News of Techno: iOS 10 All new designed

lockscreen notifications

You'll see that notifications are broken up into bubbles now and use 3D Touch to show hidden menu actions - just hard press on a calendar invite alert and you'll be able to accept or decline it.

3D Touch-enabled iOS 10 notifications work even better for Messages. You can immediately respond to messages as soon as you pick up your phone, without ever leaving the lockscreen. It's all done inline.

No more digging around the home screen and layers of app menus to check vital information. If you have a doorbell camera notification, you can see who's at the front door, use the intercom or unlock the door.

This "peeking at apps" capability via the lockscreen isn't limited to Apple's first-party

apps. Uber is just one third-party app maker that allows you to hard press on notifications. You'll get live updates on where your driver is on a map - usually headed in the other direction.

Clear all notifications button

What may be the best change to iOS 10 notifications is the ability to clear all of your old notifications with 3D Touch. Swiping them away one by one or dismissing them in groups is a time-consuming mess in iOS 9.

Just hard press that little "x" icon within the redesigned (and now dedicated) notifications pulldown menu and tap the "clear all" box that pops up. Tap it once to just dismiss the group of notifications.

It's super easy to clear away expired alerts with iOS 10 and it will please everyone inflicted with phone notification-clearing OCD.

Control Center is decluttered

The swipe-up-from-the-bottom Control Center overlay menu has a brand new look that helps declutters the layout in iOS 10, and it's something Apple users have been asking for.

It once again features four app shortcuts along the bottom (flashlight, stopwatch, calculator and camera app) and moves the fifth Beatle, Night Shift, to a new, bigger spot above the quartet.

That fixes an issue where people said having five app shortcuts in that bottom row, a short-lived idea that came about when Night Shift debuted in iOS 9.3, made the buttons a tad too small.

Bigger AirPlay and AirDrop buttons appear above Night Shift, too, while toggles for Airplane mode, WiFi, Bluetooth, Do Not Disturb and Orientation lock are unchanged (except for their new blue hue when on).

But what happened to the music controls? Slide right on the Control Center, and there's a dedicated pane for the volume, playback and device output controls, and even music album cover art.

Lockscreen camera and 'widgets'

It's easier than ever to flip on the camera with iOS 10 because sliding the lockscreen right (when Control Center isn't open) automatically transitions to the camera app.

This is a camera app shortcut we've seen on several Android phones and it beats reaching for the bottom right corner, where the camera shortcut remains in iOS 9. You use the camera app everyday, why not make it easier to access?

What happens when you swipe to the left on the lockscreen? Glad you asked a second question. It reveals a new spot for Apple's Today menu "widgets." It's not as customizable as Android widgets, but it's new location a big improvement.

Graphical 3D Touch shortcuts

Within the home screen, 3D Touching app tiles like Activity gives you a more graphical account of your fitness goals. You'll know faster than ever that you have to close those daily activity rings.

ESPN had even richer shortcut information within its 3D Touch menu. It runs scores and there's a button to easily add a widget. It's even more graphical, throwing up a drawn out play-by-play interface and video of in-progress games you're following.

All of this peeking at apps can be done without leaving the home screen, and it means that 3D Touch is becoming a little more relevant in iOS 10.

Talk to Siri normally

Two billion requests a week go through Siri, and it's now going to do "so much more," according to Apple. With that, they announced that iOS 10 will open up Siri to third-party developers.

Now you'll be able to ask Siri things like, "Send a WeChat to Nancy saying I'll be five minutes late.'" It can be said variety of ways and still understood by the now-smarter Siri.

In (very literal) other words, Siri also works just fine if you say it like "Tell Nancy I'll be five minutes late with WeChat," and even "Siri, can you shoot a message on WeChat and say I'll be five minutes late?"

Siri for iOS 10, all of a sudden, is going to be a whole lot less "Sorry..." for miscues. This is thanks to what Apple calls an "intense API," which even functions in this new way in its multiple languages.

Siri third-party apps

Besides WeChat, Siri is ready for other chat apps, like WhatsApps and Slack, and ride hailing services like Uber, Lyft and Didi in China (which Apple invested in recently).

Searching photos through apps like Shutterfly and Pinterest can be done with your voice thanks to Siri, and you can start, pause and stop fitness workouts with MapMyRun, Runtastic and RunKeeper.

Siri can also help you send money to friends with Number26, Square and Alipay, or start a VoIP call to tell your friend why you're not paying them on time via Cisco Spark, Vonage and Skype.

Messages

Messages is introducing rich links within a conversation and a live camera view as soon as you press the camera button. Like emoji's? You're going to love iOS 10.

Apple is making bigger emojis that are now three times as large as before, and the keyboard can now identify words you can easily replace with emojis via a single tap on each word.

There'll be bubble effects so you can "say it loud" with a bursting bunch of text, or say something "gently" with slow-to-exist texts.

You can also use "Invisible Ink" that requires the message receiver to slide their finger over a text or photo. It'll either be a nice surprise, or horrific shock to your friends.

Apple showed off an Invisible Ink demo in which a blurry photo turned out to be a bride-to-be's hand with a wedding ring on it. I'm pretty sure there are going to be a lot of appendages sent using Invisible Ink.

You can react to individual messages with expression-driven Tapbacks (reminds me of Facebook reactions) and write out meaningful messages with handwritten "digital ink."

With club disco lights, big emoji and full-screen fireworks for iOS 10, Messages is one crazy app. But it'll get even more insane in the future because Apple is opening up Messages to developers with an SDK.