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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melgross - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
How little people know. The Arm chip was due to Apple. They needed a chip for the Newton, the first PDA, a term Apple invented, by the way. They looked around, and went to acorn. The convinced them, and VSI to get together on a mobile version of Acorn's AM chip used in British school computers. Apple contributed specs, firmware and microcode.
Apple was also responsible for the Power PC chip, getting Motorola and IBM together on that, also supplying specs, firmware and microcode.
They design their highly rated A series of chips.
They've also designed their own system chips for the Power PC.
So yeah, it's easy to diss Apple when you try hard, and don't know much.
niva - Monday, September 28, 2015 - link
Yes, and Global Warming is due to the declining number of pirates.Morawka - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
Microsoft uses intel, intel fab's their own chips.. apple designs chips and has a contractor fab them. Intel advances lithography much faster than these contractor fabs. it is known. ask nvidia and amd how long their contractor has made them stay on the same node. 4 yearsplus moores law is coming to a end for both intel and tsmc/samsung contractors. 3d chip design is the future
danbob999 - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
actually, I would say that Intel is advancing at the same speed as the competition... only they are a little bit ahead.Jumangi - Thursday, September 17, 2015 - link
A little? AMD is still stuck at 32/28nm processes.calden - Monday, September 28, 2015 - link
Their entire CPU line up for 2016 will be based on 14nm.Morawka - Thursday, September 17, 2015 - link
no intel is way ahead because their lithography can make chips of all sizes these contractor fabs (TSMC, Samsung) fall apart when the chip gets bigger than 130mm. That's why you dont see Nvidia and AMD using 20nm or even 16nm atm. TSMC just cant make chips that big without destroying yields. their process is nowhere near as advanced as intel's..Unfortunately for intel, we are in a era where competitors have the technology to disect and sand down Chips layers away to steal transistor designs. Chipworks will gladly do this for samusng/tsmc and spill all of intel's secrets for $.
If i were intel, i'd be suing the hell out of both of them. because intel created fin fet.
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/05/18/h...
Strunf - Thursday, September 17, 2015 - link
Transistor designs are not a very big secret, even Intel publishes pictures of their new advancements... and if you look there's plenty of scientific papers about it, the secret is how to make them in big scale and with good yields, and this is the most complex part. The big secrets are not in the processors themselves they are in the factories and computers there, that's why companies don't allow journalists in so easily or if they do it's on a very well defined program to not show too much.PacificToast - Saturday, September 19, 2015 - link
Trade secret and patent are two very different things. Actually yielding out devices is the hard part, and the time/resources to R&D them are huge. Fin-fet is not owned by intel. There's a huge amount of misinformation in these comments. (Source: Employee of one of the three companies mention in parent).Jumangi - Thursday, September 17, 2015 - link
Did you actually read the post? Cause your response says otherwise. He stated plain facts about a lack of access to new mfg node processes that have greatly benefited their chips over the last few years.