This week, Apple held its 27th Developers’ conference, an exciting event for its tech and software announcements. While The Practice team weren’t lucky enough to attend, we were able to tune into the live-stream. Read on for our thoughts on this year’s proceedings.

One of the most exciting announcements at the conference was the news of iOS10. Among the features of the anticipated operating system will be a more efficiently-designed Control Center, a new lock screen, and a home screen showing updated notifications and 3D Touch capability. The lock screen will importantly allow users to respond to and manage their notifications too, as well as show live status updates from their apps if using 3D Touch. There will also be a cool new feature entitled “Raise and Wake”, which will wake the lock screen each time the user lifts his or her phone. Finally, the company’s Music and Maps apps were also mentioned as undergoing complete redesigns, with Maps in particular reimagined to enable easier navigation. It seems as though iOS10 will display a significant revamp- in fact, Craig Federighi, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Software Engineering remarked that the new iOS would be the biggest “release ever for our users”.

Siri too, will function much better on the new operating system. Firstly, it is set for an interface design makeover, and will better integrate with your existing apps with Apple revealing that it would also be making Siri available to third party apps developers. This means that we will likely be able to use Siri to perform functions on our commonly used iPhone and iPod apps- perhaps to automatically send messages, or book an Uber. With this in mind, it’s clear that Apple is looking to rival other AI technology displays by the likes of Facebook with their recently announced Messenger Chat bots for instance. The improved Siri will extend to its other devices too, including Apple TV, which will showcase updated artificial intelligence features, letting users speak into their remotes in order to search for TV and YouTube programmes. Another exciting update to the company’s software was the announcement that Siri will be available for its desktop devices too, and will be used to search for information, send messages to the user’s contacts, and also conduct web searches.

As far as Home Kit is concerned, Apple revealed a further use for Siri, in that it would soon be integral for home device control. The company announced a new app, connected to Siri and accessible from the user’s mobile device, which would allow compatible devices to be controlled from one place. For instance, trigger phrases could be set up to activate connected products, such as front door locks, lights and more on command.

We were glad to see updates to Apple Music and Apple Pay, with the former set for a much-needed redesign, featuring a more simple user interface and clearer type. As far as Apple Pay is concerned, it will soon be integrated with Safari, meaning users can pay online on desktop, iPhone or Apple Watch. There also won’t be any need for users to input their credit card details, as authentication will also be available via TouchId.

What was your favourite announcement at the event? Which software updates are you most looking forward to seeing in future? We’d love to hear your thoughts, so please tweet to us @PracticeDigital and share your comments on our Facebook page.