iOS 8 vs iOS 7

APPLE UNVEILED iOS 8 during its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) on Monday, and while it isn't a drastic overhaul like iOS 7 it will bring lots of new features to the iPhone and iPad.

We've stacked up iOS 8 against last year's release to see what features you can expect.

Notifications
Apple has made some fairly major tweaks to Notification Center, a feature which was first introduced in iOS 7, and therefore somewhat limited.

Chief among these tweaks is the addition of interactive notifications, a feature which lets you reply to messages or "Like" a Facebook post, for example, without having to leave the app you're already in.

Notification Center has also been beefed up with widgets. No, hell hasn't frozen over - Apple has in fact introduced Android-style widgets, which developers can start building to appear in the drop-down menu. Apple's Craig Federighi showed off an eBay app that's already available, which will allow users to bid on items from the notifications screen.

Compare this to iOS 7 and Apple's tweaks will be welcomed by most, with the feature presently limited to viewing notifications and tapping to jump into apps.

Messaging
Apple's most interesting iOS 8 updates arguably relate to messaging, with the firm introducing a number of new features.

First off, Apple introduced Quicktype, a feature that could signal the end of Autocorrect. This is a smart word-prediction service, which Apple claims will quickly learn how you talk and what words you're likely to type next, depending on who you're talking to. Support for third-party keyboards was also announced, which means iPhone users can soon opt to replace Apple's proprietary offering with Swiftkey, for example.

Apple also announced that with iOS 8, users will be able to use Do Not Disturb on specific group iMessage conversations, in order to silence frustrating notifications. The firm has also introduced a Snapchat-style Destruct feature, allowing users to send images, videos or audio messages that will be automatically deleted, unless a user has specified otherwise.

These features likely will be welcomed by current users of iOS 7, although the firm has been criticised for "ripping off" features from Snapchat and Whatsapp.

Siri
Apple's voice-activated digital assistant, Siri, will see a fairly major update in iOS 8. Mimicking Google Now, users will be able to say "Hey, Siri" to activate the feature, which will soon be capable of recognising songs (thanks to Shazam) and will be able to recognise streaming voice recognition.

Healthkit and HomekitiOS 7 didn't introduce many new apps from Apple, with the firm instead focused on touting its redesign. iOS 8, however, sees the arrival of Healthkit and Homekit, which sees Apple looking to challenge the likes of Samsung while making its mark in the Internet of Things (IoT).

Healtkit is similar to Samsung's S Health feature, allowing users to track data such as the number of steps walked, calories burned and so on. Unlike the app found on the Galaxy S5, however, Apple's Healthkit app supports third-party apps, including Nike+.

Homekit is Apple's rumoured smart home application, allowing users to easily control internet-connected devices, such as Philips Hue lightbulbs, from their iPhone or iPad.

Next: Camera, Mac continuity, enterprise.

Can you spot the tiny change Google has made to its official logo?

Did you notice any changes in Google’s logo last week? If not, then don’t be surprised. Google did get itself a “new” logo, but the change is so minor that it almost seems accidental. Google appears to have slightly moved the letters ‘g’ and ‘l’ as part of its redesign.

We’ve made a gif image that highlights the change, before and after, which can be seen above. Take a look to see if you can spot the difference.

As you can see, the small ‘g’ seems to have moved one pixel to the right and ‘l’ one pixel down and another pixel to the right. We wonder just what Google hopes to have achieved with the redesign – is it just a practical joke to see if users can spot the difference, or if it was correcting a stylistic mistake it had originally made.

Google has been using its logo as the canvas to commemorate events deemed worthy of global attention, with its rather interesting Google doodles that can be either interactive, or static, such as the most recent one for American biologist Rachel Louise Carson, and another for palaeontologist Mary Anning. A recent interactive one was to mark the invention of Rubik’s cube.

If you’re looking for actual redesigns, Google’s biggest revamp to its homepage occurred around the same time it launched Google+, in mid-2011. The company had then said, “Constant revision and improvement is part of our overarching philosophy,” and described the new Google homepage to feature a smaller logo and links moved to the top and bottom edges of the browser for a cleaner look.

Google’s last major redesigns for its other web services include when it revamped Gmail last year,adding a tabbed interface, as well as YouTube, with its redesigned comments feed. YouTube’sbiggest redesign was back in December 2012, and the web property has been only slightly tweaked since then.

So, while it’s not clear why Google edited its logo last week, if you can think of a reason for this minor change, do speak up in the comments section below.

- NDTV