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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
227 Comments
View All Comments
name99 - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
"In my test case I have Safari with 6 tabs open. These tabs are all pages from a certain technology website which has particularly heavy pages."You're not fooling anyone. Dude, we all know it's theverge.com :-)
nerd1 - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
Wow, it is a really hilarious article, from extremely narrow apple ecosystem viewpoint. Maybe the author have NEVER used anything except apple deivces?Commodus - Thursday, September 17, 2015 - link
Maybe it's acknowledging that most people don't switch platforms. It'd be nice to have a broader comparison, but let's face it... many hardcore Android fans likely wouldn't accept any elements of this comparison that paint iOS in a favourable light.photolamus - Thursday, September 17, 2015 - link
Apple iOS 9 release today: artwork issues or trouble?http://blog.photolamus.com/2015/09/16/apple-ios9-a...
yhselp - Thursday, September 17, 2015 - link
Thank you for the in-depth review.It took Anand slightly over a week to write the 5s review, we also used to get timely updates on hardware bits and other interesting features. The iPhone 6 review came about 3 weeks after the announcement and ended with a statement that while cool it can't be as good as Android.
What is the reason for this, and can we expect more timely reviews and interesting side-pieces on Apple products?
Malih - Thursday, September 17, 2015 - link
iOS 9 have betas everyone can access, so they can start writing a review before it releases.But to do the same for hardware review would require Apple/Samsung to trust the website with an early review device, which is not exactly accessible to everyone. Also Anandtech digs deeper into the hardware architecture compared to some other reviews. That would most likely cause delay, I think.
ReturnFire - Thursday, September 17, 2015 - link
Are you serious? iOS and iDevice coverage has been fantastic, and has come out in a very timely fashion. Several of the most recent Android devices haven't even had reviews at all, and have been out longer than the 6S (I'm aware this hasn't been reviewed by Anand yet).Nothing against Anand here, and I understand there's good reason for delays in reviewing products (their in-depth, comprehensive nature as an obvious reason), but they certainly aren't slow when it comes to Apple pieces..
willmb - Thursday, September 17, 2015 - link
What frustrates me is that as an iOS public beta tester, my phone got an upgrade to the beta of iOS 9.1 before iOS 9.0 was released. I upgraded without thinking - and as a result, I am stuck as to how I will transfer all my stuff to my new iPhone 6s when it arrives. iTunes, even the new v12.3, does not properly back up the iOS 9.1 beta phone, so even if I updated the new one to the iOS 9.1 beta first thing out of the box, I wouldn't have a good backup to restore to it. iCloud backups have been working only sporadically as well - and with a 4Mb/s ISP, will be inconvenient to download.Morky - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
Found this for you:http://9to5mac.com/2015/09/16/how-to-downgrade-ios...
darkich - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
Question to the author - why aren't you considering Samsung Android in your conclusion?Care to explain why you give a whole iOS 9 tablet OS props for multitasking even while it applies ONLY for three iPad models, yet you diss a whole Android tablet OS even while entire Galaxy tablet line actually offers similar, and in some ways more advanced multitasking?