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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Morawka - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
your still talking about the 13" ipad pro man? thats what we are comparing here. It's huge, must be held with 2 hands, and is heavy without a kickstand. to do any extensive typing, your gonna need a tablet stand, and then you cant use touch. must have keyboard.its just to big (and heavy) to do what your typical use case is on a ipad. sure it's cool for artist, but it's gonna slide around on the table when your drawing unless you have it on some sort of stand.
ws3 - Thursday, September 17, 2015 - link
The iPad Pro is the same weight as the original iPad, which I have and use without issue.Sc0rp - Wednesday, September 30, 2015 - link
"and is heavy without a kickstand"It weighs 1.57 pounds. that's only 0.07 more pounds than the iPad 1 or 2. Thats not heavy.
damianrobertjones - Thursday, September 17, 2015 - link
Sorry but you're miss-informed. The MD here has a Surface Pro 3. The QA guy has one. The H.R. lady has a Pro 2. The sales guys have a mix and I use an i3 SP3 at home. if you add the dock you've an instant desktop replacement....and yes these guys do heavy Excel work.
Last year, while waiting in an airport, I use my then pro 2 to launch a VM that holds all my design stuff. I took a picture with my 1020, threw it into the VM, messed around with the picture and uploaded. That VM held my video editing software etc. Why compromise with an ipad? The weight difference is hardly an issue.
P.s. I also own an Air 2, which I like, but it really is a toy and my fav app is SimCity Builit :)
robinthakur - Thursday, October 1, 2015 - link
I agree in that while the Suface 3 Pro is my primary deive, it could really just be any laptop (or Macbook) because I just use it at my desk, and I never use it in tablet mode because it gets quite hot and noisy. Likewise it's not stable enough to use in laptop replacement mode (due to the kickstand design) pretty much anywhere but a flat surface like on the tube, bus etc.Klug4Pres - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
"For me, my iPad is my preferred device to check email, browse the web, read, play games, stream movies/music, etc. "Maybe I haven't tweaked the setup enough, but I find my wife's iPad very frustrating to use for web browsing. 90% of the time, it is great, but then I try to do something simple like fill in a web form and suddenly it is completely unusable. I cannot scroll text within form boxes, I cannot move the cursor in a reasnable way for editing, there are no arrow keys, hover text hides what I am writing, etc.
Say what you like about Windows and laptops, and there is lots wrong with them, but as productivity devices they just provide a more efficient experience. Then there is Flash content, handling certain file types, dealing with files in general.
I also prefer not having to hold the device I am using, and clamshells are just better ergonomically for that.
Vichy_C - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
"a toy like the iPad"That "toy" has more graphical and computational power than ANY Surface devices available. It also has better battery life, better accessories (Apple Pencil) and better hardware design.
kspirit - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
what.Vichy_C - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
Did I misspell something? I said the iPad Pro is better than the surface graphically, computationally, aesthetically, and accessorily. It's not a "toy" by any stretch of the imagination.xenol - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
Sure the iPad Pro is better than the Surface. It was running a Tegra 3 which was woefully underpowered for the device to begin with.Now the Surface 3, that might be a toss up because it depends on what metric Apple used when claiming A9X is "faster than 80% of portable PCs shipped". For all I know, they were comparing it with all the Atom based tablets and convertibles and by "faster", maybe like 5%.