seems that tech giants are taking notice of this consequence and taking measure to curb it back. Technology innovators and companies should take note of this trend in order to pivot towards the push for high quality /less frequent engagements with your users. At Google’s I/O in June of this year, the company launched tools to help Android users curb phone usage by setting certain limits for specific apps. Apple followed suit with a new “Screen Time” feature that will provide robust app tracking for total phone usage as well as detailed breakdowns of specific apps and categories. Screen Time will also provide information for how often your apps are sending you notifications and summarizes weekly usages. Additionally, users will be able to set limits for how long they want to use an app and receive a push notification when their allotted time is about to expire. Unlike with Android, users will still be able to use the app after their time is over without going into the settings. These gentle reminders put the user fully in charge of how and for how long they want to use apps instead of a hard-set restriction. In a similar vein, Apple announced a new feature called Grouped Notifications. Instead of disparate notifications from the same app, notifications will be grouped together by content and app. "Notifications are grouped not just by app, but also by topic and thread," said Federighi. "[This] gives you great overview of the notifications you've received." This echoes the same approach to make the phone a utility and to prevent unnecessary distractions. Not only is Apple creating Grouped Notifications to help users manage their engagement with apps, but they will also be featuring a new “critical alert toggle”. The toggle will allow app users to opt-in to ensure they receive reports from important apps such as those with business critical information. The critical alerts will take top priority on the lock screen and notification Cover Sheet, and they’ll even show up in Do Not Disturb. As digital transformation continues to be arriving in the workforce through the use of mobile applications, it’s prudent that many enterprise applications take advantage of this opt-in to ensure their employees remain engaged and receive critical alerts. Improvements such as these will most certainly cause app developers to think twice about push notifications and change the focus from "time" spent in-app to “quality time” spent in-app. As consumers focus on monitoring the time they spend in apps, marketers and product teams will need to increase their efforts to engage users with the right content at the right time.
