The first app to use this underlying functionality, called Health, ships with iOS and provides a health and fitness dashboard so you can monitor your Heart rate, calories burned, blood sugar, cholesterol, weight, fitness, and other categories.
But Windows Phone lacks an integrated, core health infrastructure like the new Health Kit functionality that Apple has added to iOS 8.
With Sensor Core, Nokia added some very interesting health-related capabilities to certain Nokia handsets only. You can share photos and calendars, and you can find your kids-courtesy of their phone's GPS-on a map at any time. When they want to make any purchases, you can configure it so that they have to get explicit permission from you. Your kids don't get your Apple ID and password.
Now in iOS 8, it has also added a neat Family Sharing feature that lets you share your Tunes (music, movies, TV shows), iBooks, and the App Store purchases with up to six family members, and do so securely. Stung by lawsuits and complaints about children buying apps and making in-app purchases on its devices, Apple has slowly but surely plugged the holes and made iOS more secure. This is quite possibly the iOS 8 feature I'm most excited about. And this list is intended to be constructive. But I'm not as interested in helping Apple as I am in selfishly seeing my favorite mobile platform catch up in ways that are meaningful. There are as many, if not more, Windows Phone features I'd love to see in iOS and iPhone, starting with live tiles and dedicated Back and Camera buttons. To be clear, this isn't a one-sided debate. But the iPhone 6 and iOS 8 in particular have a lot to offer, including some things I'd really like to see in Windows Phone. To use the app on your Mac, just click on this icon and the app will launch and display the content that you were viewing on your iOS device-a Safari webpage or map, for example.The conventional wisdom among Windows Phone fans is that theirs is the only truly innovative mobile platform, and that Apple in particular is behind the times, releasing years-old features in its new iPhones and iOS to a compliant audience. When you do, a Handoff icon will appear at the left of the Mac’s dock (or at the top of it if you’ve pinned your dock to one of the sides of your display). To use Handoff between an iOS device and a Mac, simply launch a compatible app on your iOS device. You’ll find the Handoff icon next to Yosemite’s dock and in the application switcher. Third-party apps can be written to take advantage of Handoff as well. On a Mac running Yosemite, Keynote 6.5, Numbers 3.5, and Pages 5.5 are compatible as are version 2.5 of Keynote, Numbers, and Pages running under iOS 8. Likewise, you can hand off apps between iOS devices-start work on an iPod touch and then hand it off to your iPad.Ĭurrently compatible apps include the iOS 8 and Yosemite versions of Calendar, Contacts, Mail, Maps, Messages, Notes, iPhone, Reminders, and Safari. For example, you might be working on a long note on your iPhone and, walking into your home office, choose to finish your work within your Mac’s version of Notes.
The idea behind Handoff and apps is that you can launch an app on one device and then, when you’re in range of another, continue your work on that other device. Now that you’ve configured your compatible devices correctly, let’s see how Handoff works.