iOS 9

Along with the new features, iOS 9 promised an improvement to the ‘foundation’ of iOS with performance boosts and battery usage improvements across the system. However, as always seems to happen with new versions of iOS, not all users are satisfied. There have been many reports that iOS 9 is causing lagginess, especially on older hardware such as the iPhone 5. Some phones are getting stuck on the ‘slide to upgrade’ screen and users are frozen out of their devices completely.

Seeing as iOS 9 supports all the same devices as iOS 8, it’s quite important that the OS runs well on all iPhones and iPads, not just the recent Apple devices with the faster A7 or A8 processors.

How has the iOS 9 affected your iPhone? Is it slower than before the update … or maybe it’s actually faster? Let us know with the following poll …

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With the launch of iOS 8.4 earlier this summer, Apple removed support for Home Sharing, prompting the users to voice their dissatisfaction with the company’s decision. Eddy Cue then revealed that Home Sharing support would return with iOS 9, and sure enough, it did. The process for using it is similar to what it has always been, but let’s go through the steps…

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iOS 9 has now been out for 24 hours now and the first usage data is in. According to analytics from Mixpanel, iOS 9 has crossed the 12% adoption mark of all iOS devices one day after launch. Although 12% is a good figure, it is actually down a bit from last year’s rate of adoption of iOS 8, which managed 16% device penetration during the same period. This is despite iOS 9 actually being easier to update due to lower storage space requirements, but it’s possible that early server hiccups led some users to delay updating. Mixpanel says iOS 9 and iOS 8 are currently reporting similar upgrade paths:

iOS 9 has received 12% adoption in the last 24 hours and is being adopted similar to iOS 8 last year. However, one issue for it being substantially slow compared to iOS 7 is that servers are having trouble keeping up right now as people update.

iOS 7 continues to dwarf both iOS 8 and iOS 9 in terms of initial adoption, reaching over 20% penetration in its first day of availability. Data from 9to5Mac’s audience is more impressive with over 50% of readers already on iOS 9.0. Obviously, our data has a tendency to be heavily biased upwards because of our audience demographics.

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With the launch of YouTube Gaming earlier this year, Google’s Twitch competitor that lets users live stream and watch gameplay videos on YouTube, users can now live stream and browse gameplay videos on YouTube from dedicated apps. Google first enabled live streaming the desktop, and today announced plans for Android, but an update to the popular AirServer app is taking advantage of the lack of iOS streaming support by enabling users to live stream directly to YouTube from their iOS devices.

Google does have a YouTube Gaming app or iOS, but it currently only acts as a community-style app for letting users access live streams and recorded gameplay videos from their iPhone or iPad. AirServer, however, tells us it collaborated with YouTube to enable streaming from iOS apps using its mirroring technology:
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We’ve already rounded up several apps this week that have been updated with iOS 9 support and that rollout continues tonight to a pair of popular apps. This evening, both Pocket and Hulu for iOS have been updated with support for the latest version of Apple’s operating system. Pocket has been updated to version 6.0.1, while Hulu has been updated to 4.6.1.

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iOS 9 marked the first major version of the iPhone and iPad software that Apple opened up for public beta testing after a similar trial run with iOS 8.3 last year. As many users have noticed, Apple’s public beta program is continuing with the upcoming iOS 9.1 release available as an OTA (over-the-air) update for non-developer testers, but many users will surely want to hop off the beta train and onto the stable release cycle with today’s iOS 9.0 release.

Several readers have already asked about downgrading from the iOS 9.1 public beta to today’s iOS 9.0 release, and while it’s possible it does come at a cost: potentially losing some important data. If moving from iOS 9.1 public or even dev beta to today’s official iOS 9.0 release is worth it for you, read on for a detailed guide for doing just that.
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AgileBits has pushed out the latest version of its popular password management app, 1Password. The update brings support for new iOS 9-exclusive features, such as the ability to search for your saved passwords directly through the native iOS Spotlight screen.

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Apple has officially released iOS 9 and watchOS 2 to the public and today we’re getting into a rundown and our first impressions of the new features that come along with these updates. If you’d like to find out more about the top features in iOS 9 you can check out our full rundown here. The Happy Hour podcast is available for download on iTunes and through our dedicated RSS feed.

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Unfortunately, it seems that watchOS 2 has been delayed and will not be releasing today as discussed in the podcast.

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After a few months in beta, Apple has today released iOS 9 to the world for everyone with an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. Download the update from Settings on your iOS device, then tap ‘General’ and select ‘Software Update’. The required free space for installing iOS 9 is a lot lower than iOS 8, at around 1.3 GB, which should make it easier to upgrade your devices right away. Any device that runs iOS 8 can upgrade to iOS 9 and, naturally, iOS 9 will also ship preinstalled on Apple’s iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus when they are released next week.

But what exactly is new in iOS 9? Read on for a walkthrough of all the new features and changes in Apple’s latest iteration of its mobile operating system …

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With iOS 9 launching later today, it’s worth taking a look at how you should prepare your device for the new operating system. Before installing the update, it is recommended that you have a backup of your data. This how-to is going to walk you through backing up your iOS 8 device and transitioning it over to iOS 9:

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With both iOS 9 and watchOS 2 set to be released tomorrow, Apple has already started releasing third-party app updates that take advantage of the new features in each software update. watchOS 2 for Apple Watch introduces native apps that run faster and have access to sensors, and iOS 9 introduces new split-screen multitasking and deeper Spotlight-integrated search capabilities. There are some of the watchOS 2 and iOS 9 apps we’re already starting to see hit the App Store:
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Update: Apple has now informed developers that they can submit iOS 9, El Capitan and watchOS 2 apps to the App Store.

Three days later than the normal schedule, Apple is finally letting developers submit iOS 9 apps for review. Apple usually enables submission for apps built against the new SDK as soon as the Xcode GM is published but for unknown reasons, this milestone was delayed.

Although there hasn’t been an official announcement, developers are now successfully uploading binaries through iTunes Connect and are ‘Waiting For Review’. Apple’s review team will now be working double-speed to get the influx of submissions ready for iOS 9’s launch on Wednesday.

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While Apple hasn’t detailed the changes publicly, the company is planning what appears to be a major, undocumented overhaul of its AirPlay protocol with iOS 9 that should make the framework for streaming video and audio content between devices a much smoother experience for both users and developers. It is, however, breaking many screen mirroring apps in the process and forcing developers to scramble to implement workarounds ahead of the launch of iOS 9 on Wednesday and the new Apple TV in the coming weeks.

Perhaps the best example of these apps is Reflector from developer Squirrels. The app utilizes AirPlay to allow cross platform wireless mirroring from mobile devices to Macs, PCs, and other devices with the app installed. The developer first brought the change to our attention and warns that developers will have to follow in its footsteps to implement a workaround that will allow screen mirroring apps to continue functioning after iOS 9 is released… 
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A few weeks prior to the launch of the iPhone 6s, I wondered whether an S model could really continue the blockbuster sales success Apple enjoyed with the iPhone 6. Based on what we knew then, it seemed like it might be a tough sell. And at the time, it seems many of you felt the same way: in our poll, only 29% of iPhone 6 owners said they would ‘definitely’ upgrade.

But my view now is that Apple may have pulled a rabbit out of the hat. The company has, I think, successfully dealt with three of my five reasons for being skeptical about the sales potential of the 6s:

• Force Touch is a techy feature, with limited mass-market appeal
• The camera improvements are nice, but the iPhone 6 camera is already great
• The iPhone 6 still feels like ‘the new iPhone’

So let’s look at each in turn, and see why I think Apple may have managed to prove me wrong … 
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The iOS 9 GM includes a new feature for Siri to help it better recognize your voice when using the automatic ‘Hey Siri’ activation feature. On all current iPhones, you can activate Siri by saying ‘Hey Siri’ when the device is plugged in to power. On the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, the ‘Hey Siri’ activation feature works all the time, plugged in or not, thanks to new dedicated components inside the latest iPhones meaning it can be ‘always on’.

This makes the addition of voice training particularly relevant. In previous OS versions, Hey Siri would just work if you toggled a switch in Settings. With the GM, the OS now prompts you to go through a few training exercises before the feature will be enabled. Some readers have claimed that this feature is like Voice ID, so that Hey Siri function will only respond when the true owner of the phone speaks to it. Whilst this would be a nice feature, we cannot reproduce this and believe it is only meant to improve general detection accuracy.

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Announced earlier in the year, it is now official: Discover bank cards will be supported by Apple Pay from September 16th, the same day as iOS 9 is released. Discover joins Visa and MasterCard in the US as supporting card types for Apple’s contactless payments service.

To sweeten the deal, Discover is even offering a special cashback promotion to celebrate the addition of Apple Pay. You can get 10% cashback on up to $10,000 of in-store purchases until the end of the year, as long as those transactions were using Apple Pay.

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