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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Brandon Chester - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
It's impossible to measure properly. I haven't noticed any decrease in battery life but I wouldn't put any confidence in that anecdote even though it's my own.Wolfpup - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
Presumably the only way it would is just the extra CPU/GPU getting used by the second program. In most cases I'd guess the effect would be very minimal, at least if a program is coded decently, since you're probably not going to be using two programs that use a ton of CPU simultaneously, or one might be sitting more or less idle for the time you're interacting with the other one, that sort of thing.Joe_H - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
"" In my view, the addition of multitasking just puts the iPad experience even farther ahead of other tablets. Obviously Windows has a similar implementation, but the unfortunate truth is that the Windows tablet market is almost non-existent at this point outside of the Surface lineup"LOL! What a complete load of BS you pathetic Apple shill. The multi-tasking experience in Windows 10 walks all over the iPad, and the Surface Pro 3 just curb stomps the iPad Pro. Don't even get me started on how Apple completely ripped off the multi-tasking from Microsoft. It's the exact same impementation.
I also find your comment about the Windows tablet market funny, especially considering iPad sales have been declining for many quarters now. I suspect you don't have damn clue what the Windows tablet market is.
ama3654 - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
I can't believe them saying multitasking is better than Windows tablet and Samsung tablets when the iPad pretty much copied the same thing. SMH really....Wolfpup - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
My take on it was that that comment was really aimed at Android. Obviously multitasking on a real OS like Windows is always going to destroy what these mobile/limited OSes can do, but I took it that the comment was like really just comparing it to Android.Though Android has seemed utterly pointless on tablets ever since Windows 8/Surface hit. iOS has some tablet-style programs that are missing from Windows (even if obviously Windows has far more programs overall) so there's some benefit there, potentially, but Android?
xthetenth - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
Yeah, I read that as multitasking between tablet apps, which is somewhat limited in Windows by app selection, which is kind of right and kind of missing the point.osxandwindows - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
better multi tasking then samsungxthetenth - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
No, Apple's multi-tasking isn't exactly literally the same thing as that from Windows 8/RT, it's the implementation from 8/RT but with severe limitations on how you control the split between apps unlike Windows' total freedom as long as each app gets its minimum room, and with some ugly kludges tacked on to hide a painfully wrongheaded initial app UI model.star-affinity - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
”Don't even get me started on how Apple completely ripped off the multi-tasking from Microsoft. It's the exact same implementation.”Then one could argue the Task View in Windows 10 is ripped off from the Exposé feature from OS X 10.3 that came out 2003. I think they keep taking stuff from each other back and forth.
MKy - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
One aspect that would have been interesting to read in the review is that how does IOS9 behave in extremely resource-constrained environments, such as the iPhone 4S and iPad 2. Is it faster/more efficient than IOS8?