@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.

Appendix: The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs by @andrewchen

Love everything except that they added blab to iMessage ;)

@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..

@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)

@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.

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

I haven't seen or read anything about updates to Maps, but surely they haven't left that alone. I can understand that there's only so many features you can mention at WWDC, but will iOS 8 bring transit instructions from Apple's acquisitions of HopStop and Embark? Is search better? Offline maps?

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

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

"Massive for everyone else" is right. What a huge dl unless you do it through the computer!

@rrhoover I'm with you - notifications get me started in the morn, but being able to do something with them I've wanted for a long time. I've used an android on and off for testing, and the one feature I've wanted in iOS is live tiles. Let me see whats new in an app and interact with it without having to open it. The other feature that's going to be really helpful for me is being able to reply to messages through the notifications and not have to leave the app I'm currently in.. Happens multiple times a day (or I pass on a quick answer while I finish what I'm doing and then forget to do it.) Overall, an interesting batch of changes. Going to be interested in seeing what we can do with it all.

It good to see Apple finally making a release about catching up to the competition and porting/cloning loved features from other successful apps + platforms. To me, primarily an Android user, this makes iOS much more appealing again (switched to Roid with 4.0), as a lot of the loved features have finally made it's way there. The one thing that Apple has historically excelled at is actually baking features and product until it works really really really well and nicely. While we have not seen anything really innovative/new in this update, I expect Apple's version of the same software to just work better.

I'm super excited about this, as a recent OS X convert. The biggest thing I think is the continuity feature; apps being able to pick up where they left off and intelligently transfer across devices is something I've yearned for for a very long time. I've always wondered why I couldn't make phone calls and send SMS' from my Mac.... they can all talk to each other anyway using bluetooth, so why didn't it work? What's perhaps most surprising is Apple beat Microsoft to this. Despite Microsoft saying that Windows Phone and Windows 8 share the same core, it's still failed to execute on these truly important features. Apple's removed all friction between switching devices, which is incredible. It shouldn't matter what you're using, you should always be able to interact with your phone as it's the hub of your life now.