WWDC 2015: iOS 9 Is Here But It's Hardly Anything To Get Excited About

Apple’s Annual Developers conference’s 2015 edition kicked off yesterday. And unsurprisingly, the highlight of day one was the announcement of iOS 9. Don’t get excited yet, as the update changes nothing radically and is more of a refinement of the existing OS. Here’s what’s been fixed, introduced and added in iOS 9.

1) Siri gets Proactive

Siri has been fitted with a new feature called Proactive which will help Siri offer suggestions based on your location and time of the day. Also, it will tell you estimated traffic times, start music as you plug in your ear phones and suggest you apps keeping in mind you usage pattern and the ewisting apps on your phone. 

2) Spotlight Search Gets Smarter

Somewhere or other, Spotlight search just feels not so very flawless. With iOS 9 Apple is trying to make Spotlight search as reliable as possible. Deep linking within Spotlight searches has been introduced which will now let you look up content in apps and do unit conversions without opening a web tab. Also, all this intelligent processing takes place on the device itself rather than on cloud processing like Google and Microsoft.

3) Apple Pay Is Now More Friendly 

With iOS 9, the skeptic Apple Pay will be compatible with more banks and credit card providers, while support for store credit cards and loyalty cards can be expected soon after. The confusing in-bilt app Passbook has been replaced with something called Wallet which will take care of your credit cards, debit cards, store cards, and loyalty cards.

4) ‘Notes’ App Gets The Much Needed Revamp

The note taking app has forever been a staple to iOS. With iOS 9, new handy features like image insertion, checklists and sketches have been added to Notes. 

5) News

As the name speaks for itself, News is Apple’s very own app for news curation. The app will aggregate the most important news blogs, articles, features and feeds from around the web and present them in mobile-formatted layout that loads quickly with full-blown images. Apple has reportedly collaborated with CNN, Time, Wired, ESPN, Buzzfeed, and The Verge for support for this app.

6) Good News For iPad Users

With Ios 9 Apple has introduced new multitasking mode for iPad. This feature lets you run two-apps side by side at once and can be split 50-50 or 70-30 on the screen. Videos can also be now watched in picture-in-picture viewer that can be moved around on the screen. Though this will only be compatible on iPad Air 2.

7) Decicated ‘Low Power Mode’

Apple also talked about a dedicated low power mode that will manage another additional 3 hours of life on a single charge. The details about it’s operation are still scant.

The update has only been opened to registered developers as of today, followed by a public beta launch in July and the final launch can be expected in September. The Update will only be compatible with  iPhone 4S and iPad 2 from 2011.