iOS 9 has brought a lot of new features to the table, and many of those features have been borrowed, whether by coincidence or not, from already existing jailbreak tweaks. In this post, I summarize some of the tweaks that have been natively added to iOS 9 beta 1. Did your favorite tweak make the cut?
Episode 85: WWDC 2015 was a huge event with tons of different announcements, beta releases and new features. The crew tries to cover all of the major announcements, including OS X El Capitan, iOS 9, watchOS 2, Apple's new music service, and more.
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Apple seeded iOS 8.4 beta 4 to developers this afternoon. It is available immediately to those developers running iOS 8.4 beta 3 via Settings → General → Software Update. It is also now available as a download from Apple's redesigned Developer Portal.
The iOS 8.4 beta 4 release, which is build 12H4125a, comes nearly a month after iOS 8.4 beta 3. Apple announced at yesterday's WWDC keynote, that its new Apple Music streaming service was set to debut on June 30th. This means that we'll see the final version of iOS 8.4, in which Apple Music will officially arrive to the public, before the end of the month.
watchOS 2 brings a ton of new features to the Apple Watch, including a new bedside alarm clock feature, multiple screens for friends, the ability to add new friends directly from the Friends interface, video playback, speaker output, replying directly from email, and so much more.
True multitasking is now a reality on the iPad! With iOS 9, you can view two apps at the same time and interact with them using multitouch at the same time.
You can also adjust the Split View between the two apps on the fly, and access additional apps by means of a brand new App Switcher. You'll even be able to watch videos via a brand new Picture in Picture mode.
Needless to say, iOS 9 looks like a complete game changer for the iPad. It will certainly make it more of a productivity machine thanks to the new multitasking ability.
Apple says that many iPhone users use the Notes app regularly to do things like create lists, capture ideas, and more. As a big proponent of the Notes app, I completely concur.
Notes on iOS 9 brings some significant new improvements to the Notes app to help those users, including the ability to create lists, rich text, and hand-drawn notes, and more.
Spotlight search has been completely redesigned for iOS 9, and it brings with it a new interface, a new search API, deep linking to search results, and more. With an interface that harkens back to the pre-iOS 7 days, search is now a powerful new tool in iOS.
As someone who no longer personally owns an iPad, it was great to finally get back into the tablet game with the adoption of a Nexus 9 from Google. I know some of you probably think I’ve lost it as of late, or I’m simply pulling a classic Jeff move, but hear me out.
After adopting the iPhone 6 Plus, I felt that there was simply too much overlap between it and my 7.9” iPad mini. The difference in screen size between those two devices, while still technically large, just wasn’t enough for me to justify carrying both of them around. I was, and still am convinced that my next tablet will have to be larger than 7.9 inches.
With the recent release of Android M, I wanted a tablet that I could use to test out Google’s latest OS update. Unfortunately, due to the massive fragmentation present in the Android universe, the hardware options were quite limited. Basically, I needed to get a Nexus device, and since I already own enough Android phones, I decided to go with a tablet—enter the Nexus 9.
I’ve been using the Nexus 9 for about a week, and I’ve been using it a lot. In this post, I want to talk about five things I like about the Nexus 9, versus five things I don’t like. I shot this video a few days ago, and my opinion is still evolving about the hardware and the software experience, but this is a good starting point for this discussion. Watch the full video walkthrough and tell me what you think.
Earlier this evening, I had the opportunity to join Megan Morrone over at Tech News 2Night on TwiT. We discussed Apple Watch, WWDC, HomeKit, the new Music app in iOS 8.4, Android smart watches, the Pebble and more.
Want to join in on the fun? You can watch the full episode right now.
Lots of new tidbits of information is beginning to surface regarding a potential jailbreak for iOS 8.3 and iOS 8.4, and the future of jailbreaking with iOS 9, which will presumably be released in beta form after the WWDC keynote on Monday, June 8th, 2015.
iDigitalTimes' Cammy Harbison's interview with TaiG member Ray Xie, revealed that the TaiG team is setting its sights on iOS 9 with regard to future jailbreaks. Not long after that interview went live, news began to leak out that Pangu, the other Chinese team responsible for some of the more recent jailbreaks, was preparing a jailbreak release for iOS 8.3 right after the release of iOS 8.4.
So what's to make of all of this? Will we actually see an iOS 8.3 jailbreak released publicly? Will we have to wait until iOS 9 officially launches before another jailbreak surfaces? There's no way to be 100% sure about any of this, especially with the rumored implementation of the so-called rootless security mechanism. But one thing is clear, the interest in jailbreaking—at least from a hacker perspective—is still strong.
A couple of hours ago, I got my first real hands-on experience with HomeKit—the connected smart home framework that Apple announced at WWDC 2014. A year later, and some of the very first HomeKit enabled products are now landing on store shelves.
The folks over at Lutron were nice enough to send us the Caséta Wireless Smart Lighting Dimmer Kit ($229.95 on Amazon). This kit comes with a Smart Bridge, two remote controls and two plug-in lamp dimmers. Although the kit in and of itself is interesting, our main interest at iDownloadBlog is with its HomeKit support. With that in mind, this post consists of an unboxing and overview of Lutron's kit and a walkthrough of the HomeKit configuration, including Siri control.
Want to see how HomeKit works in the real world? Then watch our full video walkthrough for more details.
Yesterday, the folks at tmbr sent over a couple of iPhone 6 Plus cases for my inspection. To be honest, I've never been a big fan of reviewing cases unless they do something particularly well. In fact, I've received tons of cases over the years, but I can count on one hand how many I've actually taken the time to review.
In other words, if you see me reviewing a case, then it must be pretty special. I wasn't exactly sure if I'd even bother reviewing the tmbr case, but after testing it out for just five minutes, I just knew I had to share the experience with you.