For the first time in several years, Apple is changing up its annual iOS and OS X upgrade cycle by limiting new feature additions in favor of a “big focus on quality,” according to multiple sources familiar with the company’s operating system development plans. We first reported in February that iOS 9, codenamed “Monarch,” would heavily feature under-the-hood optimizations, and we’ve now learned that Apple is taking the same approach with OS X 10.11, codenamed “Gala.” Sources have revealed additional new details on how Apple will optimize the new operating systems for improved stability and performance, add several new security features, and make important changes to its Swift programming tools for developers…
According to sources within Apple’s software development departments, Apple engineers have been pushing executives for a Snow Leopard-style stability focus in 2015, following numerous bugs that clouded the launches of both iOS and OS X. Apple directors reportedly opposed a complete pause on new features, but agreed to focus on quality assurance by holding back some features that were initially planned for the latest operating system launches. One source explained, “I wouldn’t say there’s nothing new for consumers, but the feature lists are more stripped down than the initial plans called for.”
New Features For iOS 9 and OS X 10.11
Apple’s broader and deeper quality assurance testing includes stricter stability and polish guarantees before new features are officially added to iOS 9 and OS X 10.11. We reported that iOS 9 is expected to include the Apple Watch’s new San Francisco typeface as its system-wide font, while a new Home application for managing HomeKit devices, split-screen iPad app views, and an upgraded Apple Maps application with mass transit directions are also in the cards. As for OS X 10.11, we are told that Apple has realized that annually adding new features to the mature Mac operating system is more challenging than with iOS, so 10.11’s upgrade list may be slimmer than iOS 9’s.
But that does not mean OS X 10.11 will be feature-less: we’re told that the new operating system will have system-wide interface tweaks to continue the work done in OS X Yosemite, as well as the San Francisco font from the Apple Watch and iOS 9. Additionally, Control Center has been planned for inclusion in OS X 10.11, after appearing in some early beta seeds of last year’s OS X Yosemite, only to be left out of the final release. Control Center moves many of the controls from the Mac’s Menu Bar to a pane that slides out from the left side of the Mac’s display, adding on-screen music controls and other iOS-influenced features. However, Control Center reportedly has been in flux during development, and could be pushed back again.
Security Upgrades – Rootless, iCloud Drive + Trusted Wi-Fi
Marquee features aside, Apple has been working on significant enhancements to the security fundamentals of both operating systems, ranging from a major new initiative called “Rootless,” re-architected Apple apps with iCloud Drive file encryption, and a new feature called “Trusted Wi-Fi.”
Rootless
Sources within Apple are particularly enthusiastic about a new security system called Rootless, which is being described internally as a “huge,” kernel-level feature for both OS X and iOS. To prevent malware, increase the safety of extensions, and preserve the security of sensitive data, Rootless will prevent even administrative-level users from being able to access certain protected files on Apple devices. Sources say that Rootless will be a heavy blow to the jailbreak community on iOS, though it can supposedly be disabled on OS X. Even with this Rootless feature coming to OS X, sources say that the standard Finder-based file system is not going away this year.
iCloud Drive
In order to make its syncing apps more secure for consumers, Apple is in the process of converting many of its core applications to an iCloud Drive back end. Currently, Apple applications such as Notes, Reminders, and Calendar utilize an IMAP-based back end for syncing content across devices, whether you’re using an iCloud, Gmail, or Yahoo account.
With iOS 9 and OS X 10.11, Apple plans to transition this sync process to iCloud Drive, which offers better end-to-end encryption and faster syncing than traditional IMAP servers. As an example of how this will work, when a user launches Notes in either of the new Apple operating systems, a splash page offering to move content from the IMAP server over to iCloud Drive will appear, making the transition easy for users.
The promotion of iCloud Drive will also likely pull some users away from competitors, and move them over to Apple’s cloud services. According to sources, Apple is also upgrading its iCloud Drive and CloudKit servers to sustain the expected uptick in usage when more core applications move to a pure iCloud foundation. A dedicated iCloud Drive app to view files has also been developed, but it may remain for internal use only.
Trusted Wi-Fi
Last on the security front, we are told that a new feature dubbed “Trusted Wi-Fi” is in development for release as soon as later this year, but that it could be pushed back to next year’s iOS and OS X releases. Trusted Wi-Fi would allow Macs and iOS devices to connect to authorized wireless routers without additional security measures, but would instate a more heavily encrypted wireless connection for non-trusted routers. Apple has been testing its own apps and third-party apps to ensure that they will still work over various wireless networks with this feature enabled.
Older Device Optimization – Good News for iPhone 4S + iPad mini
While some users of older iOS devices have speculated that Apple’s recent operating systems were built to encourage the purchase of new phones and tablets, the company has actually been working on ways to make legacy iPhones and iPads more efficient while running the upcoming iOS 9.
In what will come as a surprise to many people, our sources note that even A5-based Apple devices, including the original iPad mini and discontinued iPhone 4S, will be able to run iOS 9. In order to avoid the sluggishness and bugginess that was most notably seen in iOS 7 for the iPhone 4, Apple has restructured its software engineering process to better support older hardware.
Instead of developing a feature-complete version of iOS 9 for older hardware and then removing a handful of features that do not perform well during testing, Apple is now building a core version of iOS 9 that runs efficiently on older A5 devices, then enabling each properly performing feature one-by-one. Thanks to this new approach, an entire generation (or two) of iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches will be iOS 9-compatible rather than reaching the end of the iOS line.
Chris Lattner, pioneer of Swift, demoing at WWDC 2014
Swift 2.0 + Smaller App Sizes
Besides re-organizing its development process to improve older iOS hardware, Apple is preparing a major upgrade to its Swift programming language. Swift was first introduced at the 2014 Worldwide Developers Conference, and the new version will benefit both developers and users.
Since Swift is still evolving as a development language, Apple previously did not include Swift programming “code libraries” within iOS. For this reason, developers who choose to write App Store apps with Swift must include the code libraries inside each of their apps. Consequently, App Store applications written in Swift carry approximately 8MB of additional code, and the more Swift apps you have, the more storage space you lose to code library copies.
With iOS 9 and OS X 10.11, we are told that this will change: Swift is planned to reach what is known as “Application Binary Interface (ABI) stability,” and its code libraries will therefore be pre-installed within the new iOS and Mac operating systems. This means that Swift applications updated for iOS 9 and OS X 10.11 will require less space and consume less data when downloaded over a cellular connection. Users with lower-capacity iPhones and iPads or non-unlimited cellular data plans will see at least small improvements over time.
While Swift is planned to reach ABI stability in version 2.0 at WWDC 2015, Apple will apparently not ship Swift versions of its own iOS and OS X applications this year. Instead, we are told that Apple currently plans to convert its own apps over to Swift in 2016 via iOS 10 and OS X 10.12, unless unforeseen roadblocks emerge over the next year.
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Re-writing current apps using Swift? Oy. prepare for bugs.
Swift is still sorta Objective-C in a way. I don’t think it will be that bad.
If the purpose of re-writing an app in Swift is to take advantage of all of Swift’s features, Swift isn’t like Objective-C at all. The frameworks may be the same, but the language encourages a different, better paradigm. Which means, it’s not simple language translation, which means *potential* bugs.
Question is whether Swift 2.0 is valuable enough to make such a transition. Re-writing it alone has no value to an end user, and can lead to things like discoveryd renaming your Mac to have (2), (3), etc…
I doubt they’ll organize a whole-sale transition to Swift. I’d expect them instead to allow (maybe even encourage) mixed-language development for various projects.
No. The second time you program anything, always comes better than the first time
Exactly, they can clean cut a lot of cruft and bloated legacy code. Older apps often contains lots of fixes, a complete rewrite lets the developers start with a blank slate regarding the methods and object structure.
But that’s the problem, they are switching from the 1000th time in C, over to the first time in Swift.
We can argue all day, but Apple is switching to Swift and so should you.
I can hear Fall’s naysayers now, “That’s ALL that’s new?!” and “You call this QUALITY?!” (or both)
Remember how great Snow Leopard was? Well. it took almost 2 years to get from 10.6 to 10.6.8. 10.6 was buggy at first and much hated because it dropped support for PPC systems.
Rootless will prevent even administrative-level users from being able to access certain protected files on Apple devices. Sources say that Rootless will be a heavy blow to the jailbreak community on iOS, though it can supposedly be disabled on OS X. — Can’t say I like the sound of that (except for the part about being able to disable it on OS X, should it be too intrusive)…I’m all for security but it has to be done in such a way where it doesn’t interfere with the user…the user should not even know that it’s there.
And file system eventually leaving? That’s when i’ll be leaving Apple for good.
Aside from jailbreakers, this doesn’t sound like it will affect any mainstream users on iOS. Jailbreakers are a niche crowd.
I really don’t care about jailbreaking IOS devices, but preventing root access to OS X would be a HUGE mistake. I rarely login as root but often use the sudo command in terminal. Most recently I used it to fix a problem with Spotlight. There is a bug in Spotlight, which is tightly woven throughout OS X, even affecting the search function in Mail. After weeks of dealing with Apple tech support with no luck, I was not able to get Spotlight to re-Index. Spotlight didn’t work, Mail searches didn’t work and all attempts to delete the Spotlight index failed. I finally, after a great deal of searching, found a command line statement beginning with sudo that fixed all of my problems overnight. I was immediately able to drop my external back up drives into the Spotlight privacy tab to be ignored but didn’t even have to because they reappeared. I did this in the late evening and by morning Mail searches were working perfectly.
This problem originated in Mavericks and continued into Yosemite. It’s only happened twice since but it’s very nice to know I can fix it at a moments notice.
Restricting root access is a very bad idea. It’s great to keep neophytes from doing stupid things, but for those who know what they’re doing it’s a terrible restriction that might sour potential OS X users from exploring or even considering the operating system.
They’re not restricting root access. They’re protecting system files, much akin to Windows File Protection which was introduced in Windows Me/2000. Although, the wording is vague, so there’s no saying whether that’s just protecting the *writing* of system files (like WFP) or going as far as even protecting the *reading* of certain system files. More than likely the command you ran didn’t modify any OS files, just data in /Library, your home directory, and the Spotlight index (/.Spotlight-V100).
OS X has a huge following in the developer community because of its Unix core; Windows fails here because a vast majority of developer programs are built with POSIX/Linux in mind but Windows’ differences can involve extra work. cmd.exe is also behind the times, feeling quite complex and almost unchanged from MS-DOS 20 years ago. Solutions like MinGW/Cygwin try to implement a POSIX layer on Windows but they’re still quite different from the real thing. Apple would be pretty stupid to piss off those people.
Adam D, You got me curious and I found the Magic command in my notes:
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
I’m not exactly sure what it does but prior to using it, adding anything to the Spotlight Privacy pane would generate an error.
launchctl is part of the launchd system, which manages daemons (background processes/services). There you’re instructing launchctl to load com.apple.metadata.mds, which collects data for Spotlight. Definitely wouldn’t be something Apple would block; they even just rewrote launchd. Interesting that it unloads itself, requiring you to load it again… sounds like a crazy bug. :p
Adam D, It is a pretty wacky bug. I first noticed it when my “Flagged” mailbox vanished. During troubleshooting I then noticed that Mail’s search function stopped working. I finally checked Spotlight and it wasn’t working either.
The bug ignored a reinstallation of OS X, prevented the deletion of any files that would cause Spotlight to reindex (all done / attempted under the direction of a second tier Apple tech). The Apple tech was baffled and we did a Data Capture that got sent to the engineers. In the meantime I started searching the Internet and found the above mentioned line in an old OS X Daily article about turning Spotlight on and off.
Do you think they are going to be able to prevent the Hackintosh crowd from installing OS X on a PC? I’m just wondering if Apple’s sick of losing sales to Hackintosh losers, I mean users.
Is there such a big Hackintosh crowd that Apple would even bother about it?
Well I hope Apple can prompt those app developers with low quality and rated apps to update their app in a given short time frame, else those apps will be automatically be removed from App Store. There is no point to have those apps available for user to download them. At least Apple can give the option to download previous version of the app i.e. the one before updated that cause tonnes of crashes and bugs.
I’m still all for forcibly removing Apps that are not only not updated, but ones that don’t take advantage of enough of the APIs Apple puts out. Seriously. Apple needs even more curation. Not less. The App Store is like the wild west. I wish could download apps knowing that they are required to include useful Apple APIs, like Extensions.
Absolutely! My example is Resident Evil 4 on iOS. They don’t bother to update the app, but they updated the description to say ‘May not work if you update to iOS 8’ or something like that. Apple should give maybe 6 months to update to the newest operating system comparability or the app is taken off the store. Still available to download by previous purchasers.
This is all excellent.
The reality is that most people are not even aware of more than 75% of the features of these already complex “phones”. But we all can use more stability, security, performance and battery efficiency.
If there is one reason why buy an Apple Device over other brands is this focus in reliability and it just work qualities.
This is the way to go Apple, hoping competitors copy you on this!
I’m excited for this. Sure there might not be a ton of new features, but i can live with that for the sake of quality, performance and stability.
.problem is 4S is old 3.5 screen? now is 5.0 etc. battery on that thing also is very low. 2000Mah better
I’ll believe it when I see it. It should be kept in mind that even 10.6 wasn’t as “robust” as we all remember until WELL INTO its 8 minor-update-lifecycle. At this point, I am fearful that OS X will not recover its “reputation” for another year, and past the point when Microsoft ships Windows 10. For many of my clients who were switchers, there is already discussion about moving BACK to Windows with Win10; they now have Windows compatible hardware. OS X 10.8-10.10 have been abysmal experiences for the business/productivity market (Mail, most especially, iCloud, AppleID and Mac App Store policies, Calendar/Contacts lacking basic feature parity with Outlook/Exchange), and Apple will deserve the hit IMHO. Which is tragically unfortunate, and a completely unforced-error on the Apple Executive team’s part.
And I’m glad they may be focusing on better performance for older iOS devices, that should benefit EVERYONE (if iOS 9 runs fast on a 4S, it should scream on a 5 or 5S/6/6S). But given that Apple has continued to sell the 4S and the iPad mini 1 FAAAAR longer than they should have into the developing world (and the US “discount market”), I wonder if this is altruism for performance, or a forced-hand to support a pretty dumb marketing plan (and now a HUGE platform momentum issue). Seeing the recent iOS and Mac OS installed versions charts, Apple is starting to hit that leveling off point, where old OS installs will begin to impact them out of sheer numbers of entrenched users. This effort should have begun more than a YEAR ago; considering that Google undertook it -2- years ago for Android 4.4 and into 5, the gap is already closing.
Windows 10? How about OS XI — take that, MS!
Gurman’s on fire this week!
Heck yea! my 4s LIVESSSSSSS
It would be great if they fixed the browser refresh issue. I hate it when I go back to a browser tab in IOS and it has to refresh to load the page!
I thinks that is more because of the small RAM iPhone has…
So basically they are out of ideas? :)
Quality shouldn’t be something that they decided to focus on instead of coming up with new stuff. Quality should be there all the time. Sometimes I just can’t figure out what they are doing in Cupertino. They have all the money – why don’t they hire more people? Is there a shortage of talent in the world? Maybe there is, I don’t know. But the kind of apps Apple has release recently is just embarrassing. Steve Jobs would have fired so many people…
Podcasts, Reminders, Maps, iCloud Drive, etc… they all need so much work. And there are number of issues with the iOS 8 in general too. People should be working on them, while the big guys come up with new stuff.
You kinda answered your own question there. IOS 8 is a compilation of messes.
One thing to consider is how Apple tends to over focus on new products at the expense of old ones. (The watch being the prime example because currently the push is so hard that it makes many users feel guilty for not having an unnecessary accessory).
New features are nice and make upgrades more exciting but when a $900 ios8 phone still can’t figure out screen orientation then maybe cleaning the mess is better than piling things on.
“New features are nice and make upgrades more exciting but when a $900 ios8 phone still can’t figure out screen orientation then maybe cleaning the mess is better than piling things on.” This is the most intelligent comment in this whole article. Well said, sir or madam.
Screen orientation!
Who looks at their iPhone upside down and expects the ui to be upright?
Why can I navigate through apps in landscape only to turn my phone upright because apps do not open in landscape view?
Here comes the android fanboys.
Podcasts has problems?
Remineders has problems?
Maps has problems? more lacking some features, but problems?
iCloud Drive has problems?
What?
Putting a question mark after each thing you listed doesn’t make them any less of a mess.
As a hardcore Apple fanboy.
1. Podcasts: don’t use it so idk
2. Reminders: use it daily and it’s flawless
3. Maps is great but does need improvement to compete. Transit, more detail and traffic improvements would be welcome.
4. iCloud Drive needs help. They need an app for iOS and Mac OS X that functions like Dropbox. Also they need to bump up the 5GB they give to like 25GB. I refuse to store my data there when I can get Gigs free from someone else sadly.
Overall, I fall in between you too. Not everything is perfect but it’s not a catastrophe either lol
Podcasts:
I find that it doesn’t update in the background. I’d like for a new podcast to be downloaded as it arrives.
Reminders has problems?
IDK I barely use it
Maps has problems? more lacking some features, but problems?
I find that the visual updates are lagging behind the audio too much. Feature wise has a long way to catch up to google maps /waze.
iCloud Drive has problems?
Copy Dropbox. Give us an drop box type app.
Mail Drop, part of iCloud, has serious problems. Remember, it’s used to transfer large (up to 5 GB) files via iCloud, which it does admirably, however the transferred files get ‘stuck’ on your computer, often in more than one place and in places Spotlight doesn’t search. They wind up buried deep in the mail directories and the only way to remove them is to use a third party search utility and hope you remember the file name. If you check your sent mailbox to see if it was successful, you may wind up with more copies.
I discovered this in v10.10 and reported it via apple.com/feedback. I beta tested 10.10.1 and found the problem still there and reported it via Feedback Assistant. It still existed in 10.10.2 and I reported it again. The problem is still there in 10.10.3.
Apple isn’t just not on the ball, they don’t even know where the ball is.
Hopefully they borrow a few Watch features for iOS9
Digital Touch – drawing anything on a 38mm screen is silly. And there’s no reason this is a phone exclusive when iOS messaging has impressed users and a bigger screen.
Complications – Apple may refuse to put “widgets” on the lock screen but how about emulating the watch faces and give customizable “complications” for weather, calendar, fitness etc.
Better Siri – sure, most Siti commands on the watch result in her telling us to handoff info to the phone. But Siri on the watch is so much better at voice recognition than the iPhone so Let’s get out upgrade.
And of course.. hardware. Waterproof. better outdoor visibility. Enable FULL NFC.
The today view is just a swipe away. It seems like complications are just mini today view widgets.
I don’t know what a better tradeoff would be. I’d rather notification center be only notifications and the today view functions could move to the lock screen. I think that would be much cleaner. But then I also like seeing my most recent notifications directly on the lock screen. I guess it could do watch style notification and then you get to more history with notification center.
I think they will borrow Force Touch but that won’t be announced with iOS 9 at WWDC. My guess is it will be a feature added in by the launch of the new iPhone.
maybe? I guess the mac Api just came out whenever. I figured iOS devs could do way more cool stuff with it and would want to have the features out in time for the new hardware.
a new phone with a feature that no apps support isn’t great. Reminds me of when I got an iPhone 5 on release…
but you could be right. It would basically ruin the surprise but at this point I think everyone knows.
About older device support. It makes sense. Apple really couldn’t kill of the A5 devices since the mac mini is still on sale. Has there ever been a time where they dropped a device and immediately dropped software support for it?
I assume the 4s just got lucky since it shares the same processor as the iPad. I wasn’t planning on doing another betas (It’s hard to live with and I still have a bug from the last beta haunting me) but they could probably use more testers rocking a 4s. Plus I want the tear the hell out of the UX of maps again.
The next few months should be fun.
: ]
whoops. iPad mini not mac mini.
“For the first time in several years, Apple is changing up its annual iOS and OS X upgrade cycle by limiting new feature additions in favor of a big focus on quality”
Hurray. I’m seeing cute a few bugs on OSX, even after doing a clean install. I welcome a continued focus on quality.
“an upgraded Apple Maps application with mass transit directions are also in the cards”
Without knowing if this is a global rollout or not, I don’t think anyone outside of the US can be cheerful about this
“Even with this Rootless feature coming to OS X, sources say that the standard Finder-based file system is not going away this year”
If they take away the Finder I’ll simply install a 3rd party. many available.
“when a user launches Notes in either of the new Apple operating systems, a splash page offering to move content from the IMAP server over to iCloud Drive will appear”
With the continued problems with all Cloud services from Apple I wonder what the percentage will be of users switching over.
“While some users of older iOS devices have speculated that Apple’s recent operating systems were built to encourage the purchase of new phones and tablets, the company has actually been working on ways to make legacy iPhones and iPads more efficient while running the upcoming iOS 9.”
This makes sense. People now complain about it and buy new HW. When they optimise their software for older devices people won’t complain and buy new HW.
I do like the sound of this!
I just want WWDC to be here already.
To be honest, I’d be happy if they just gave us an iCloud Drive app that works on iOS and Mac OS X. Make it like Dropbox and I’m sold lol
Whoops sorry, I meant to add that as a comment and not a reply lol. First time posting here :)
To be honest, I’d be happy if they just gave us an iCloud Drive app that works on iOS and Mac OS X. Make it like Dropbox and I’m sold lol
Agree completely. I was excited right up until the point where I read “A dedicated iCloud Drive app to view files has also been developed, but it may remain for internal use only.”
…for F*** sakes
The iCloud Drive App is needed for IOS. I can use Finder on my Mac to see what’s on my iCloud Drive, but on my iPad or iPhone…nothing. I have to go into each app to see what’s there. Not good. So I use Drop Box instead until Apple sorts this out.
What do you think about optimization for iPad 2? Performance has been slowly decreasing with every update. I’d love to get some more life out of this device with iOS 9.
That’s a myth
http://youtu.be/iU06MwGikwA
What’s a myth? That iPad 2 performance on iOS 8 has degraded when compared to iOS 7?
I upgraded my iPad 2 from iOS 7.1.2 to iOS 8.3 about a month ago after I read several articles that assured me that iPad 2 performance was back to being great after initially suffering under iOS 8.0 thru 8.2. I was pretty disappointed that there was a noticeable degradation of performance after the upgrade. It still performs adequately (I’m not going to throw it on the ground in anger anytime soon), and I am happy to take advantage of the new iOS 8 features, but to say the performance hit is a myth is simply not true, at least in my experience.
Please bump iCloud storage from 5GB to 20-25GB!!!! Kthxbye
when you use iCloud photo library that amount is so little it doesn’t matter. I ended up paying for 200gb and don’t worry about it anymore. It’s like the cost of a coffee each month to have all my iOS devices backed up and all my photos on all of them.
but hey, it would be nice if they bumped it for those who just want to do document stuff and no photos. They should also obliterate all 8 and 16gb devices from the lineup.
I realize that you are talking about iOS devices when you say that 8 and 16 GB devices should be eliminated from the product line, and I fully agree. For the vast majority of people 32 GB should be a bare minimum.
But I’m also very concerned about the RAM available in their computers. Every 15″ Retina MacBook Pro has been available with only 16 GB of RAM while the processors are capable of using 32 GB. I understand Apple’s (Jony Ive’s) desire to keep the line ultrabook thin, but I’d be more than willing to sacrifice a few millimeters to be able to upgrade the RAM if I need to. Apple should be working with the industry to create a low profile RAM module and socket standard and allowing the expansion of RAM rather than limiting it to half of what the processors can handle.
My next iPhone, like all my previous iPhones, will have the maximum amount of storage available, and I guarantee that I’ll feel it’s not enough.
Rather than adding new features and improving peripheral ones, I would be happiest if the engineers made the damned thing quit constantly reloading my Safari pages on my iPad Air 2, often in the midst of my typing in a dialog box. I could not care less how it integrates with an iWatch I will never buy, which seems to be where the programmers are directed to devote their resources.
iLIke how Marc and this whole site claim to speak on apple’s behalf.” unforeseen roadblocks emerge over the next year” you mean like speculation and leaks ?
Stability is, IMHO, the most important feature.
Maybe this update will un-brick my iPhone 5. It has been stuck on “searching…” since the last update. A re-focus on quality is definitely needed.
Matt: Despite trying all the then current “fixes”, the “searching…” for our cellular provider just wouldn’t go away on one of our phones. So on a whim we replaced the SIM card. It didn’t cost us anything, only took 5 minutes (after getting to the provider’s store) and it’s worked flawlessly since.
Try it, it might work for you too!
Hey Mark, it says in here that Apple is having a harder time updating OS X as it is a mature platform, does that mean in the long term future we will stop seeing OS X updates? Or do you think they will always find a way to make it better?
I don’t really see any point in OS X getting a control centre… What would even be on there?
They’ve already lumped music controls into Notification Centre on the right hand side.
Toggles for certain things like bluetooth and wi-fi could be helpful, but less so than iOS.
Brightness is on my fn keys and there’s 0 need for a row of “quick” apps… ><
I’d really like to see an api for audio controls for apps and web apps. I’m so sick of having pandora running and hitting the pause button instinctively, only for it to start playing a random iTunes track. Maybe it could work more like how iOS does. Let that be a universal control for the front most audio feed or something.
then the keyboard buttons would work for any app, and not just iTunes.
Don’t forget that Siri is rumored to be a tad refreshed! 😉
The negative comments about updates that haven’t even been released yet are astounding, for the following reasons: (1) The updates are unreleased. So why would someone take the position that the updates aren’t up to par? (2) When released the updates will be FREE. So I’m confused why the negativity would ever reach a fever pitch. Just absurd. Some Apple fans are turning into trolls of the company they claim to love.
You mean they’re not allowed to complain about anything Apple does, Apple is just perfect and there’s no need to give them feedback to shape their OS how the users want it?
I think iCloud Drive needs a sharing option. Sometimes it is absolutely necessary to be able to have a shared document or folder with someone who uses iCloud too.
I don’t get how Rootless would imply the end of the Finder application. Could someone elaborate on the correlation?
Even if the root is hidden and you only see your home and applications folders (with extentions managed in syspref), the Finder would still make sense.
I can see Apple trying to make Spotlight a Finder replacement.
Not entirely replaced, but I can see something like an iTunes-like Finder: no folder hierarchies, huge emphasis on search and sort for finding the right files. Tags could replace folders for manual organisation, as each file can have multiple tags for finetuned categorisation.
But still, no clue on why Rootless specifically would be the death of the Finder as we know it.
Driving Notes / Reminders to iCloud Drive worries me, as a iPad 1st Gen user (iOS 5.5.1). I do hope that the updates between OSX Yosemite + iPhone 5 will get way faster than they are right now, but not being able to access Reminders / Notes via iOS 5.5.1 is a bit of a bummer to say the least.
This will be by far my favorite release of iOS and OS X yet. Performance and stability for the win!!
Reblogged this on citrusui personal blog.
That’s nice. Just to let to know 4s is still on sale here in India. A friend of mine bought one last month and the manufacturing date on it was of March 2015.
Great to see older iPhones still performing so well.
I’m curious if they’ll finally allow the end user to delete the built-in apps they don’t use.
Oh God, i am worried, Apple has never been great about Cloud, they still uses third party cloud services and have yet to have enough of their own DC infrastructure ready. ( With so much resources and years of planning ).
And for some reason. I sense something big is coming for iPhone 7, the 2016 iPhone. Otherwise why update iPhone 4S and not force them to upgrade? A smartphone four years ago is very old.
Quality focus/bug fixing and third party app support for Siri is all I want
I wish and i can sort of see, iOS 9 will be as stable and bug free as iOS 8.x. The improvements iOS 8.x has gone through are amazing. iOS 8.3 is so mature and stable it almost deserves it’s own major release number.
Our experience with previous bugs in iOS video / audio signals clearly one thing. A more stable and significantly less buggy iOS is the best thing app developers can ask for. It saves tons of time and resources. It provides a much better experience for users and at the end of the day more for the money they invested in any app.
Rootless on OSX?!
Will this pervent RW access to / ?
apple, you disappoint me…
Please Apple don’t use smaller apps as an excuse to keep the 16 gb model around on future iPhones….
Good article. Not really happy about that “heavy blow to the jailbreak community” though. Hope the community can still find a way. Some tweaks I really don’t want to miss, they just make it so much nicer to use iOS.
There’s a huge win for Apple in supporting all their older devices well enough to encourage updates: supporting apps with almost all the installed base on the same OS release is vastly easier than e.g. the Android world. Some Android version stats here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history#/media/File:Android_historical_version_distribution_-_vector.svg (50% of installed base on versions released before November 2013). by contrast 82% of iOS devices use iOS 8, and only 2% use versions before 7 https://developer.apple.com/support/appstore/ (released June 2013).
This means Android developers lose half the potential market if they only support the last 2 major releases; iOS developers only 2%.
All stats based on accesses to the respective app stores, which could be a bit skewed if users of older releases are not well supported, but not skewed this much.
It would be nice if they would fix the simple basics like Bonjour and Mail.
This won’t stop a determined hacker. If a hacker has access to a device, s/he can do whatever s/her wants to it.