iOS 9 released today

[haven]

A significant upgrade to Apple's iOS operating system for iPhones, iPads and iPods was released today. As always, the best advice is to wait a couple of weeks before upgrading. Despite months of public beta testing, often additional bugs are discovered once any major OS update is released. This is especially worth noting for Apple products. Apple often makes it difficult to return to an earlier version of the OS once an upgrade has taken place.

iOS 9 has a bunch of new features. I know, many of these features were part of Android releases months, even years, ago. It's nice to see them appear on Apple devices.

The iMore blog has an exhaustive series of articles about iOS 9. Read (or at least quickly scan) them here http://www.imore.com/ios-9-review

See Apple's list of new features in iOS 9 here https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1842?locale=en_US

 

[haven]

One of the potentially disruptive new features of iOS 9 is content blocking. This feature allows Apple's Safari browser to take advantage of third-party extensions to block content that slows down display of web pages. In most cases, the content being blocked is advertising. Web trackers that report what pages you're viewing are also prime candidates for blocking. While content blockers (AdBlock Plus is a well-known example) have been available for desktop machines and Android phones for a while, Apple's mobile devices have not had similar technology.

Several reviewers report that blocking ads reduces page load times by as much as 50%. Blocking web trackers reduces web traffic substantially, too. As an example, see the Anandtech.com review of iOS 9, section on content blocking.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9605/the-ios-9-review/10#SafariBlockers

Content blocking promises to give owners of iPhones and iPads faster web browsing and longer battery life. However, Safari is the vehicle for 25% of all mobile browsing. Widespread ad blocking will affect web sites that receive income from views of display ads from their sponsors.

Here's an article with a list of third party extensions that enable ad blocking. http://www.loopinsight.com/2015/09/16/a-list-of-content-blockers-for-ios-9/

Content blocking is not available on all hardware. A 64 bit processor is required. Machines that support content blocking include:
iPhone 6S iPhone 6, iPhone 5s
iPhone 6S Plus, iPhone 6 Plus
iPad Air 2, iPad Air
iPad mini 4, iPad mini 3, iPad mini 2
iPod touch 6

Looks like it's time to upgrade my iPad!

 

[evilfij]

About time on the ad block.

 

[Airmapper]

I hope it fixes whatever reason my iPad has been acting buggy since the last update. Web pages crash constantly, and my wireless (cell network) connection refuses to communicate until I re-boot sometimes.

I'll love the ad-blockers. I hope it does hurt revenue on sites that choose to implement spammy, disruptive, and high bandwidth hogging ads. I believe some filters like Ad-Block for Firefox actually allow ads that do not fall into those categories.

 

[haven]

The ad blocking extensions typically use a curated list of sites whose ads should be blocked. Some have a "white list" where you can manually add sites where you want the ads to be shown. ExpeditionPortal.com's ads aren't too intrusive, so consider putting ExPo on the white list.

 

[1Louder]

First quick test using GAIA I had no issues.

 

[brentbba]

So I admittedly just skimmed the Apple new features list and didn't see what I was looking for. Overheard someone at work mentioning a new Apple IOS and had said we could now delete unwanted apps that Apple currently forces on us...like Apple watch. There are a lot of these apps/icons both the better half and I would just as soon delete, but we can't. Can we with IOS 9?

 

[expedition4x4]

ad blocking works great!I am using crystal as the content helper app

 

[haven]

I think the ability to delete unwanted standard apps provided by Apple is under discussion for a future release. It's not part of iOS 9.0. Here's one article that talks about this issue.
http://www.fastcompany.com/3051185/fast-feed/apple-may-soon-let-you-delete-its-default-apps

 

[haven]

iOS 9.0.1 was released today. The update fixes bugs, including one that can occur during initial installation.
(told you you should wait a couple of weeks before upgrading!)

http://recode.net/2015/09/23/apple-issues-bug-fixes-for-ios-9/

 

[nwoods]

Hoping that the update fixes my search issues. iOS9 refuses to search my contacts, despite having that specifically turned on under the Spotlight options.

 

[nwoods]

Sweet! My contacts issue was resolved with 9.01

 

[haven]

Here's a wide-ranging review of iOS9 ad blockers. The reviewer liked 1Blocker the best.
https://brooksreview.net/2015/09/content-blocker-test/

 

[Christophe Noel]

My wife installed IOS 9 on her 5s. She admitted she doesn't usually jump on updates too quickly, and this time should not have. It torpedoed her phone so badly, Apple suggested a replacement. Like thousands of others, her phone got locked in "slide to upgrade" mode and had required a full restore five times in two days to get it moderately functional again. Apple's support team was not only of little help, they sounded as frustrated as anyone.

I love Apple and have two MacBooks, three iPads, several iPods, a Thunderbolt display, Time Capsule and two iPhones.

Yesterday we ordered two Samsung phones. My confidence is THAT BLOWN.

 

[nwoods]

Yesterday we ordered two Samsung phones. My confidence is THAT BLOWN.

My son "jumped ship" last fall to a Samsung S5 as an experimental upgrade from an iPhone 4s. He loved the screen size upgrade, the processor speed, and camera improvements. But he hates everything else.

He can't update to the latest Android OS because AT&T hasn't adopted it yet (didn't it come out 8 months ago?). There's a lot of bloatware he can't get rid of, and the OS itself is kind of a jumbled mess. It's inconsistent between apps, visually and functionally. There's a lot of flexibility in what he can run, but it's very unpolished. He struggles with it everyday and complains all the time.

To cap it all off, he left it out by the pool, screen side up, and the sun cooked it, cracking the screen. You can replace an iPhone screen for $50. It's $198 to replace the Samsung screen. Apprearantly the glass is factory bonded to the LCD display, so you have to buy the entire assembly.

His phone is a 32GB model, and it's constantly full. He only has about 20 apps, and offloads photos and data as much as possible to a 64Gb SD card that's plugged in (very cool), but the bloatware combined with very inefficiently written apps, and the inability to assign data within a lot of those apps to the SD card fills up his phone and makes it pretty unusable.

Also, while sharp, the camera sucks at low light compared to my wife's iPhone 5s or my 6.

He is currently saving up to go back to an iPhone 6sin the near future.

The moral of this story is to caution you from buying two Samsungs. Perhaps just get 1 and see if you like it. Also, choose a carrier with a good track record of allowing the latest Android update, or get a straight Google sourced handset that allows you to root it and update it whenever you want, and comes free of bloatware