It’s probably not surprising to hear that iOS 9 is better than iOS 8. On the iPhone I think iOS 9 brings along many smaller improvements throughout the OS, along with new APIs that developers can implement to improve the user experience. There are definitely some big changes such as the addition of Apple News and Transit in Apple Maps, but these are again just strengthening the core services of iOS rather than adding incredible new abilities and features. iOS 9 is definitely a huge release for the iPad though, and because I’ve been limited to Apple’s own applications I’ve only been able to scratch the surface of what capabilities the new multitasking features can enable. I think the iPad definitely deserved a major release that focused on it though, and it’s clear that Apple has had many of these changes in the pipeline for quite some time now.
In the end, iOS 9 offers something new and great for all iOS users, and particularly those who use an iPad. With Apple expanding their portfolio of iOS devices and implementing new features like 3D Touch there are a number of directions they could go in with future releases of iOS, and only time will tell which direction they choose.
Seems like a great release all around, but I don’t think there’s anything in there that will make people jump ship – in that sense, it’s a lot like Android M.
I tried force touch for two minutes, and for me it’s enough to switch (I move from Edge+, and the iPhone’s animation performance clearly blows android out of the water still… small things like that adds up)
So that’s probably not enough for everyone, but enough for some
I have no special ties to any ecosystem and just pick the best phone at any given time. Next year it’s probably something else. Lovely times for geeks.
Sort of. Lots of closed down devices, lacking the ability to be properly played with, like we can with our computers.
So true!
You’re not a proper geek.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_jailbreaking
Why? Why do we need to jailbreak our phones if we have to play with them? They are our phones and it should not matter to the maker what we do with them.
I use to like Apple hardware, but its buggy and childish software, its locked hardware, its walled garden and its very high prices are telling me that I need to look for something else.
Yes, the harder, the better.
Your getting hung up on the word ‘jailbreak’. Some manufacturers want to limit what software runs of their devices under the banner of ‘security’. You may or may not agree with that but does it really matter to you as a developer?
You have to modify the configuration of your device to do the kind of development you want to do – you have to do this with any device – and you can do it with your phone too. No big deal right?
Incidentally most developers can build apps for most devices without any ‘jailbreaking’ or new roms or whatnot. Their still geeks, they just don’t care so much about messing with the OS.
If I would want to develop for iOS, obviously Apple should give me the tools to do it right and properly. But, what if I would want to install Android in an Apple hardware I bought? What if I would want to put a Java compiler in my cellphone? or having a chroot running LXDE? What for? Because I was able to do that in a Nokia N900, so it is possible and the only limitations are the ones imposed artificially.
Edited 2015-09-28 20:45 UTC
I am not questioning why you want to do what you want to do. You should do whatever you damn well please with your phone! Indeed the courts in the US have reaffirmed your right to do whatever you want to a device you own.
In order to do that on iOS you have to remove the security restrictions Apple has put in place.
Most operating systems have some security restrictions and bypassing them is, in most cases, not a trivial task which is, of course, the whole point of those security features.
kristoph,
The link posted by hakki earlier indicates the legal situation in the US is a bit murky. DMCA exemptions are temporary and have to be explicitly renewed every 3 years, and they don’t explicitly apply to all devices.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_jailbreaking#United_States
I have to say that the law isn’t really my biggest concern here. It’s not really enough for the law to say I have the right to modify a device if the manufacturer will nevertheless impede my rights by adding device restrictions deliberately designed to stop me from exercising them.
Easy for a user to say, but the developers who have to implement the jailbreaks & patches to get their stuff working do not find this so trivial. It’s one thing for indy development to be unsupported, but it’s another thing entirely for manufacturers to actively block it against the wishes of the owner.
Jailbreaking is not anywhere as good as having an unrestricted device from the get-go. For one thing, everything becomes more fragile. One can’t really endorse jailbreaking without acknowledging a product’s insecurity since jailbreaking implicitly relies on it. Fixing the vulnerabilities breaks our access to our own devices. Owners should not have to be reliant on security holes to access their own device, that’s really sad.
No need. I own a N900 with Maemo, a Nexus with Android, a Firefox OS phone and a Palm Pre 2 with WebOS. Rooting is very easy on all of them, if needed. In WebOS it is actually done via Konami code.
No, he meant geeks not nerds.
The difference: Nerds do things and care about things that aren’t advertised in a Samsung commercial.
Nah: http://laughingsquid.com/nerd-venn-diagram-geek-dork-or-dweeb/
There’s nothing geeky about being infatuated with gadgetry. It takes obsessive attention to detail as well.
That’s what I often find myself lamenting about. There are a lot of interesting devices that could do so many fancy thing if only they weren’t locked down, and could be used for many years longer if only you could fix software-issues or introduce new features.
My Philips “smart” TV, for example, was abandoned the moment I got it by Philips and the software is horribly a shoddy, bug-ridden mess and oh-so-excruciatingly slow; if there was a way of installing custom firmware on it I have no doubt that there would already be a handful of high-end replacements with actually modern features and speedier UIs.
Or another example I have is my FRITZ!Box cable-modem: it apparently has 512MB RAM, a dual-core SoC and something around 256MB flash, USB3.0 and 4 built-in DVB-C tuners in it. The tuners can be used via SAT-IP, but alas, the firmware is buggy: you can only access one tuner at a time from a single IP-address, ie. you can’t use watch multiple channels simultaneously from a single address, for example. Also, the box only responds to SSDP-queries about SAT-IP when you connect via WLAN — it ignores such queries completely if you do an SSDP-query from Ethernet. The web-UI is so horribly slow, too, that loading a single page takes 10 seconds or more. It’s a lot of good hardware that is practically ruined by shit firmware.
Contrast this to e.g. the Buffalo ADSL-modems I have: only 64MB RAM, single-core SoC at 333MHz, 32MB Flash, but after installing OpenWRT those things are practically flying! The pages in the web-UI take less than a second to load, there’s a package-management system and repositories built-in so I can just go clicky-clicky to extend its functionality, I can go and use standard tools to write my own software for it and all that — open firmware really makes even such low-end devices shine.
WereCatf,
I agree with you these are among the problems with restrictions that really make modern technology lame. It’s a bane for real “geeks” who want to use technology beyond the manufacturer’s whim’s. There are countless instances when I’ve been in a bind because manufacturer bugs and limitations that I could have easily fixed if not for the lockouts built into the hardware/firmware.
You mentioned equipment that is no longer supported, however I’d like to point out that it can be a problem even with devices that are officially supported. One example is a Spider Duo I purchased from Lantronix, which overall works ok but some of it’s functions did not work to spec due to implementation bugs. I spent my time to collecting network and diagnosing the problem because I anticipated that they would actually fix the product. The tools they used in their firmware were open source so I was able to send them the fix. They acknowledged the bug, yet they were not interested in releasing any firmware updates despite the fact that it wasn’t operating to spec and they had the fix in hand. I was really shocked at how uncommitted Lantronix were with supporting a product which is still shipping new; how naive I was… Unless I can somehow find a root exploit on the device, I can’t fix it myself. I’ve been forced to purchase yet another external device just to work around a Lantronix bug that they know about.
With everything becoming IP enabled, it theoretically gives us tremendous power to hack our devices and build great things, which is very exciting. But with manufacturers locking down the technology and stripping owners of the access that would enable this power to be harnessed, that’s so disappointing. It’s easy to say “well you shouldn’t buy proprietary devices”, but it would be much better if owners could just hack their existing devices rather than having to special order something unlocked. Also sometimes it’s very difficult to find mainstream manufacturers who are committed to openness, especially for niche products.
Edited 2015-09-28 17:11 UTC
… is Safari. On IOS 8 you get 405 points (out of 555) on the html5 test. With IOS 9 you get 409 points, an increase of a mere 4 points. A year later and they did almost nothing to improve html standard compliance.
Edited 2015-09-28 14:49 UTC
The article also highlighted the memory beast that is safari as well. Phones and tablets need more RAM these days just to tame the web browsers as lame and un exciting as that is.
There is room for app improvement in just highlighting and removing excess tabs in browsers. I often find myself with 30 open tabs, non of which are very critical. I wish I had the “close all tabs except for those on the right” option that exists on the desktop. Refactored for the interface of course.