Apple on Monday kicked off its annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. Craig Federighi, senior VP of Software Engineering at Apple, drew the assignment of unveiling one -- well pretty much all -- of the biggest highlights of the keynote, iOS 8. As anticipated, iOS 8 includes a wealth of updates and new features starting with interactive notifications. With the update, users will be able to pull down from a notification and reply to it right there without having to leave what they're doing.



Speaking of, Messaging also receives a number of enhancements. Group messaging now allows users to name threads, remove people from a conversation that is already under way, leave a thread at any time and even assign a "do not disturb" policy on a per-thread basis.

dditionally, users can add location data, pictures and other attachments to threads. There's now a talk button that allows users to add voice messages directly to the thread. But perhaps best yet, all of the media is self-destructing so it won't clutter up the thread as it grows.

Federighi showed off a new "QuickType" keyboard that supports predictive typing suggestions (not unlike Android) and contextual answers. For example, if someone sends you a message that asks if you'd like to see a movie or go to dinner, the predictive text will offer up choices like “dinner” or “a movie” to choose from without requiring you to type the entire answer. The service will learn your behavior and suggest common phrases as answers. All of this learning is done locally to protect privacy.

Family Share is another new feature that's likely to be a big hit. Federighi likened it to the fridge of yesteryear where people would share pictures and leave messages for others in the family. Apple's take on that theme allows up to six family members to create a family link in iOS so they can share things like photo streams, reminder lists, calendars and even have access to Find My Friends.