AppleInsider Staff
Apple's Maps and Music services will gain new functionality and and new looks with the upcoming launch of iOS 10, the company announced at WWDC on Monday. In particular, Maps will gain in-app functionality with third-party extensions, while Music has a cleaner design that simplifies playback and discovery.
Apple Maps
With iOS 10, Maps will become open to developers, allowing third-party extensions to plug into the official Maps app. Examples provided by Apple's Eddy Cue on Monday included Uber and OpenTable.
Cue showed how a user could search for restaurants, book a reservation, request a car, and pay for the car all within Apple Maps thanks to extensions, without the need to open another app.
The look of Apple Maps has also been tweaked, offering users the ability to see traffic on their route and a dynamic view that will adjust based on current driving conditions. For example, in a city, the Maps will zoom in to show street detail, while driving on a long straightaway will automatically zoom out to give a better view of the road ahead.
Users can also pan and zoom ahead to see upcoming traffic conditions. And there are also quick controls to see route details, or the ability to search for stops along the current route.
Apple Music
The subscription Apple Music service has exceeded 15 million paid users, the company announced on Monday. And with the upcoming iOS 10 release, Apple Music will gain an all-new look focused on use and content discovery.
In addition to iOS 10, Apple Music will be tweaked for Mac, PC and Apple TV.
Featuring a new structure, the new Apple Music aims to make it clear where the user is, providing quick access to features that users are most likely to use.
In one key change, the music library has a section called "Downloaded Music," where users can see all of the songs stored directly on their device.
On the now playing music page, users can also scroll down to view the lyrics for the currently playing track.
A "Curated For You" section incorporates the Connect social feature with curated mixes. And the Radio tab allows users to explore Beats 1, view upcoming shows, or listen to previous shows like a podcast.
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10 Comments
I thought the Apple Music presentation was great this year, with Eddie explaining things simply and clearly, and I thought the new presenter (It'd be nice to have her name in the article) did a really excellent job, particularly given the tough, techie crowd. I always appreciate how Apple presenters seem to be genuine and authentic, and I really appreciated how she expressed herself in the presentation.
I'm pretty thrilled with the new, simplified layout. I'm a daily Apple Music user and I can tell that the new UI is going to streamline the experience very well, especially now that it will go straight to the library. My one real gripe is the continued lack of social integration (e.g. can't crate your own unique music identity for others to follow and interact with). But I'm glad Apple seems to be simplifying and rebuilding.
Very very useful enhancements announced today that should NOT be underestimated. The addition of APIs/extensions for Siri, Maps, TV and Watch OS's plus integration between platforms and enhancements to Apple Pay, login process, and apps such as Photos is excellent news. This is what the conference is about - empowering developers and we will all reap the many benefits in the coming months.
Downloaded aka your owned and stored music shouldn't feel like an end of list after-thought. For those of us that don't subscribe to Apple Music, it would have been nice to see what it looks like as just a music player.
I subscribed to Spotify for the summer. $10 for three months felt fair. The genre stations seemed super buried in the app during the promo. The charts still feature too many entries from just one or two artists. There ought to be a way to make in a true top 40-50 or what have you.
Less ugly is the best I can muster for music.
The map improvements all looked good and welcome.