Why We’re Excited About iOS 8 and How to Get the Most Out of It

iOS 8 will have a major impact on mobile engagement, and no one knows this better than the Founders and product engineers working at mobile companies. Below, we’ve asked four experts within the True portfolio what they are most excited about in iOS 8, how they will be using it, and what developers can expect.

Abinash Tripathy, Founder, Helpshift

The features that excite me the most in iOS 8 are Metal, Interactive Notifications and App Extensions.

Metal: Gaming makes up over 70% of the app store revenues. This explains why Apple put so much energy into creating Metal, which will help game developers extract maximum graphics performance from Apple’s 64-bit A7 processors. Helpshift serves the largest game publishers, like Supercell, and we believe that Metal will make games even more engaging.

Interactive Notifications: Interactive Notifications allow a user to complete actions of an app right from the notification without having to launch the app. Helpshift is a communication tool that enables companies to talk to their customers in-app. With Interactive Notifications, app users can reply to a company’s message sent via Helpshift right from the notification. This is exciting, as it reduces so much friction for the user.

App Extensions: App Extensions will enable two apps to interact with each other in iOS 8, which will allow developers to create mashups of apps. There are so many apps that users use today that don’t work well with each other. For example, my favorite note-taking app does not work with my email app. If I have to email a note, then I have to copy the note and open my email app and paste the contents. Imagine if there was a “send as email” button in my note-taking app and I could do that with just one tap. That is what App Extensions will enable, and I am super excited about this, as apps can play nice with each other and customers will win as a result of this feature.

Jeff Hodsdon, Product Engineer, about.me

With iOS 8 finally here, here is what I have my eye on: Extensions. Two in particular—Today extensions and inline Photo Editing.

They aren’t anything too new in the mobile world, as Android has similar features. But if there is one thing Apple is good at, it’s introducing features at a time when people are ready to use them. We’ve had these iOS devices for a long time now and we’re about to see some more complicated functionality, but I think we’re ready.

Today widgets: this will be the first time in a while where there’s opportunity to build something for an uncrowded space. That pull-down area on your phone is going to fill up fast—focus now on what to put there for your product. Think “what would it take for someone to get a glimpse of information and save them the time of opening an app?” A note for developers: you have a lot of freedom with Today widgets. They’re simply UIViews that you can do anything with. But be careful of memory. The constraints are very very very tight. Get ready to optimize for memory if you’re putting photos or doing networking there.

Photo Editing: If this works, it’s going to release the pressure off apps to have to do their own filters for photos. It could be great, because photo sharing apps won’t need the pressure of being a great photo enhancer.

Brent Hieggelke, CMO, Urban Airship

Anyone involved in mobile apps and marketing needs to take note as widgets and interactive notifications are a big, big deal.

The former offers new and extremely valuable real estate, as consumers can add an app’s widget to the Today view of the iOS 8 Notification Center for the ultimate in at-a-glance access. Widgets have potential to usher in a land rush as brands compete to offer consumers dynamic, bite-sized content to attain this exalted position and rise above the growing number of apps installed on the typical device.

Interactive notifications are poised to have an even broader impact on the mobile engagement landscape. Nothing since Apple’s introduction of push notifications in 2009 is as significant to mobile engagement, transforming how push notifications are experienced by users and leveraged by businesses.

Mark Kawano, Founder, Storehouse

As a publishing, storytelling and photosharing platform, Storehouse will be taking advantage of PhotoKit, which enables deeper integration into photos. iOS 8 enables us to look into entire photo databases, allowing us to organize visual content in a way we couldn’t before.

Another big feature is the framework Apple has developed for Extensions and allowing apps to talk to each other. Apps will no longer be one-off uses, like an app that allows you to make your photos look like watercolor paintings; most creation apps will be able to integrate with one another and will become part of a large ecosystem. As a platform built around mobile from the ground up, improving the way we can talk and share information with other apps is very exciting.