Some cool stuff in iOS 9


The keyboard caps situation

It's always been difficult to know whether the caps are on or not with iOS, but it became particularly hard after iOS 7 when everything went "flat." iOS 9 makes a major change that's simple and obvious. The keyboard letters are simply in lower case until they're upper case. As an iOS user since 1.0, it looks really weird, but should solves that problem

A new battery widget

Now at a glance you can see the remaining power capacity of all connected devices. So, in addition to the iPhone, for example, you can see the remaining charge of your Apple Watch and Bluetooth headphones.

Safari Desktop View

One big pet peeve of mine is when websites delivery special mobile sites to mobile users. These sites often lack features and content, and most annoyingly, limit touch interaction. A new share screen feature requests the desktop version of that site. Cool.

Searching in settings

This is cool and long needed. No longer do you need to hunt for a setting in the system preferences. Type something in the search and all related items come up. This includes sub-items within preferences and also includes third-party app settings. You can see the sub section for settings and simply click to get you there. This is a big improvement.

Safari Find on Page.

I've hated the way we had to search for page content since Safari adopted the unified address/search bar. If you want to find a keyword on the page, you need to clear out the URL, enter your word, let the results populate, scroll to the bottom of the suggestions, AND THEN get what you want. Oh, and be careful to not click anything else you'll shot off somewhere. Now a new share widget lets you quickly find content on pages.

Notification Order

Now we can view our notification in a more logical manner. Before it was ordered by apps, but now you can order by time. And you can wipe out all notifications a day at a time.

Spotlight Now

Similar to Google Now, iOS will read you email and try to help out. This is a cool feature, as long as data doesn't leave your phone.

Calendar Planning

Calendar now promise to update and provide notification of current travel info when an appointment has an address. Calendar would give a travel estimate, but now it seems to take into account current conditions for your next appointment to help get you where you need to be on time.

Better Battery Info

Now when you look at energy usage, you can get a more granular idea of what's going on. Sure, and app might suck down battery while using, but what you're probably really want to know is what's sucking battery in the background. Now, you can see the difference.

Call ID

Now when someone calls, iOS will try to figure out who's calling even if they're not in your contacts. Apple says it will try to figure out phone numbers from contact info in email.

Smaller Install

1.3 GB vs 4.5 GB. Owners of 16 GB devices rejoice! No longer do you need to free up to 1/3 the device storage to upgrade.

Maps and Nearby Info

Kind of cool, you can view categories of things around you. For example, looking for somewhere to eat, you can quickly search for food destinations by category or popularity. I use Yelp and Trip Advisor apps a lot for this, so this could be interesting.