iOS 9, thoroughly reviewed

Apple gives the iPad a lot of love as iOS goes back into spit-and-polish mode.

Read the whole story

 

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Correction to missing iPhone features:
The 5S tracks walking and running distance but not elevation.

 

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Has anyone had wifi issues? My 5S has been dropping my wifi connection every couple of minutes.

 

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revco196[/url]":2qcm6tlm]Huh. I thought the low power battery seeing would be accessible through a control panel button. Looks like you have to dive into battery settings to activate and deactivate it every time. That's going to be annoying.

Not only that, I had to manually turn it off. My phone was charging and got back over 20% and Low Power Mode remained activated.

 

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SraCet[/url]":147m0zl1]

InlineRanger[/url]":147m0zl1] ... I think it's easier to dismiss multiple apps at the same time on iOS 8. Since the windows are overlaid on iOS 9, you need much more accurate finger placement.
...

I can't think of a reason why you might want to dismiss multiple apps.

There are really only two cases where you would need to close an app manually:
1) The app has gotten itself into a bad state and restarting it might fix whatever bug you've run into.
2) The app registers itself as one of the select few classes of apps that are allowed to run in the background, e.g., a turn-by-turn navigation app, or an audio playback app, etc., and you want it to stop doing whatever it's doing (like audio playback) without futzing with its UI.

Otherwise there's no benefit to manually closing an app.

If the app is not running in the background (and 99% of apps don't) then all you accomplish by manually "closing" it is either deleting its memory image or deleting the screenshot of what it looked like when you last switched away from it. So you are really just saving some memory/storage, which you don't really save anyway because the OS would do that for you automatically if memory or storage were to run low.

It drives me a little bit insane to see all the people who think they're accomplishing something by "closing" all the apps in the task switcher because they think the apps are running in the background (they aren't) or they're taking up memory (they don't, practically speaking).

I guess Apple brought this on themselves to some degree with the design of the task switching UI, which gives the impression that all your apps are running and if you just switch to one of them them it will pick up where it left off because it must have been running in the background...

Everything you say is true, in theory. I have apps on my phone that really drain the battery and I have to manually close them when I'm done, or else my battery will drain at an accelerated rate throughout the day. For example, if I were to play Breakneck for 20 minutes at the beginning of the day and then do other things, my battery is practically guaranteed to reach 20% by lunchtime. If I manually close it when I'm done, I'll be at 60-70% by lunchtime.

 

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deckeda[/url]":4qgeiwmw]After the dustup this summer about Home Sharing disappearing I didn't see it mentioned in the "thorough" review.

It is back. It is tricky to find, though. In the Music app, it's in with the sorting options. When I started the Videos app, the first thing it asked was which library to use. As far as I can tell, everything works the way it used to.

 

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MilanKraft[/url]":2mcnny86]

The Ginger Rat[/url]":2mcnny86]

MilanKraft[/url]":2mcnny86]STAY AWAY IF YOU HAVE AN iPHONE 4S + iOS 7.x!!

Attempted two installs and both get stuck on the White Screen of Death ("Swipe to Upgrade"). Factory reset didn't help. Others on the interwebs having the same problem and not just with 4s models apparently. I think though it is only happened to 4x and 5x customers, not 6x as far as I've seen.

Apple did a bang-up job of testing this in a variety of install scenarios on 4s apparently, though.

My 5S refused to let me skip 8.4 (.1?). I had to update first before it would load 9.

My iPad went directly from 7 to 9 without problem. I did it mainly for the security benefits but it definitely is laggier.

I think this is the issue. iTunes wanted me to install 8.4.1 all day (it wouldn't show me iOS 9). But later when I looked in the iPhone settings via wifi, it said I could go straight to iOS 9. It lied.

I think there's a reason iTunes keeps telling everyone to go to 8.4.1 and it's because there's a problem going to 9 from 7. Ingenious Apple expects us to read minds instead of assuming the server hasn't been updated with 9, which is what most people thought.

They should pop up a simple dialog: if you want to upgrade iOS 9, you must install iOS 8.4.1 first. Durr.

My experience, since the 1st iPhone, is that iOS updates are slowly phased throughout the day. I usually don't have the option until pretty late in the day. Sometimes iTunes gets the update first, sometimes my phone gets it first. They weren't trying to hide anything or force you to do an intermediate upgrade, they were trying to keep their servers from overloading. You, in your impatience, couldn't stand to wait just a bit longer and did extra work as a consequence.

 

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SPCagigas[/url]":1im2ocvk]

gettersetter[/url]":1im2ocvk]I think Apple maps has reached feature parity with Google Maps, and almost let me ditch my standalone GPS. I even prefer the 3D satellite view over street view to quickly tell me if I'm exactly where I need to be. There are two caveats, however.

When routing for navigation, Google Maps lets me quickly hit an option to "Avoid Highways." As a local truck driver sometimes you just want to keep it on the streets. If I jump on a highway, then G Maps gets the hint and goes with it. Apple maps, even in iOS 9, has no such feature I can see.

And for crying out loud, when typing a hyphenated address in Queens, NY, like 37-26 108 street or something, Apple maps doesn't offer any usable suggestions, whereas G Maps can and does. Apple requires a postal correct address *without* a hyphen such as 3726 108th. Sure it will generally figure it out and route you even with the hyphen in there but it would sure be nice to get a live suggestion closer than Turkey. Seriously. I've tried several times a day for a year and the hyphen chokes the suggestion process.

I know Queens is just an outer borough of NYC but we use the hyphen here *all the time.* What the hell, there's only 2.3 million people that live here, and only two major international airports.

The weirdest part: if you drop a purple pin on a house in *Queens* by long pressing (not in Manhattan or any other borough) the address is returned hyphenated! Like 108-02 or 46-100. It's just the live suggestions that are broken. So clearly someone over at Apple knows how things are done in this neck of the woods. Probably was all the bug reports I filed

Well, your caveats make it pretty clear that there's still a pretty good feature gap between Apple Maps and Google Maps.

FWIW, I tried running them in comparison again last night -- the first time in probably 6 months. Here was my methodology:
Launched Google Maps, entered my destination, then selected the route with the shortest time.
Switched back to the Home Screen, launched Apple Maps, entered the same destination, and selected the route with the shortest time.
Had my copilot switch between the apps as we drove. . .

Immediate Notes:
1. Apple Maps took MUCH longer to find my destination and generate a route - almost instantaneous in Google Maps, but upwards of 20 seconds in Apple Maps.
2. The shortest-time route was a couple minutes shorter in Google Maps than the shortest-time route in Apple Maps -- 17 miles/29 minutes from GMaps, and 21 miles/31 minutes from AMaps.
3. The GMaps route notes alternate routes with estimated travel time changes at every major intersection.
4. The nighttime display for GMaps was much less disruptive/distracting than the AMaps nighttime display (I know this is subjective).

Conclusion: Apple Maps is still a non-starter for me.

That's strange. I just picked a random restaurant on the other side of town and both gave me the same route practically instantly. Apple, however, said it would take 5 minutes longer for the exact same distance and route.