It’s summertime, and you know what that means: Apple is readying
a new version of the software that drives its iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches.
It’s called iOS 9, it comes out in September, and it will be free. (It runs on
the iPhone 4s, iPad 2, iPad mini, or iPod touch fifth generation — or later
models.)
The new iOS version
looks and feels just the same as before, and everything’s in the same places;
nothing new will confuse you. But don’t let appearances fool you; Apple’s
software plastic surgeons have made hundreds of little tweaks that are intended to make its mobile
devices faster, smarter, and more stable.
If you want an an early
look at iOS 9, you’ll be able to download the public beta version this week (sign
up here); just understand that it’s not finished and may be buggy.
But I’ve already been playing with the beta and thought you might appreciate a
guide to what’s new and useful — including, by the way, a slew of new features
that Applehasn’t announced
publicly.
Close the door and
cancel your appointments; it’s a very long list. Fortunately, if you squint
your eyes a little, you can pretty much fit all of them into six categories:
Basics, Apps, Brains, Mail, Camera, and iPad Specials.
The Basics
In iOS 9, Apple has put
a lot of work into making things feel faster
and more fluid— especially opening and moving between email, messages, Web
pages, and PDF files.
The app-switching screen has been
redesigned. The “cards” that represent your open apps now overlap, so that
more of them fit on a single screen.
There’s longer
battery life for all, too. On
average, Apple says every iPhone will get a full
hour more of life from every
battery charge, which is completely awesome.
It eked out this extra
juice by making a long list of tiny tweaks. One example: If your phone is
face-down on the table, the screen no longer lights up when you get incoming
notifications.
There’s also a new Low Power Mode, clearly
inspired by the similar feature on Android phones. You can turn it on at any
time, in Settings -> Battery — but you’ll be invited to turn it on when your
battery sinks to 20 percent and again when there’s 10 percent left.
In Low Power mode, the phone stops fetching
new mail and updating apps in the background. Most of the cute little
animations are eliminated. The processor slows down, meaning that it’ll take
longer to, for example, switch between apps. And the battery indicator turns
yellow, so you don’t think your phone has suddenly gotten slow just to annoy
you.
Apple says that in Low
Power Mode your phone or tablet can hobble along for another three
hours, which can be a lifesaver.
(By the way: The same Settings screen offers far more
information about which of your apps are scarfing down your battery power,asyou
can see above at right.)
Apple has put some time into beefing up security, too; the most
visible example is that you now need a 6-digit Simple Passcode to
unlock the phone. Bye-bye, four-digit Simple Passcodes. (You can, of
course, still create passwords of any length and style if you
turn off Simple Password. And you can still use your fingerprint on recent
models.)
Even the upgrading process has been upgraded. Now
you need only 1.3 free gigabytes on your phone to perform the OS surgery — not
4.6 gigabytes, as before. If necessary, the phone will even ask if it can
delete some of your apps to make some temporary room for the upgrade process.
It also promises to put them back at the end.
And the “Upgrade now?” screen offers more choices for the timing
— like “Tonight” or “When I use my phone least.”
The Continuity feature, introduced last year, lets you make and
take calls on your Mac or iPad, which acts as a speakerphone extension for your
iPhone. (The phone, which must be in the same Wi-Fi hotspot, acts as a sort of
remote antenna.) But now there’s Continuity overCellular— so
far available only from T-Mobile — which lets you take calls on your Mac or
iPad even if your iPhone is somewhere else in the world! Yes,
even if you left it at the office or at your buddy’s house.
Finally, with iOS 9, Apple introduces Move to iOS— a
new app that brings nearly all your stuff from an Android phone or tablet over
to your new iPhone or iPad, wirelessly and automatically. Afterward, you’ll
find your iOS gadget fully stocked with your contacts, email accounts,
calendars, wallpapers, text messages, photos and videos, and Web bookmarks. It
will also transfer your songs and books — at least, the ones that aren’t copy
protected.
Where there are obvious app equivalents to what you had on
Android (Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, and so on), the app offers those for
download, too.
Also, from the Department of Minor Tweaks:
·
The letters on the
onscreen keyboard now change from uppercase to lowercase when you
engage the Shift key. (In the old days, they were always capitals. If you
prefer that arrangement, open Settings -> General -> Accessibility, and
turn off Show Lowercase Keys.)
·
In the bad old days, evildoers could learn your passwords by
watching the little pop-up balloons that appeared above your fingertips when
you tapped the onscreen keys. Not anymore. You can turn those balloons off in Settings -> General ->
Keyboards -> Character Preview.
·
Usually, notifications appear in chronological order on your
Notifications screens. But now, in Settings ->Notifications, you can turn on Group By App, which
clusters the alerts by app.
·
If you’ve hopped into one app (say, Safari) by tapping a
notification or a linkin another (say, email), you canthen hop back into the first app by tapping a little button in the top
left corner, skipping the intermediate step of opening the app switcher.
The Apps
Once you’re using your
phone or tablet, you’ll notice some useful changes to the standard Apple apps.
For example, Apple will
offer a new app called News that “collects all the stories you want to read,
from top news sources, based on topics you’re most interested in.” In other
words, Apple has written its own version of
Flipboard.(It’s
not yet in the developer’s beta version of iOS 9, so I can’t tell you if it’s
any good.)
There’s always been a Notes app, but this ancient,
text-only notepad has had a huge upgrade, making it more Evernote-ish in scope.
A Notes page can now include a checklist of to-do’s, a photo, map, Web link, or
a sketch you draw with your finger. The new Attachments Browser lets you view a palette of all the photos, videos, maps, and Web
links you’ve added in all your notes, which is surprisingly handy. (To make all of this
even more useful, Notes appears in the list of options when you tap Share,
which means you can save a map, link, photo, and so on directly to a note from
within another app.)
And, as before, any changes you make in Notes are automatically
synchronized to all your other Apple gadgets and Macs.
(Note thatyou don’t get
any of these new features unless you’re willing to upgrade to the new Notes
format — which means you can’t open them on any gadget that doesn’t have iOS 9 or OS XEl Capitan forthe
Mac.)
The Maps app remains a
whimpering also-ran compared to the mighty Google Maps app. But in iOS 9, this
app takes a timid step toward Google Maps’ superiority by adding public-transportation directions—
for a handful of big North American cities, at least.
Oh, and when you search
for something in the Maps app, you’re now shown a list of business categories like Food, Drinks, Shopping, and Fun
that list places near you. You can explore within each category to see what’s
around you and find just what you’re looking for.
You can give Siri more elaborate spoken commands
now, like: “Show me photos from Utah last June” or “Show me videos I took
at Mom’s birthday party.” If you’re looking at a Web page or a text message on
your phone, you can even say, “Remind me about this whenI get home” or “Remind
me about this later today.” When you get home, your iPhone, iPad, or Mac will
offer a link to the page or the message you were reading, so you can get right
back into it.
In practice, you’ll wind
up using that one all the
time.
Apple Pay is now accepted at more shops and can be linked to more credit
and debit cards. It tracks your reward cards now, too. Finally, you no longer
have to unlock your phone to use Apple Pay; just hold your phone close to the
payment terminal and double-press the Home button.
Apple has even given the Search screen some love. It starts out full of icons
for the people, apps, places, and news it thinks you might be interested in
right now. You can also search
for things beyondwhat’s on
your phone now, like sports scores, weather, stocks, calculations, unit and
currency conversions, and documents on your iCloud Drive.
And from the Department of Minor Tweaks:
·
Settings -> Photos & Camera: You can now specify the frame rate (30 or
60 frames a second) for standard video and slow-mo video. Higher frame rates,
of course, eat up more space but give you smoother playback.
·
Search your Settings. There’s now a Search box at the top of Settings. So if you’re not
sure which category to tap to find — say, Larger Text or Ringers — the OS can
help you out. (Which is lucky; Settings has turned into a bureaucracy the size
of the IRS.)
·
To reveal the Search box, you can either swipe down from a Home
screen, as you could in iOS 8 — or you can swipe
the first Home screen to the right, as you could in even earlier iOS
versions. Yes, the first Home screen is now the Search screen once again.
·
The much despised Podcasts app has finally had a redesign.
·
In Safari’s Reader Mode (which conceals all ads and other
distracting elements from something you’re trying to read), a newAa button lets you specify the background color or
typeface.
·
If you want to see all the Web passwords Safari has memorized
for you, you open Settings -> Safari-> Passwords. But now you can’t see the stored passwords
without using your Touch ID fingerprint (provided
you’ve set one up).
·
The Health kit app now adjusts when you turn the
screen 90 degrees, showing you, for example, a wider graph of your health data.
There’s a new Reproductive
Health section for women, too, where you can record variables like
Menstruation, Ovulation Test Result, and — in what’s certainly a first in a
major consumer operating system — Cervical Mucus Quality.
The Brains
On the premise that a
more efficient OS is a better OS, Apple has put a lot of time into figuring out
how to save you steps.
For example, there’s
what Apple calls Proactive Assistant, a grab bag that might be better called
“Saving You steps Through Software Common Sense.”
When you address an
email message, iOS 9 suggests
the names of other people you usually copy on messages to that person.
And if you type a particular subject you’ve used before, iOS 9
suggests the names of people who’ve received this subject line before. (For
example, if you send “This month’s traffic stats” every month to three
co-workers, now their names will appear automatically when you type out that
subject line.)
Similarly, when you plug
in your earbuds, the phone automaticallyproposes whatever album, music
service, or podcast you were listening to the last time you put on earbuds. It even
attempts to noticewhere you are, based
on your GPS coordinates and what devices you’re connected to, and adjust
accordingly. When you’re
in the car, it suggests whatever you were listening to there last; when you’re
at the gym or the supermarket — well, you get the idea.
There are some carryover
features from the Mac, too; for example, if an airline or restaurant emails you
a confirmation message, iOS 9 automatically figures out what that message says
and proposes adding it to your
calendar.
And how about this? When
you get an incoming call from someone who’s not in your address book, iOS 9
instantly hunts through youremail looking
for a match for that number, so it can display
a name as Caller ID. When that happens, it’s really cool.
Department of Minor
Tweaks:
·
iOS has always offered an amazing breadth of accessibility
options to accommodate disabilities. But there’s a new category in Settings
-> General -> Accessibility -> Touch Accommodations: You can tell the
phone to register a tap only
if you leave your finger down for a moment, or to treat the finallocation of your finger as
a tap instead of the initial location.
·
For the first time, there’s a master
Off switch for all vibrations— even the emergency
ones for earthquakes and tidal waves. It’s in Settings -> General ->
Accessibility -> Vibration.
Mail
You can now mark up PDF
files and graphics attachments at the moment of sending them. You can circle a
typo on a document, draw arrows on a diagram, and — this is the best part! —
drop in your actual signature on a contract. In other words, the iOS Mail program
now has exactly the same markup features as OS X Yosemite on the Mac.
If you’re sending a PDF or photo, hold your finger
down on it to make the options bar appear; tap Markup. If you’re receiving one, hold down on the file
attachment’s icon, and then tap the Toolbox icon.
Now you get four icons
at the bottom of the screen:
·
Sketch lets you draw freehand
in your document — and marvel as iOS cleans up your lines, if you like. For
example, if you draw what’s more or less a diagonal line, it can straighten it
and make it a perfect 45 degrees. If you draw what seems to be a box or a
circle, Preview zaps it into perfection.
·
Loupe. This option creates a magnified circle on a piece of the photo
you want to emphasize.
·
Text. Click to place a text
box on the image. You can drag it or reshape it — and, of course, you can
replace the word “Text” inside it with much superior words of your own. Use the Aabutton to choose a font.
·
Signature. This button invites you
to add your finger-scrawled signature to a pop-up list, so that you’ll be able
to drop it into contracts. As
a handy bonus, your phone starts out showing whatever signatures you’ve saved
on your Mac, in Preview.
Department of Minor Tweaks:
·
You can now add
file attachments of any type to outgoing Mail messages (not just photos or videos). To do
that, hold your finger down anywhere in the message, and then tap Add
Attachment in the button bar that appears.
·
You can also save
any file attachment from Mail to your iCloud Drive. Just hold your finger
down on it to see the option to do that. Slowly but surely, the iPhone and iPad
are becoming more like real computers; theiCloud Drive has, in essence, become
iOS’s folder system.
·
When you’re editing a list of email messages, you’re no longer
condemned to tap every message individually when you just want to mark, move,
or delete them all (or most of them). New
Mark All, Move All, and Trash All buttons
now appear at the bottom.
The Camera
As our phones become our
cameras, photo and video options become increasingly important. There are
zillions of helpful touches in iOS 9. For example:
·
Until iOS 9 came along, you could attach at most five photos to
an outgoing email message. Now
the limit is 15 photos.
·
You can finally zoom in on a video! Use the same pinching/spreading two-finger
gesture you’ve always used onphotos. Supercool,
really.
·
You can also turn
the video-recording light on and off at will, during the capturing of a single
video. Genius.
·
In the Photos app, once you’ve opened a photo for viewing,
there’s a row of photo
thumbnails at the bottom, which make it easier to jump around in your
collection.
·
In iOS 8, Apple added the Hide button for a photo, so that you
could keep less-lovely items like screenshots, whiteboard shots, and diagrams
out of your Moments, Collections, and Years photo sets. Now you can hide more than one photo at a time,
thanks to the Hide icon that now appears on the Share sheet.
·
It’s a lot easier
to select a lot of photos at once— before sending or deleting them, for
example. Once you’ve selected onephoto,
you can just drag your finger across any others you want to include, rather
than tapping them individually. Three in this row, four in this column,
whatever. (Drag again to un-select them.)
iPad Specials
A few of iOS 9’s goodies
appear only on iPads. For example, when you’re typing, you now get buttons for Cut, Copy, Paste, and basic formatting. They appear on the
Quick Type bar (where you see the iPad’s guesses as to the next word you might
want to type). Other companies’ apps are allowed to add buttons to this bar,
too.
This is cool, too: If you drag two
fingers across the onscreen
keyboard, it acts as a giant
trackpad. You can, in other words, move your cursor or insertion point
through some text as though you had a mouse. After you spend a minute learning
it, you’ve got yourself a more efficient way to select, edit, or move text
forever.
If you’re using a
physical Bluetooth keyboard with your iPad, you’ll be grateful — possibly to
the point of weeping — to discover that you
can now use standard keyboard shortcuts, like Command-Tab, to switch
between apps. (To see what keyboard combos are available, hold down one of the
modifier keys on your wireless keyboard, like Option, Command, or Control.)
The bigger deal is that
you can now split the screen
between two apps— a first for iPads, and a thumb of the nose at Samsung,
whose tablets have offered side-by-side multitasking for years.
If you’re watching a video or conducting a FaceTime video chat,
you can shrink the video window into a little picture-in-picture screen. It
continues playing even as you use a different app.
The Top Line
That’s an awful lot of
stuff crammed into a very small screen, for sure.
Fortunately, very little
of it gets in your way. Most of the time, you won’t even be aware of the
enhancements until you need them. There will be a lot of “Hey, look at that!”
exclamations going on this fall.
I’llreview iOS 9 when
it’s available in finished form. Until then — go forth, public beta testers,
and start pounding away!
David Pogue is the
founder of Yahoo Tech. On the Web, he’s davidpogue.com. On Twitter, he’s
@pogue. On email, he’s poguester@yahoo.com. He welcomes nontoxic comments in
the Comments below.
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