Some of iOS 9‘s more important planned enhancements include split-screen apps on iPads, a new Home app for controlling HomeKit accessories, a new system-wide UI font, a mass transit directions service for the Maps app, and major quality, performance, and security enhancements. However, multiple sources note that there will also be some smaller, but still important, tweaks to the operating system. We spotlight some of these expected changes below…
Force Touch for the iPhone 6S
Sources confirm that the next-generation iPhone will look like an iPhone 6 but will include a Force Touch display with haptic feedback as one of its marquee feature additions. To go with the new hardware, Apple has designed iOS 9 to be Force Touch-ready and is working to let developers integrate Force Touch into App Store apps. Force Touch on the iPhone will be used to clear up some control space across the system, and potentially replace some long press-and-hold button interactions.
Additionally, Force Touch on the iPhone will offer similar functionality to the Force Touch Trackpads built into new Retina MacBooks and Retina MacBook Pros. Force Touch will be integrated into Maps to drop new pins, into media players for pressure-sensitive scrolling, into the Calendar for adding new events, and across the system for quickly looking up word definitions, according to sources who have used Force Touch on prototype versions of the “iPhone 6S.” However, as Force Touch is tied into new and unannounced hardware, it’s unlikely that the support will be announced at WWDC.
One of our sources believes that Force Touch on the iPhone 6S will be more “power user-centric,” as it will not be essential to using the iPhone, as contrasted with its necessity within certain Apple Watch applications. Apple’s Force Touch work for iOS also spans to the iPad version of iOS, so it’s quite possible that Force Touch displays will also end up in upcoming iPad models. Notably, like the MacBook trackpad, the Force Touch display in the new iPhone is expected to present realtime haptic feedback so users can feel their input physically.
Keyboard
iOS 8’s iPhone 6 Plus Keyboard
Beyond Force Touch support, Apple is also working on an updated keyboard for iOS 9. Apple is said to have prototyped multiple new keyboard designs, including one that is slightly longer than the current keyboard and includes additional editing controls while in portrait mode. Apple also believes that the QuickType keyboard in iOS 8 is not always accessible enough, so it is working on ways to make that experience more prominent across the system. Likely to the joy of many users, Apple is said to have also redesigned iOS 8’s infamous Shift Key so that it is easier to tell when shift or caps lock is activated.
Apple Pay for Canada
In line with reports that Canada will become the first country outside of the United States to officially support Apple Pay, we are told that iOS 9‘s Passbook application includes the necessary foundation to support banks, credit/debit cards, and credit unions in Canada. While the technical side for Canada is being built into iOS 9, it’s unlikely that such a launch will be announced until Apple finalizes its negotiations with Canadian banks. As Apple’s previous efforts to launch Apple Pay in China have reportedly been delayed by similar negotiations, it’s unclear whether any international expansion of the service will be announced at the WWDC keynote. Apple is also expanding its iTunes Radio and Apple Music rollouts this year internationally.
iMessage
Lastly, we are told that iMessage is expected to receive some minor but important enhancements. Apple has upgraded its back end infrastructure to support read receipts for group chat threads, as well as read receipts on a contact-by-contact basis. This means that iOS 9 users will be able to activate read receipts for only certain contacts, such as parents or friends, while leaving read status ambiguous for work colleagues. Apple has also, once again, considered removing the Game Center app (it is not present in some internal iOS 9 builds), and data point additions are planned for the Health application.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
One would hope that *important* functionality like being able to clear all notifications in Notification Center isn’t hidden behind a Force Touch feature-wall.
I’m still puzzled why people consider clearing all notifications important functionality. Why not handle the notifications? If you don’t want notifications of some apps in the first place, turn them off. And if you’re too lazy to finetune the notifications experience (which is perfectly acceptable), why bother clearing notification center? I fail to see how that helps anything.
And if you like consistency, which you should, and you want a way to clear notification center, then why not ask for a way to clear all badges from the app icons, too?
But then again, the best way to handle notifications is by turning off all notifications you don’t care about.
Thank you for finally putting my thoughts into words haha.
Lol, I couldn’t have said it any better. I never understood the demands for clear all notifications. Every single notification on my phone (and my watch) is something that I want to see. Because I’ve filtered out what I don’t want sending me notifications. So if I get a notification, its something that I want to know about. Apps that send notifications like “come on and check us out” I turned off a long time ago. I’ve never even used the clear all function on the Watch
2 culprits:
(1) Multi-platform/multi-device apps that can’t hide notifications without user action. Facebook, Google Hangouts, Twitter, even the New York Times. When you visit Facebook on another device like your laptop, stale notifications stay on your iPhone. iOS platform limitation. Facebook has no way to revoke those notifications after sending them. iMessage is the only app allowed to do this.
(2) Apps have no choice about appearing in Notification Center. If an app wants to send you push notifications, the Notification Center is going to hold onto 5 of them by default. Apps can’t opt out. That’s you always have that “Your Uber is waiting for you” notification in your Notification Center.
Related to #2: It’s super tedious for users to _allow an app to send notifications_ but _hide it from Notification Center_. It takes a dozen taps per app to correct this in Settings.
The user feedback about wanting a “Clear all notifications” button is a symptom of platform limitations in iOS that cause noise to accumulate.
Hey there, read your defence on this very ongoing topic. Impressive, but i would like to add something. Being a normal user, for eg, u turn on notifications for fb,twitter,some news headlines, weather etc. There are times when i want to read the notifications and there are also times when i dont want to as i am a normal human. So, simply turning off notifications wont help. As it will do it forever. So, the times when i dont want to read them, i want clear all feature and these times do come very often.
Just stop setting up your mind that its not a feature we want, even if it is necessary, cause it was not provided by apple and i cant go against it. Eradicate your this type of mindset and be neutral. Thanks
Well sometimes I look at my phone and have notifications from 10 different apps, instagram twitter, text messages, missed calls and so forth, sometimes I can glance through my notifications in 5 seconds, but now it takes me 30 seconds to clear all these notifications. Don’t really consider it as “important” but… I would appreciate it
I hope that the new iOS 9 keyboard also includes a swiping ability. That’s the main reason why I’ve stuck with Swype, even though 3rd-party keyboards suck on iOS.
Have you tried SwiftKey? I use it on my iPhone and I’m pretty happy with it.
I second this. Just add swiping to iOS keyboard and I can be done with the bugginess and delay and unreliability of all 3rd party keyboards.
Well, I’d rather they’d put effort into something I’m likely to use. The iOS 8 keyboard with autocomplete is a joy to use; I rarely need to tap more than two letters to complete a word.
the only thing wrong with current keyboard is you have to change languages instead of selecting 2 or 3 languages you can type simultaneously. that’s what i miss the most and it’s annoying when you have to switch between emoji keyboard and spanish or english and Swiftkey is still too buggy in iOS to use it on a daily basis
Sorry, but that’s not all that’s “wrong”. It doesn’t have the “suggestion” bar in all languages (Danish for one) and the suggestions aren’t nearly as good as Swiftkey. I agree about Swiftkey being buggy on IOS but I’m not sure it is all Swiftkeys fault. I think IOS is partly to blame too as some of the issues I have experienced disappeared right after an IOS update.
I would like Force Touch in Safari to work as a second button mouse click in iOS. It would be so neat in my company’s website to enhance functionality… It would be a dream come true.
So I’m assuming Apple will have to reengineer how the display is made for iPhones to support forcetouch. Will this lead to better display tech? Or will it come with sacrifices?
Another story today mentioned the adoption of a thinner backlight (perhaps to make room for the ‘pressure sensitive’ system) and that it is said to be about 10% dimmer. They mentioned that apple may be able to compensate and find another way to make it brighter all at the same time. So yes, it’s very possible it’ll come with trade offs
Mark, you should go independent with your stories. In recent weeks I’ve noticed that other contributors to this website come across as really ignorant or as typical narrow minded tech reviewers only interested in views or clicks.
The quicker you distance yourself from these guys the better.
You are much younger than them, but clearly have a greater understanding of technology
Just an opinion
It’s not as if great scoops like this come regularly throughout the year.
No I get that and see why you will say that. However it’s not about scoops. If you listen to mark the way he speaks on the podcast for example you can pick up on a lot of thought behind his statements. He is also not afraid to be go against the mainstream audience. I have noticed that even on a pro apple YouTube channel for example a youtubers will not give a lot of praise to an apple product because they fear the backlash form the audience calling him a sheep or whatever else.
It seems to be the norm with the reviewers nowadays. Be cautious with what you say so you can be liked by the mainstream audience
Also, try and listen to their podcast of 3 weeks back and their complaints of the Apple watch. Dom who has a massive YouTube channel complained that during a WORKOUT his watch did not track his activities He then points out that he didn’t even open the workout app, nor did he calibrate the device to be used without a phone.
So 2 points he was expected to know is the activity is tracked continuously only if in “workout” mode and he needed to first calibrate it to work without a phone if he intended to use it that way.
No one on the podcast pointed this out (mark wasn’t present)
That’s just one of multiple frustrating things mentioned in that one episode alone
iMessage read receipts? I’d rather have it update the unread count on all my devices.
iCloud already does this.
Mea culpa. I meant Mail, which is indeed a different program. It may very well be not my dotMac account that isn’t updating the unread count…
not sure apple wants to retain information about messages once they are sent to devices
Why does it take 2 years to fix something broken like the caps key?
Because it wasn’t broken. It was just ambiguous.
It’s broken in the sense that it’s difficult for people to use, particularly since it worked perfectly fine in the past.
If Apple implements a whitelist for the Phone app, we may see the end of the annoying and often scam-riddled telemarketing industry once and for all.
After the Iggy Azalea/Papa John’s incident, I’m glad they finally put together the iMessage filtering, but it needs to extend to SMS and Phone as well.
I’m on social networks, but just like those social networks, I should be able to limit other people’s ability to reach me. I’m connected, but I don’t want to be THAT connected.
After years of keeping Read Receipts off I broke down and turned them on last week. Dont care about it anymore.
Further, I will probably keep the iPhone 6 for one more year and then go 7 Plus
Hey Mark, I noticed last week you said that Apple has realized that updating OS X manually is hard because it is a mature OS, do you personally believe that some day they will stop updating something like OS X or iOS because it will be so mature, or do you think they will keep finding a way to push it forward and make it better?
Thanks for reading, I really appreciate it. I think updates will continue, just without as many new features annually. Maybe a bigger update every 2-3 years.
What’s the point of removing game center, I mean, I don’t use it but its a great place to store all of my games and keep track of my games. They should remove the default app but have it available on the app store.
The Game Center service is not going anywhere. The need for standalone App has vanished. It is essentially something you authenticate with, and from there on the games you play that use it just work in the background.
They are removing the App itself, not the service or function.
And you can access everything useful that was in the app from within the remote view controller. I can’t believe they might actually remove it since I thought Apple had to add at least one app every year that I don’t want and can’t remove.
The Game Center app is useless but I don’t think it should ever go away. If anything they need to beef it up to hold games like Music, Videos, iBooks, Newsstand, etc. folders with multiple pages is close but not quite there yet. Needs to have all games, games store and related tasks in one nice package.
I would appreciate the “Markup” feature for Messages. Being able to markup an image with tools similar to the Apple Mail Markup tools before sending the image/attachment off would be very very handy imo.
Why does everyone keep calling the caps lock key a “shift” key? The shift key doesn’t have a sticky / always on mode, at least not on any keyboard I’ve ever used…also what’s the problem with it in iOS? I don’t get that one..
If you double click the shift key it sticks and enables caps lock.
….what? There is no Caps Lock key on iOS. The Shift Key doubles as a Caps Lock key when pressed twice. The icon changes to represent the current state, of which there are 3 states (off, shift, capslock). Some people allegedly have a hard time telling the difference between the variations of the icon.
Those people are not the brightest. It’s pretty easy to figure out. There are bigger things to fix with the keyboard then that.
Damn! Apple Pay in Canada! About time!
peaking of keyboards, they should fix Italian accents too. There is some good technology out there for Windows, it would be great if something like this were applied to iOS. And of course allow for multilingual input without changing keyboard and/or going through emoticons just to switch between English and Italian or Italian and French.
How about fixing things like:
Allow 5 apps per row on the 6+ to better utilize screen real-estate and not have so much space between app icons, you can press the dead space between them.
While they’re at it, they could let us MOVE OUR APP ICONS WHERE WE WANT THEM SO WE CAN SEE OUR WALLPAPERS AND NOT HAVE TO USE REACHABILITY TO OPEN EVERY SINGLE APP.
Add contact photos in conversation threads in SMS/iMessage so that each reply has the contact photo next to it.
Add contact photos to contacts, not just your favorites.
Allow the user to chose whether they want the keyboard to change color on a per-app basis, or chose the one they prefer because third-party keyboards on iOS suck.
Display contact photos next to messages received on lock screen notifications. (Can’t remember if this is already a thing)
If they would make these changes that should have already been made ages ago, I would no longer feel the need to jailbreak my device.
It’s a shame that such basic functionality is STILL missing after all these years.
(Sorry for the CAPS rage up there… I just get especially frustrated by that one)
I agree with all your proposals…I could only add a recall ability for iMessage, this means the ability to recall a message before the receipt read it (pretty much like email recall, last BBM beta has this and is great for your “too much beer nights”)
Although I disagree with your first point (5 apps in a row’s gonna be too squeezy), I love the 2nd point that you made. Being an iOS + Android user I didn’t realise that Apple is short of this fix that would actually allow each home screen to have spaces on top of the screen and not automatically filling it up first. The more I think about it, the more I think it is a great idea!
You can add a picture to any contact you want. It’ll show up in Recent et cetera. The keyboard changes colour when typing in your pw, or in Safari when in Private mode. It’s not something you can adjust yourself.
“Force Touch on the iPhone will offer similar functionality to the Force Touch Trackpads built into new Retina MacBooks and Retina MacBook Pros. Force Touch will be integrated into Maps to drop new pins”
It would be insane if they didn’t have pressure sensitive zoom buttons in maps. Not being able to zoom out with one hand is ridiculous and the mac version of maps has that function.
“One of our sources believes that Force Touch on the iPhone 6S will be more “power user-centric,” as it will not be essential to using the iPhone, as contrasted with its necessity within certain Apple Watch applications.”
Is there really any function that is force touch function on apple watch that is necessary? I guess changing audio sources but I’d put that under power user-centric since I don’t think normal people will be doing that much.
Of course Force Touch will not be essential for iPhone User. iOS 9 will be released for iPhone 5 minimum, which has no Force Touch. However, Force Touch could become essential, in some years… With iOS 12 and iPhone 6S the last upgraded hardware.
The paste key icon looked like a writing implement like a pen or pencil and made me think they’re going to add the ability to draw or write msgs. It could be similar to other apps or the new Apple Watch.
Until you said that was Paste I thought it was Tag, and was wondering why there’d be a Tag key.
nice
I have always hated that damn Shift key!
Apple Pay is fantastic at stores, where it’s supported, and in apps. The only missing link is to have it tied to web purchases. Even though Apple Pay is incredibly secure, the number of merchants is very steadily growing and I get by with it for daily use, web purchases are still insecure and expose your credit card information. https helps but just doesn’t ensure security.
SekurMe and Lydia are two web solutions with Apple Pay that have been mentioned. Hopefully, Apple can buy or improve upon these solutions.
As far as international expansion, I don’t think the hurdle is technical. I don’t think foreign banks want Apple in the game, even at a 0 basis points or a small one-time fee. I think Apple Pay is too good and after seeing what happened to other industries, they fear their identity will be subsumed.
Additionally, Apple Pay builds on EMV/Chip and Pin security and is actually superior. I think there is a component of European pride that they don’t want to admit that an American Company/ American Banks with their crappy security for years have suddenly and so quickly leap-frogged security. This may be a tough pill to swallow. It’s like your scrawny little brother all of a sudden is towering over you. Oops.
It’s unfortunate because the customers in Europe, Australia, China are the ones not getting the best security. Tokenization, DAN instead of PAN, passbook integration.
I would really like to have a better email app with true filters and different sounds or vibrations for filtered emails. Plus a delete all email function! Used to be there in some beta. But I miss it.
how about a delete all text messages button also.
I really hate when in safari, the period key is so close to the space key, while its not there in other apps.
I keep ending up searching for.things.like.this lol
Also wish I could delete multiple contacts from my phone.
nobody has mentioned this but will the haptic engine act as it does on the new laptops in regards to the keyboard? It would be super cool to type on the iPhone and get the feel that you’re typing an actual button, the feedback would be really nice.
Is tap and hold in iOS9 running on a 6+ the same as the ‘strong’ press on 6s+ ? ie the ‘new’ press mode is actually the ‘mid’ one ?