iOS 8 is finally available for public download. Somehow I never liked the idea of OTA updates, so it took me 20 minutes to download the update via iTunes. The update process itself needed less than 10 minutes. Right after the completion of update process, we need to answer few setting questions like iCloud password and Location services.
It’s probably worth to note that one of the setting up question is whether we want to upgrade our iCloud files into iCloud Drive or not. Since I also use Mac mini and Macbook Pro, I choose not to upgrade my iCloud into iCloud drive yet. Waiting for the public release of Mac OS X Yosemite.
At first glance, iOS 8 looks almost identical with iOS 7. Of course, until I started exploring some of its new features. The new OS runs very smooth in my iPhone 5S and iPad mini retina. No notable lag or any bug so far.
Battery Usage per App
This is one of the main feature that I’m looking forward to. Now we can find out which app drains the most of our battery power. Go to Settings > Usage > Battery Usage to access this new feature. For most people, the top culprit would be Facebook app. For my case in the first 4 hours of using iOS 8, the top list is Messages, Home & Lock Screen, then Facebook. Why do we need this? When we realize than a particular app draws significant battery power without we use it much, it means that app is doing a lot of background activities, or triggering too many notifications. We can always opt to disable background refresh and/or notifications for these apps.
Hey Siri
Now we can call Siri without pressing home button, without doing any tap or entering any menu. When iPhone is connected to power, we can directly say “Hey Siri” to call it. There is no need to wait for its response before continuing with instruction. If we just say “Hey Siri” then wait for an answer, it will only answer by “Hi “. Of course, we can also turn off this feature if we don’t want it by going to Settings > Siri > Allow Hey Siri. If you notice, Siri now display what we’re saying as we speak. This will result in faster interaction with Siri, and (hopefully) better results.
Quicktype
The default keyboard of iOS is now equipped with the capability to guess the word we’re typing. It learns as we use it, so it gets better after some time. I personally like this new feature because it recognizes words from the multiple languages that I set from Settings > Language & Region. I can type in any language that I need, and it automatically adjust to my behavior.
Keyboard
iOS 8 finally allows us to install custom keyboards. So far I have installed and tried three custom keyboards: Swype, SwiftKey and Fleksy. Some of these third party keyboard asks permission for “full access” and we can deny their requests. This becomes a difficult decision for me. If I don’t allow “full access” to these keyboard, they won’t be able to learn the words that I type, therefore they won’t be able to provide good word suggestions to allow me to type faster. But if I give “full access” to these keyboards, technically these keyboard becomes a keylogger, their servers will receive everything I type, which might include passwords and credit card numbers.
Custom keyboards offer different styles of “improving” our input method. They are fun to play with. But after 1-2 hours of playing, I found that I still prefer the default keyboard from Apple with the new Quicktype.
Notification Center
There are some improvements in notification center. Apps now can install widgets there. Plus we can directly respond to message notification banner.
Family Sharing
This is by far the best new feature in iOS 8. iCloud makes iPhone and iPad very personal. Everyone is encouraged to sync their own data and settings using their own account. However, since music, movies, books and apps purchases are tied to an Apple ID, using separate accounts mean every family members need to purchase their own content. This new feature allow one “organizer account” and up to 5 family members share music, movies, books and apps purchased using 1 credit card. Parents can set up kids account, integrated with parental control. When kids want to purchase content, we can set that parent must give approval first. Very very useful. Thumbs up for Apple !
Continuity and Handoff
This feature allow seamless integration between Apple devices. We can work from one device and continue in another. Supposedly this feature will be a lot more useful when OS X Yosemite is available for public download later this year. For now, we are limited to integration between our iOS devices. Today when I first receive call from my wife, I was shocked because the incoming call appeared in both my iPhone and iPad. I can pick up the phone in my iPad ! Well, this is just one simple example. There will be more productivity improvements once OS X and iOS can work seamlessly.
App Extension
This new feature is more for developers. It allows more flexibility on how apps could talk to each other. Hopefully there will be many apps using this feature in the near future.
Messages
We can now send voice recording in Messages. In the conversation screen, there’s a new menu called Detail on the upper right corner. This allows us to send our current location to the other person, see all the previous photo attachments during conversation with this person, and a Do Not Disturb switch. If you turn on the vibrate, sometimes we get annoyed by constant buzzing when we have frequent conversation. Now we can turn off the notification with one particular person, and turn it back on later. The new Messages app also offers a new option to automatically delete older messages.
Suggested Apps
The lower left corner of the lock screen will now display a tiny app icon based on our location. When we are in a store that has an app, it will display the app if we have it in our phone, or it will display App Store icon if we haven’t downloaded it yet. To access the suggested app, simply swipe up from that icon. To turn off this feature, go to Settings > iTunes & App Store > Suggested Apps.
Health app
This is Apple’s version for health features. Haven’t really explored this feature yet. Probably will write a separate post later.
Other Changes
> Improved Spotlight search.
> Podcast app and iBooks app are now part of iOS installation.
> iBooks app gains auto night mode.
> New Tips app.
> Redesigned Photos app. Camera Roll is removed. Photo editing gains few more capabilities including auto rotating.
> We can now hide a photo by long-pressing the photo or its thumbnail.
> Swipe gesture in Mail app now shows a new button: flag.
> Contact shortcuts in app switcher screen. By default it displays our favorite and recent contacts, but we can easily change this setting from Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Contacts > Show in App Switcher.
> Slightly modified design of Control Center.
> Revised design of iBooks app. Somehow now it displays less lines in a page, using exactly the same setting as iOS 7.
> Time Lapse mode in Camera app.
> We can now request desktop version of a particular website when using Safari.
> In Music app, we can delete an album instead of each individual song. Plus we can add songs from one playlist to another.
> Weather app now uses data from The Weather Channel instead of Yahoo.
> New alternative calendars, including Chinese, Hebrew, and Islamic.
> In the privacy setting of Location Services, we can now choose to allow each particular app to access our location with three options: never, always, when using the app. The third option will prevent the app from accessing our location when working in the background.
> Grayscale mode and Speak Screen mode in Accessibility.
> iOS 8 randomizes the MAC addresses of our devices when scanning for WiFi networks. This makes it more difficult for companies to track and gather location data on a customer. Unfortunately, this new feature has prevented me to connect to some free WiFi networks provided by some banks and stores.
> Peer-to-peer AirPlay. This new feature allows us to stream content directly to Apple TV without the need to have both devices connected to the same WiFi network.
> Phone calls over WiFi.
> DuckDuckGo is now added as an option for search engine. DuckDuckGo is a search engine that does not collect any data from us, so it’s more private.
This year’s iOS update is more developer-centric. It means, it doesn’t give many direct observable changes for end-users by the time of installing, but it will allow app developers to do a lot more things so they can create more awesome apps.
Overall, I really like iOS 8 so far. It does not introduce massive amount of new features, but it does give us great improvements in some areas that really matter (like Family Sharing). I personally don’t like to have overwhelming number of new features every year, only to find out that I won’t use most of them.
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