One of the first important announcements at Apple’s WWDC conference was that the company is adding a new sidebar and browser tab to its Apple News selection of news articles.
Apple News will also soon be integrated into Apple’s Stocks app, so users will be able to view market-moving news right next to the latest share prices. This is according to the firm’s VP of Product Marketing Susan Prescott.
The browse tab and sidebar form part of upgrades to the user-interface for News in iOS 12. The aim is to make it even easier to locate news from your favourite outlets as well as new channels and topics.
Prescott added that in future, the Voice Memos app would come with iCloud support so that a user’s recordings will remain synced across all their devices.
WWDC has become known as the one event where Apple announces the latest software that it plans to release over the next few months. This year’s conference comes at a time when services and software are becoming ever more important to the company.
Even though Apple is still selling millions of smartphones each quarter, sales are not increasing as rapidly as in the past. With people nowadays not upgrading their devices as often as they used to, attracting monthly subscribers for its services has become increasingly important for the firm.
Apple has emphasised areas such as mobile payments, augmented reality and streaming music as its core focuses for the next few years.