The Apple iOS 9 Review
by Brandon Chester on September 16, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Apple
- Mobile
- Tablets
- iOS 9
2015 has been a pretty big year for Apple as a company. Product launches this year included the Apple Watch, the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, the iPad Mini 4, the iPad Pro, and the new Apple TV. This month is a big month for their software launches, with today marking the release of iOS 9 as well as watchOS 2, and OS X El Capitan launching at the very end of the month. In time I hope to do some sort of review of the new features in watchOS 2, but today's article focuses strictly on iOS 9 and everything new that Apple is bringing to their biggest operating system for both users and developers.
What's interesting about iOS 9 is how Apple has involved their community of users in the development process by creating a public beta program. OS X Yosemite famously was the first version of OS X to have a public beta (with the exception of the OS X 10.1 Kodiak beta 15 years ago), but Apple had never done anything like it for their mobile devices until now. However, many users found ways to install the developer betas of iOS on their devices by bypassing the activation or having a service register their UDID for beta installation. With more and more features being added to iOS, and more and more users adopting devices that run it, it appears that Apple felt that expanding their beta user base beyond developers would be a good way to collect information on bugs and stability, as well as general feedback about what does and doesn't work well.
Opening up iOS 9 with a public beta also plays into the focus of the new release. iOS 7 was an enormous release that redesigned the entire operating system, and iOS 8 added features like continuity and extensibility to improve how apps communicated on iOS, and how iOS devices and Macs communicate with each other. With all those changes there has been concern that there hasn't been enough attention to polish and eliminating bugs in iOS. While it's not something explicitly stated, it's clear that iOS 9 does go back to basics in some ways, and focuses on improving performance and stability. There are still new features, and some of them are very integral to keeping iOS competitive as a mobile platform, but the key focus is on solidifying the existing foundations.
The polish and improvements that will be most obvious to the end user are those that involve visual or functional changes to the apps they use on a daily basis. With that in mind, it makes most sense to start off the review by taking a look at some of the general changes made to the UI and the system in iOS 9, so let's dive in.
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Sc0rp - Wednesday, September 30, 2015 - link
Windows users are the cybermen of the computer world.Windows user: "We are four million, how many are you?"
Apple User: "We are FOUR"
Windows user: "You will beat us with only FOUR apple users?"
Apple User: "We will beat you with ONE Apple User! You are better than us at only one thing."
Windows user: "What is that?"
Apple User: "You are better at failing."
Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
The problem is that windows is jsut a horrible OS. It is a sloppy slobbery steamign pile of dung to navigate on a tablet. And it is still very broken and has always been broken and will likely always remain broken. Stuff that should work simpyl doesnt work reliably. Even the windows store sometimes fails to function on my win 8 tablet. Yes, it fails to load the frickin store! Sometimes windows update simply ceases to function. It drains a full battery overnight just sitting in standby. When you open the onscreen keyboard it often covers up the text box that you are typing in. When you close the keyboard it sometimes leaves a huge chunk of your window missing, forcing you to click the minimize and maximize buttons to fix it. There is an endless list of issues like these that no one should want to deal with. I now use my windows tablet STRICTLY for playing videos. Anything else, and I mean ANYTHING, results in complete frustration and a desire to smash the device into pieces. Anyone who says otherwise is simply deluded or not a productive computer user.Wolfpup - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
Wow. Yeah, really "objective" there. LOLcatinthefurnace - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
Yep, these are issues everyone that uses Windows faces, but very few talk about them when Apple is in the discussion. When Apple is the subject, Windows is idealized as a flawless "full OS", and people claim that there is no reason someone would prefer iOS for mobile tasks. Insanity I tell ya.nerd1 - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
I use all three OS (ubuntu, windows and OSX) and I think windows is the best OS for managing a large number of files for productivity tasks.tuxRoller - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
What does this mean? Win handles memory better? That is, give the same amount of ram, you can't open the same number of "files for productivity tasks" on osx/linux?The window managment is better? IN what way?
nerd1 - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
I just found it harder to manage a very large number of files in OSX, or windows/file manipulation in general. And I have had a macbook since 2011.tuxRoller - Thursday, September 17, 2015 - link
Again, what do you mean "manage"?For very large file sets a cli is typically going to be faster (and in that case all the desktops assuming powershell is installed) should work fine.
I guess I just find these sorts of complaints nebulous to the point of preference masquerading as some sort of fact. I'm not saying you're not right but windows had never had s particularly sophisticated window manager especially compared to osx/kwin/compiz, and file management should be pretty equivalent on all the DEs.
Sc0rp - Wednesday, September 30, 2015 - link
For large file sets you can also use automator, which is a simple graphical fronted for applescript.Sc0rp - Wednesday, September 30, 2015 - link
It is only harder if you don't know the file system that well. I find it incredibly easy to navigate."I just found it harder to manage a very large number of files in OSX"
Well use automator if you need to do something with a large number of files. Personally, I'm annoyed that you need to get third party software in windows to do some basic stuff that's provided first party in OSX. You know, like make .zip files and .pdf's.