So yesterday was the keynote for Apple’s Developer Conference, where they announce what they are planning for iOS and OS X for the year ahead.
These events are normally exciting but this one in particular, Apple have out done themselves.
Apple introduced iOS 8 and among all the new features, the following are my hi-lights that I feel enterprise/business customers will love.
So in no particular order here are my favourites:
Shared Storage
Third party apps that access server/cloud based storage can now present these documents directly to your app. So if you have a corporate server, for instance Share Point, you will now have an easier way of accessing your documents.
Mail
Mail has had some love and attention including:
- Free/Busy support for Exchange calendars.
- Quick swipe to mark messages as read/unread.
- Can now designate individual mail threads as VIP.
- Mark external email addresses in red for additional security.
- Automatic reply for Exchange accounts.
- Per message S/MIME controls.
Keyboards
In my opinion this is a big one. Android has had the ability for a long time for third party companies to replace the stock keyboard. iOS 8 now supports this. SwiftKey have already announced they are porting their popular keyboard to iOS 8.
Touch ID
Developers now have APIs for Touch ID so third party apps will be able to use the finger print scanner for authentication.
MDM
Apple’s Mobile Device Management solution is quite mature but with iOS 8 we see some new features including:
- Books and PDFs can now be automatically pushed to iOS 8 devices.
- Devices can now be renamed over the air.
- Query the mot recent iCloud backup.
- Certificate based Single Sign On.
- Prevent the user from configuring restrictions on the device.
- Prevent internet searches using Spotlight.
- Allow/disallow the option to erase all content on the device.
- Disable apps from storing data on iCloud.
Data Protection
As well as Mail and third party apps, Calendar, Contacts, Reminders, Notes and Messages now have their user credentials protected with a pass code until after the device is unlocked following a reboot.