Apple’s iOS 12 public beta has just launched and, believe it or not, there are a bunch of changes behind the familiar iPhone and iPad interface.

It only looks as if things haven’t changed at first blush. New iOS 12 features are full of better integration, faster performance, and, most important, genuine reliability.

In fact, we’ve found the iOS 12 public beta more component than iOS 11.4, which is still rife with known iOS 11 problems. We do heard from you about them – everyday.

But what makes iOS 12 better? Why is it worth the upgrade? We’ve highlighted 12 ways it’ll change your daily life.

1. Your old phone will be faster and worth more

You don’t have to be afraid to update to iOS 12 public beta on your old iPhone and iPad because Apple’s No. 1 goal here has been to improve the performance of dated devices. Whereas prior iOS updates seemed to slow down older hardware, iOS 12 will do the opposite – make them faster – according to Apple. 

The company specifically mentioned iPhone 6 Plus speed improvements during its WWDC 2018 keynote, detailing that, thanks to iOS 12, the still-popular hand-me-down will be 40% faster at launching apps, 70% faster at launching the camera app, and 50% faster at displaying the keyboard.

Even the iPhone X, iPhone 8 and iPhone 5S feels we tested with iOS 12 feels faster and more fluid than it did on buggy iOS 11. All of a sudden, your older, stuttering used iPhone that’s been sitting in a drawer is actually worth a little bit more money again.

2. Every morning, you’ll see Grouped Notifications

Waking up every morning with an iPhone lockscreen in the iOS 11 era meant being slammed with a seemingly endless stream of individual notifications. Like hundreds of them. It was a maddening way to start the day.

iOS 12 fixes this problem with Grouped Notifications. Being able to swipe through, unbundle and instantly clear bunches up notifications sorted by app and message thread is one of the first things you’ll love about the public beta.  It’ll change your morning routine.

3. You’ll stop losing your keys, and may buy a HomePod

Finding your lost keys via an attached Tile tracker and performing other similar tasks is another frustration iOS 12 is looking to solve in the future. It’ll do this with Siri Shortcuts, which are programmable commands you can say to Siri in order to execute a task within an app.

Yes, you can always open the Tile app, find your keys icon, and try to ring it from there, but in the heat of turning everything over in your room, so you really want to deal with opening up the way-too-slow Tile app and wading through all of your Tiles to find the keys Tile?

Siri Shortcuts isn’t part of the iOS 12 public beta yet, but the idea behind it is so promising that we just might be inspired to buy a HomePod. Asking Siri where our keys are without having to fetch our phone (which may always be lost for all we know) is yet another shortcut we like.

4. Group FaceTime will stop cutting of people’s faces

FaceTime is a great way to connect with family and friends afar because you get to see everyone’s faces on your iPhone and iPad screen. Well, almost everyone’s faces. Right now, birthday FaceTime calls for me consists of half of my dad’s face and half of my mom’s face. It time to make FaceTime whole again.

Group FaceTime with iOS 12 will fix this, as everyone with a compatible iPhone and iPad can join the video call – up to 32 people at once. My mom has an iPad mini and my dad has an iPhone. My seemingly endless number of nephews won’t hit the user cap either. That’s going to make a lot of people happy and hole in my family.

5. Yes, even Memoji will have an impact

Okay, not everyone is going to use Memoji, but a lot of times, I don’t want to appear on camera in a 1:1 FaceTime video chat. That goes double for Group FaceTimes at times. This is where Memoji may be a bit hit, especially with kids and everyone who doesn’t like staring at their own face on a screen.

Snapchat masks and Instagram filters are popular for a reason. Apple’s Memoji, complete with winking and tongue wagging, is actually a clever method to make FaceTime even more accessible. It’s definitely more useful than Animoji.

6. You may use your phone less

We use our phones too much. You’re probably using one right now. Apple is aware of the addicting nature of its smartphone, tablets, and apps, so it has created a way to track your usage and provide self- (or parent-) imposed limits.

New to the settings menu is Screen Time, which cleanly lays out which apps you’ve been binging on. It doesn’t just report that you have problems. There are solutions here, too. Downtime lets to schedule time away from the screen and App limits is a timer to lock you out of apps.

My usage numbers in the Screen Time menu have the potential to look less scary – though it’s really easy to ignore the suggested breaks. This new feature is more about much-needed awareness.

7. ARKit 2 means someone will play with you

AR games on the iPhone and iPad have been a neat party trick on iOS 11, but iOS 12 is going to bring more people into Apple’s augmented reality ecosystem thanks to multiplayer gaming capabilities. Two different Apple devices can look into the same AR world, which is something we haven’t seen from other more expensive hardware.

The iOS 12 beta is laying the foundation for developers to make these multiplayer AR games. You may not see a lot of AR multiplayer content on day one of the public beta, but developers we talked to at WWDC this year seemed eager to get started on this more than any other new feature. Shared experiences certainly seem to be in the pipeline for iOS 12’s official launch later this year.

8. Photos app event search

Let me know if you’ve heard this before:

“Hey, let me show you my photos from this recent event” …followed by ten minutes of painfully searching through your photos app to find the right photos to show someone.

Apple’s Photos app is making searching for specific photos a bit easier, automatically categorizing your snapshots by event to compete with Google Photos. It’s using over four million events, as niche as the Aspen Ideas Festival, to group photos together in the photos app.

9. Translation into 40 languages

Globetrotting with an iPhone just became easier as Siri can translate 40 different language pairs on-the-fly with iOS 12. You’ll still need an internet connection to get it done, but it makes ordering in a foreign restaurant easier.

Note: Siri still can’t translate Spanish into English yet in iOS 12 public beta, but we’re hopeful that Siri will learn every major language by iOS 13 at its current place. It can translate English into Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, and French.

10. Voice memos

The iOS 12 public beta bring new features to even the most basic apps, and we’ve found the most use out of the Voice Memos makeover. It automatically names files based on location (you can edit the name anytime) and just has a cleaner interface.

The best is yet to come. Voice Memos will sync to iCloud and that means you can quit using AirDrop to send your voice memo to your Mac computer. It’ll already be there when you update to macOS.

Even more on the way

These are just our first impressions of the newly launched iOS 12 public beta. There’s still more to explore and additional features for Apple to launch in between now and the final version of the software. Siri Shortcuts, for example, is the top feature we want to test out but have to wait for.

You can download iOS 12 public beta right now, or wait until the official launch of the software. That usually happens in September. Unlike prior beta, the software here is sound. We can’t guarantee you won’t run into problems, but so far, we haven’t had a single bug that hasn’t also plagued us with iOS 11. 

http://www.techradar.com/news/ios-12-first-impressions-10-specific-ways-ios-12-can-change-your-daily-life

Apple’s iOS 12 public beta is now available to everyone with a willingness to test the new software on their iPhone and iPad.

Its big highlight is that it’ll make your older devices faster, according to Apple. The iPhone 6 Plus, for example, is 40% faster at launching apps, 70% faster at launching the camera app, and 50% faster at displaying the keyboard.

There are also a bunch of front-facing features, including Grouped Notifications, Group FaceTime, and ARKit 2 for multiplayer gaming – so much room for group activities.

• iOS 12 first impressions: 10 specific ways iOS 12 can change your daily life

Memoji, the personalized Animoji that are supposed to look like you or ‘the real you’, according to Apple, are also part of today’s iOS 12 public beta. They can even be used in FaceTime and Group FaceTime.

There’s a new Measure app and refreshes to Apple News, Stocks, Voice Memos and even CarPlay. iPads get updated to iPhone X-like gesture controls, likely making room for new 2018 iPad Pro models.

Just don’t expect every feature to launch with iOS 12 public beta. We’re likely going to be waiting for Siri Shortcuts, which can be programmed to specific apps. Siri will understand that “Find my keys” should ring your Tile tracker, for example. We’ll have to wait for this perk until a later beta update or the final version of iOS 12.

Apple typically tests out new iOS public beta updates for just under three months, leading up to the final version at new iPhone launch events.

http://www.techradar.com/news/apple-launches-ios-12-public-beta-today-to-speed-up-your-iphone-and-ipad

Website builders can help you build anything from a simple single-page site to a professional web store, even if you’ve no design or HTML experience at all. Whether you’re a sole trader or a multinational corporation, just about every business needs an online presence – in other words, a website.

Even if you don’t sell products online a site can help people find you, learn more about your skills and services, and provide a way to share your details with other potential customers. It’s like having a permanent, always-on-call personal assistant, ready to answer queries. And it can even be free

More experienced users can customize and fine-tune the design to suit their own needs, or perhaps install a more traditional web design package that allows them to build the perfect site from scratch.

There are free options, but these often have major restrictions, including limits on the size of the site and the lack of any ability to use your own domain. Fortunately, the commercial options are very reasonably priced, from around £5/$5 to £10/$10 a month, with hosting included.

To help you decide which option is best for your needs, we’ve picked out the cream of the crop: these are the five top players in the website building world right now.

1. Wix

Wix is one of the most popular online website creators, offering a range of plans and products. The free version has Wix branding, limited storage space (500MB) and bandwidth, but move up to the most popular plan (unlimited) and there’s no Wix ads. You get unlimited bandwidth (hence its name) and 10GB storage, along with a free domain, Google Ad vouchers and much more. The e-commerce plan adds an online store along with 20GB storage for a reasonable $16.50 (£12.30) per month.

An excellent collection of 500 plus templates gets the design process off to a quick start. The drag-and-drop editor gives you all kinds of tools and features to explore – an image editor, video backgrounds, animations, social buttons, an integrated site blog – and just about everything can be tweaked, tuned and restyled.

All the core editing functions are really smartly designed, and operate more like a native app than your average website builder. Wix does have some weaknesses, with tech support seeming a little sluggish and limited in some respects. But there’s no denying that the superb editor and range of top-notch templates make it easy for web building novices to create something impressive.

2. 1&1 MyWebsite

There’s a lot to like here in terms of a powerful drag-and-drop editor bristling with professional features and highly customizable templates, but at the outset, let’s make it clear that this isn’t the cheapest service around.

There’s no free plan (or indeed trial – although there is a 30-day money-back guarantee), and the most basic plan is priced at $3.75 (£2.99) a month for the first year, rising to $8.75 (£6.99) afterwards. That gives you unlimited pages and web space, a simple integrated blog, limited SEO settings, plus website backup and restore, so it’s a touch pricey for what you get.

That said, 1&1 MyWebsite offers a wide range of responsive templates, and an editor which provides loads of potential adjustments and tweaks, all with plenty of visual feedback and context-sensitive menus to help streamline the whole process. What’s clever here is that the top-level stuff is easy to use and understand for beginners, yet expert users can dive more deeply into the menus to really play around and customize elements.

Other highly useful features include the ability to point to your old website in order to import media content from there straight into your new site. This could be a huge timesaver for some. There’s no e-commerce plan here, but there is a separate 1&1 eShop range for that functionality (although it costs extra, starting at  $12.50 – £9.99 – a month, rising to $27 – £19.99 a month).

3. Weebly

Weebly is another big name in the website building world which offers a powerful editor and capable set of features. There’s a free plan, which like Wix limits space to 500MB and imposes ads on your site.

However, if you move up to the Starter plan – at $8 (£6)  a month – the ads and storage limit are dropped, plus you get a free domain, and even support for a web store containing up to 10 products. The supercharged Business plan lets you create sites with unlimited web store products and high-end store features like product reviews and discount coupons, retailing at $25 (£19) a month.

The service offers hundreds of professionally-designed web templates, covering just about any site type. The drag-and-drop editor is neatly designed, although you don’t get full control over where you can position elements on the page, and the interface can seem a little cluttered. A further niggle is that there is no global Undo feature.

Like Wix, we found tech support was a little wobbly in terms of sluggish responses, but Weebly offers a host of powerful features, some very stylish templates, and easy access to free images for your site is another definite boon.

4. Voog

As we’ve seen, many website builders pitch themselves towards novices and making life easy for the less site-savvy out there, but what about experts who want powerful low-level control? Those are the users Voog has in mind.

So you don’t get many templates here, for example, and there’s the bare minimum of media support – but what you do get is a compact drag-and-drop editor which does its best to stay out of your way. There are weaknesses here, and the interface is somewhat clunky in respects – and it’s another which lacks a global Undo function – but it has some real power you can drill down into.

For example, clicking a text box gives you the option to use bullet-point lists, insert tables or videos, or even edit the HTML source to customize effects. Voog also lets multiple users easily collaborate on a site project, and if you’re after nifty, unusual features like these, you won’t see them elsewhere.

The entry-level Starter plan is priced at $7.40 (£5.30) per month (billed annually) and gives you 2GB storage, and all the core features you’ll need, including SSL security (although it’s limited to 30 pages). If you know what you’re doing in terms of website design, and want some true power and customization capabilities, there is a 30-day trial you can check out (no credit card details needed).

5. Jimdo

Jimdo is a somewhat quirky website builder targeted largely at novice users, but it’s well worth your attention for a number of reasons, not the least of which is a free plan which boasts more than the average offering.

Yes, there are the usual limitations including adverts, a 500MB storage limit, no custom domain, and very limited SEO. But there are a few features you won’t get in other free plans, like a password protected area, and very basic e-commerce support for up to five products (the latter is very unusual for a freebie).

The site editor itself is simple and consistent, even if it’s somewhat unconventional in terms of its design. Also, the editor doesn’t have as many functions and features as some rivals. For example, there aren’t that many templates, and the widgets on offer aren’t as plentiful as you might find elsewhere – plus there’s no global Undo (although Jimdo isn’t alone in this respect).

Another neat touch is a good web knowledgebase which means help is generally close at hand when it comes to troubleshooting. Overall, this is a compelling product, and if you fancy experimenting with a simple web store without spending anything, Jimdo is well worth giving a whirl.

http://www.techradar.com/news/the-best-website-builder