After the launch of iOS 14.3 last Monday accompanied by other versions for iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV, the Cupertino company yesterday launched the first betas for developers of the following software versions that, except for a capital surprise , we would see already in the year 2021. Below we analyze the news that we can already find in these systems for the iPhone and company.
iOS 14.4 includes interesting improvements
Developers who have already installed the beta of iOS 14.4 will have been able to verify that, unlike what was seen in iOS 14.3, this is not a version with so many changes. This is in a way understandable, since it is not really expected to find very great news in intermediate versions. The next big change will come in iOS 15, but for now details are still being polished that improve the user experience.
The main novelty that we find is related to the integration with the HomePod mini and the Handoff functionality . This functionality is achieved thanks to the U1 chip that incorporates the speaker, so that when playing a song on the iPhone through Apple Music and joining it to the speaker, the sound can be passed directly to it, feeling at that moment a haptic vibration in the phone that is accompanied by a banner in which the song and album art that is being played appears. It should be noted that by clicking on that banner you can expand the information with a full screen interface.
Image from 9to5Mac
Some VoiceOver functionalities have also been improved for people with vision problems, and now they can better control an app without the need for direct interaction. The Shortcuts application also brings improvements in some functionalities that until now implied having to see a banner at the top of the screen when a certain action was performed.
It should be noted that many of these novelties are also present in iPads compatible with iPadOS 14.4 , a version that also released its first beta for developers yesterday.
Greater stability on macOS 11.2, watchOS 7.3, and more
The fact that macOS Big Sur has brought so many new firsts makes the improvements in intermediate versions minimal. At the moment no relevant news has been found in the first beta of version 11.2, although some bugs that were present since the first version of the operating system have been corrected. An example of this is the Quicktime audio recording arrow for choosing the microphone input.
In watchOS 7.3 we find that the autonomy has improved, although not in a really remarkable way, since the current official version (7.2) has already corrected a multitude of problems related to battery consumption. There is little to highlight also in tvOS 14.4 , a minority operating system and in which the news is not usually relevant given the focus that Apple TV has.
When will they officially come out?
If you are not a developer, you may already be wondering when you can have these versions of software on your devices. Once again, Apple does not indicate the date when they will be official, but taking into account the calendar that usually takes with the updates it would be expected that it would arrive in mid-January . Therefore, in these weeks we would have new betas that would add more news and polish the existing instability in these betas, because precisely this is the reason why it is not recommended that normal users install these versions on their computers.