iOS10 preview : An Indian point of view
Last week, at WWDC 16, Apple took the wraps off of iOS 10, the next version of their popular OS for phones and tablets. I was able to get the developer beta installed on my iPhone 6 and I have been using the beta version for almost a week. There were a few application crashes, few freezes here and there. This is expected given that the OS is in developer beta. Apart from these tiny niggles, the OS is surprisingly stable and is fast too. This time, the updates are targeted more towards applications that to the core OS itself. If you saw the Keynote address, a lot of time was spent on showing off new versions of apps like Photos, iMessage, Maps etc.
In India, we never get a chance to utilize every single feature of iOS. There are various reason for this. iOS users are in extreme minority in India, the accessory/services market has not evolved like how it has in USA/Europe (HealthKit, HomeKit etc) and whatever is available is ridiculously expensive! The reliability and speed of Internet is also at a primitive stage. In this article, you are going to see if iOS 10 is going to be helpful for those using iOS devices in India.
iMessage, the biggest change to iOS
I can explain these feature by feature but it is easier if you take a look at this video. One issue that I face is that, unlike in Europe or USA, the iOS community is India is minute. Given the lack of integration with other chat apps like Hike, Hangouts, I ended up with severely limited function. Not even half a dozen of my friends have an iPhone so for 99% of my contact list, iMessages can be used to send plain text messages.
The User Interface
At first glance, the only difference you see with lockscreen is that the message ‘Slide to unlock’ is gone, replaced by ‘Press Home to Unlock’. From the lock screen, you can swipe right to access the new ‘widgets window’ or swipe left to access phone’s camera. Though there is option to edit widgets (at the bottom of the list), you still need to unlock the phone. The number of apps supporting lockscreen/homescreen widgets has increased considerably. When compared to Android’s widgets, these things look totally hideous and severely limited. I would rather keept he widgets panel empty than fill it up with half functional ugly looking widgets.
The home screen is still that same old grid of icons. The iconography has remained the same when compared to iOS9 but typography is now little bit bolder so you do not have to sqint in some areas to understand text. The folder view looks beautiful, thanks to new translucent background. A 3D touch on application short cut will now give you option to add new widgets (for the application) in the widgets area and this is far easier than editing the widgets area to add new widgets.Spotlight search is everywhere now, including the notification bar. You can also access search history, which can be very helpful.
You can now remove the built in applications that Apple provided but this is more like ‘Remove shortcut from the desktop’. The app and its data remains on board. Given that this will de-clutter the home screen, I am partially happy. As of now, you cannot change default applications settings for most apps so if you remove apps like ‘Mail’, you will not be able to use ‘share by email etc’ as it will say ‘Mail application is missing’. So, until Apple makes ‘default application’ choice more open, you better not remove those built in apps. Contacts interface is new. The ‘list of contacts’ has not changed but when you open a contact, the interface looks different and now you can add lot of information.
Those using iPhone 6s/plus can now view notifications (on lock screen) by raising their phone from the table (if Raise to Wake feature is enabled in Display and Brightness settings). This feature is not available for those using older phones. According to Apple, those with newer iPhones have extremely sensitive fingerprint reader so they are not able to access notifications by doing a tap on home screen and this is the reason why they added ‘Raise to Wake’ for 6s/plus. For those with older phones, just click on the home button.
Notification center now has ‘clear all’ option so you do not have to clear your notifications day by day or app by app. Notifications come with quick action support where in you can reply to a message that came via iMessage or other messaging applications. You can even watch a video or photo right from notification bar. If you have the newer 6S/Plus with 3D touch, there are lot more actions that you can perform. The best part about notification center is ‘lack of widgets’. These are moved to the left most home screen (have to swipe right from your primary home screen). The removal of widgets from lock screen makes it lot more cleaner. Control center too got an update where in there is now a two pane layout (second pane is dedicated for multimedia control (YouTube, Apple Music etc) and is highly recommended. Those using 6s/plus can now use 3D touch to perform actions like ‘select intensity of flash light, setup duration for timer etc’.
Keyboard now has contextual predictions and can help you with something like ‘feasible time for meeting or meet up’ when you are typing ‘i will be free at ‘ or if you are typing using different languages, the predictions change accordingly so that you can stick to single keyboard. I tried to test hinglish but it did not work. Looks like for now, its just some European and key Asian languages. I have also tried to get Keyboard suggest me free time etc but somehow it is not working. It could be some region setting or I will have to check again in detail. 🙁
iCloud Drive
If you have a Mac at home that is running MacOS Sierra, content that you place on your desktop and in documents folder will be synced to iCloud Drive (settings is enabled by default) and you can access the same content from your phone using iCloud Drive application. Be careful when you are copying huge files (as our first instinct usually is to copy data straight on to desktop). If you copy a massive 4K video, your limited Internet bandwidth will be gone for a toss. This is a very useful feature for me as I do not have to setup ‘dedicated’ iCloud Drive on my desktop. And letting the content accessible from the phone or iPad is great thinking!
Calendar
Calendar is now more powerful. Calendar goes through your email and messages and can suggest you events that it found in mails/message and let you add the event to your calendar. If navigation and traffic mode is enabled in your country, Calendar can suggest ‘time to leave’ by looking up location, traffic condition, transit options etc. If you are searching for a location for an event, Calendar will suggest you locations based on your previous picks.
For us in India, given that you cannot integrate Google Maps (as it has strong traffic/transit features), new functionality is limited. Also, the locations are not aggressively added to Apple Maps so ‘location search’ is limited. Coming to Maps, Apple’s own maps application continues to be useless in India. There are some businesses listed but when I try to get directions, Maps applications is not able to find directions to the destination. For example, when I searched for Hyatt hotel in MG Road, the app pin pointed the location well and even pulled reservation/contact detail from booking.com. If I click on ‘Directions’, it fails. with Maps Apps and Apple’s focus on India, we may see vastly improved Apple Maps for India but right now, I do not see any need to use this when we have Google Maps, HERE Maps etc.
One good new feature in e-mail application is the ability to ‘un-subscribe from mailing lists’. Most of the ‘e-commerce Spam’ is sent using mailing lists and with the new e-mail app, you can un-subscribe from mails from a vendor by tapping on ‘un-subscribe ..’. In threaded mails, the most recent mail will now be at the top. There is also a suggestion for ‘move to’. There are many other new features for Mail but those are specific to large screen iOS devices like ipad.
Clock
Coming to Clock application, the new ‘Bedtime Wake Alarm’ will not render those sleep pattern applications useless but does provide some basic functionality to get you necessary amount of sleep. Using Bedtime Wake Alarm, you can configure when you have to wake up every day, how many hours of sleep you need and you will get an alarm (say, 15 minutes before the scheduled time) asking you to hit the bed. The application will not analyze how much time you were asleep etc. This is very similar to having two alarms (one to notify you to hit the bed and one to wake you up).
HealthKit
Health application on the other hand received major overhaul. The overhaul is so big that this is now the new ‘most confusing iOS native application’. There are four quadrants on home : Activity, Mindfulness, Nutrition, Sleep) and each of these need trackers and monitors to add data. The new application relies heavily on trackers and monitors compatible with Apple’s HealthKit. As of now, I did not configure much of this and am using the basic pedometer functionality. Once I setup some trackers and monitors, I should be able to analyze how good the new Health application is. If you are a big fan of HealthKit, get ready to spend a lot of money.
Photos
Photos application has also received major overhaul. The biggest feature is ‘face recognition’. Photos now has a ‘people’ section and you can now access photos organized by ‘who is in the photo’. Another great feature is ‘Memories’ which is more like HTC’s Zoe where you have collections based on memories and you can create nice Zoe like highlight videos. Third new feature is organizing photos based on location. With powerful Siri functionality, you can now search for photos based on location, memory and photos of a person. If you have lot of live photos, you can edit the live photos, apply live filter, do mark up of photos (adding special effects etc). The auto enhance and auto brilliance features are fun to use but do not expect these to make everyone look like a super model.
Apple Music
A lot was talked about Apple Music, about how the new UI is better than the previous ones and I totally agree. This new interface is less cluttered, has more options and is easier to use. You now have option to enable automatic music download so that you do not have to first add the music to library and then download the music. The ‘new’ section is now part of ‘Browse’. The home ‘Library’ is super clean and reminds a little bit of Zune’s UI where text take predominant place of iconography. Not going much into the changes, the Apple Music app is far better to use now.
Will it click in India?
Unfortunately, given that I am using the iPhone 6 (no 3D Touch), most of the new features will not work for me while some of the features that work are useless in India. And a good part of those features make use of 3D Touch and/or large screen devices. If you own an iPhone 6/Plus or older device, the number of features that you get in India are fairly limited and if you barely have any contacts/friends using iOS device and if you do not have a Mac at home and if you do not have a subscription for Apple Music iOS 10 is going to be as useless as Salman Khan’s shirt. But if you are using iPhone 6/Plus with active music subcriptions and if you have lot of friends using iPhones, this one is going to be a massive update for you!
