Posts Tagged ‘ios’

The hidden gems of iOS 9

laelene Posted in general blog, reviews,Tags: , , , , ,
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I just got around to upgrading my phone to iOS 9 today and there were some surprises in store for me! First was the new font, which is a bit… cuter, I’d say. It’s hard to describe but I feel like it’s a bit thinner, more rounded, and seems slightly more spaced out. Most people probably won’t even notice it.

The biggest shock was when the keyboard popped up and *gasp* there were lowercase letters! This seemed like such a basic thing, yet it took years to finally get it. In fact, I’ve already converted to Swiftkey as my default keyboard because the Apple one just doesn’t cut it.

ios 9 new safari bookmark icons and lowercase keyboard

As you might also note from here, Safari bookmarks now show a letter when there’s no custom icon from the site. Previously, they used the Safari compass icon as a placeholder.

ios 9 app menu redesign

Switching between apps takes on a new feel as you swipe in the opposite direction now. It glides more but I find it harder to close two apps at once.

ios 9 menu box buttons

Menu box pop-ups feel rounder and more spaced out.

ios 9 new photos folders for selfies and screenshots

New default photo folders group together “Selfies” and “Screenshots”

ios 9 new photo scrubber

Photos have a scrubber at the bottom, where you can quickly navigate through.

Other nice updates allow you to zoom on videos to get a better view, quickly select a bunch of photos by swiping across them (no more individual taps!), and swipe down on a photo to go back to the thumbnail view of an album.

ios 9 new notes with checklist, sketching, and image capabilities

Notes gets a lot more functionality, with the ability to create checklists, draw sketches, and insert photos.

Notes can also be put into folders, making it easier to organize.

ios 9 add webpage to notes

Now easily add a webpage to your notes too!

ios 9 search within settings functionality

Search within settings when you can’t remember where something like battery usage would be found (don’t we all have trouble with this?)

ios 9 view event showing schedule before and after event

Viewing events in Calendar show you a glimpse of your time before and after the event.

ios 9 reminders with number of reminders and overdue items shown

Reminders have nice summaries of how many items are in each list and which of those are overdue.

 

ios 9 text overlap

Sometimes text runs into each other though.

And then of course there are plenty of other changes that you probably heard about as well:

-directions for public transit in select cities

-smarter prompts from Siri: swiping right from the home screen pulls up suggestions for contacts, calendar events, apps, and more

-“Back to [previous app]” option in the top left now lets you quickly return to the app you just came from

-Low power setting to conserve your phone’s power usage

-Improvements to performance so battery life is extended

-Passbook is now Wallet and you’ll be able to add loyalty cards in addition to other forms of digital cards/tickets

-A News app for aggregating news that you might want to read

-“Remind me of this” prompts Siri to set up a reminder about whatever you are looking at

-Add attachments in Mail – not just for photos anymore!

So far I’m really liking the changes and I look forward to stumbling upon others that make the experience better in subtle ways. I’m not upgrading my iPad mini just yet because a coworkers told us that the version of Reflector we use isn’t compatible with it. I need to be able to show my tablet screen for demos and webinars and I’m not keen on paying for the newer version of the software just so I can have iOS 9 on my tablet. Have you upgraded to this new operating system? What do you think so far?

iOS 7 review

laelene Posted in reviews,Tags: , , , , ,
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I’ve been running iOS 7 for about two weeks now and it’s been quite a change. Overall I really enjoy it, but there are definitely some issues that need to be worked out and new things to get adjusted to. Here are some of the highlights:

ios 7 geotargeted reminders feature with ability to change geofence radius

Geotargeting with the radius of your choice! Anywhere from 328 to 7.92 million feet, haha. I wished for this back when iOS 5 came out and now I have it!

ios 7 new ringtones list

New, more gentle and pleasant ringtones.

ios 7 new visual look and feel

Liking the new graphics – simpler, cleaner, brighter.

collage of ios 7 photo collections, new multitasking look, and safari tab browsing

New organization of photos into collections, more useful multitasking view with easy swipe to close, and better view of Safari tabs. All nice changes, but take some getting used to!

ios 7 new control panel feature

The Control Panel makes it easy to get to useful features. Finally, convenient access!

ios 7 weather app with sunset and sunrise indicators

I like knowing when sunrise and sunset are.

ios 7 block caller option

Being able to block callers will be helpful.

ios 7 text message times visible on right

If you pull to the left on the text messages, you can see the time of each, thank goodness.

ios 7 correct siri's pronunciation of words feature

It’s great to be able to correct Siri’s pronunciation.

ios 7 inclinometer feature

The compass now offers a hidden feature: inclinometer! Now you can figure out what perfectly balanced is.

And a few things that aren’t so great:

ios 7 new cleaner keyboard

For some reason the new keyboard is different enough to make my typing worse.

ios 7 multitasking feature

The apps keep having to reload when I move between them. I thought they were supposed to work in the background…

ios 7 lock screen with new keypad design

The screen fades too fast and I never tap it in time. Of course when I tried to get a screenshot of it fading I got the full brightness instead, but you get the point.

Have you updated to iOS 7? What do you think? Or what’s keeping you from making the change?

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