iOS 13 and Facebook News

WWDC19 just happened and there are all kinds of changes coming to an iPhone near you.

Held in San Jose, CA from June 3-7 the Apple Conference brought together developers for news, information and networking. It was kicked off with a Keynote from Apple's CEO Tim Cook who highlighted a bunch of changes on the iOS platform as well as updates to WatchOS and a serious upgrade for the Mac Pro.

Some highlights of the news

1. No more iTunes (but don't panic) - The legacy has ended as the app is being split up into three separate apps (Music, Podcasts, and TV) so users can get exactly what they're looking for instead of searching through a behemouth of stuff.
2. Apple Based Sign-ins - Deemed as simple and more secure, users will be able to sign in to their favourite apps like Facebook and Twitter through AppleID. This anonymizes user data which could prove to be a big challenge for Facebook, but that's not Apple's problem.
3. Dark mode - Now we can use our phones at night without sending out beacons to space, or more realistically - not disrupt sleeping partners while surfing in bed.
4. Faster Face ID and new Memoji's - Handy but not really a big deal for most.
5. Better Photos - There will be new editing tools for photos and video and unnecessary duplicates will be deleted.

What's a tech update without some Facebook news

Once again, Facebook is making headlines. It's messy and dramatic so it's good fodder.

At a shareholder meeting recently, 68% of outside investors voted for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to be ousted as chairman. Then on the heels of that an activist Facebook investor called for an independent investigation into the company's governance structure. Effectively, independent investors feel that Zuckerberg has too much power and they want to reel it in.

Of course, the Facebook group of companies and platforms remain unscathed by all of this but there's lots of motion behind the scenes of this massive company.

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