iOS 8 - The new iOS—Huge for developers. Massive for everyone else.

I'm very excited about interactive notifications and widgets. I had mocked up something very similar (with a Product Hunt cameo) over the weekend so it's cool to see how Apple has expanded functionality outside of apps.

Enhancements to Photos are also a welcome change. I've been using

@adamsigel Agree with you on both fronts, Adam. - I haven't been a big fan of notifications in previous versions of iOS (too many trivial updates), so I've turned them off for the most part. There's lots of potential for this medium though, and it's great to see it becoming more interactive and useful. - I know a lot of families (mine included) that use Photos + iCloud to share photos. So it's great to see some improvements there. Search and Time Lapse look great. I hope the Shared Photo Stream UI gets cleaned up.

Loving the updates to messages as well, especially around group messaging. Solving lots of headaches there.

Love everything except that they added blab to iMessage ;)

I don't think it's quite the same as Blab @ShaanVP. I love me some Blab!

@lylemckeany haha - yeah, was just poking fun at Apple for shamelessly ripping off features from other apps. iMessage cloned a ton of Whatsapp features & UX. iDrive did the same to Box etc..

@ShaanVP but they don't have a Blab bot! (seriously though, I bet you could create a product out of Blab bots and mini-games... let's brainstorm sometime). I'm super jazzed about this. In particular, the ability to respond to notifications without unlocking the phone is a big deal (yeah, I know Android has had this forever). @joshm wrote a fantastic post where he describes the lock screen as the new news feed (cc @kellymcgrath). I use it this way -- it's the first thing I look at when I wake up. I scroll through notifications to ensure I didn't miss something important before unlocking my phone, effectively clearing my "feed." And as friction is reduced, we'll interact even more with one another and perhaps send more "yo's" because it's so easy.

@rrhoover Yeah. Blab bot, blab roulette, etc.. the possibilities are endless! I like @joshm's post, but would argue that the lock screen is your new INBOX, not Newsfeed. An inbox is centered around YOU. Your calendar, messages people send to you, things near you etc... A newsfeed is centered around your friends/network. That's a major difference. Facebook Home (or whatever it was called) was an actual newsfeed on the lockscreen. I agree that there will be more products that leverage Push Notifications, but soon the market will adjust, and people will stop enabling PN. (I think Andrew Chen gets credit for the Law of Shitty Clickthroughs)

Appendix: The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs by @andrewchen