iOS 11 on the iPad introduces a brave new world of improved
multitasking, dragging-and-dropping, and launching apps from a familiar
dock. Yes, Apple saved the most substantive changes for its tablets , so
it's tempting to overlook the enhancements on the iPhone side of
things.
That would be selling the iOS 11 update short. While
this initial beta iOS 11 feels more like a continuation of iOS 10 than
an entirely new version, it does introduce some noteworthy changes that
can expand what our phone can do. Some are available now, such as a
customizable Control Center and Siri-powered translation tools, and
others are on the horizon, like Apple Pay support for transferring money
and augmented-reality-friendly apps. Here’s what we like — and what we
don’t — so far.
A word about betas
Before we dive into iOS 11 and what it brings to your phone, let's
address the burning question that's popped up ever since Apple started
issuing public betas for its mobile OS: Should I install this thing on
my iPhone?
The answer's the same as before — install the iOS 11
beta only on a device you don't depend on for your day-to-day use. As
relatively stable as the iOS 11 public beta is, you're still going to
run into bugs and glitches that are common for software that's not
intended for prime time. (My iPhone SE has spontaneously restarted a
couple of times since I installed the beta, for example.) Also, be
prepared to see your battery draining at a faster-than-usual clip — an
issue that Apple addresses in subsequent beta updates, if past patterns
are any indication.
One other factor may dissuade you from trying out the
beta at this point. iOS 11 works only with 64-bit devices (the iPhone
5s or later for phones, and on the tablet side, the iPad mini 2 or
later, the fifth-generation iPad or any iPad Pro or iPad Air). Apps that
are still 32-bit simply won't run on your iOS 11-powered device, so if
you depend on an app that hasn't seen an update in quite a while, you
may want to hold off on installing the beta until you can find a
64-bit-friendly replacement app. It's easy enough to find out which apps
won't work on iOS 11 by opening Settings and going to General ->
About -> Applications, where you'll find a list of the apps marked
for extinction.
What's good about iOS 11
A smarter Siri: So what do iPhone users have
to look forward to in this current iteration of iOS 11? Well, sticking
with Siri, Apple's personal assistant has learned some new languages, as
it's able to translate phrases into German, Spanish, Italian, French
and Mandarin Chinese. (Just be sure to over-enunciate the word
"Mandarin" when asking for a Chinese translation: Siri mishears my
request as "Manderin," and that gums up the works.)
Helpfully, Siri will not only speak the translated
phrase but will display it on your iPhone's screen; there's even a
button you can tap to repeat the phrase. This will come in handy if you
do a lot of traveling but don't speak the language of the locals, as you
can make Siri your interpreter.
Other promised Siri improvements don't appear fully
baked in this beta. Apple says that you'll be able to ask Siri to "play
something I like," but when I tried that, the digital assistant just
played a song at random from my library. Other queries like "Who is the
lead singer?" as "Baba O'Riley" played just result in Siri repeating the
name of the song. (This feature would presumably work better if I
subscribed to Apple Music , but it still feels like Siri could be a
little bit swifter on the uptake with some of these questions.) Overall,
Siri remains a little too slow on the uptake at this point, especially
in an era where the more clever Google Assistant now can live on the
iPhone. At least Siri's new voice in iOS 11 sounds a little more natural
and less robotic.
Editing Live Photos: I confess that I've never
taken to Live Photos, which add sound and motion to photos you shoot
with any iPhone released since 2015. The ability to edit Live Photos,
added in iOS 11, may change that.
You can insert effects like Bounce, which moves your
image back and forth, or Loop, which turning the Live Photo into a
GIF-like looping video. The best part of this addition is a preview
window as you edit in Photos, so you can see if your creation is
actually worth sharing, and make the necessary tweaks to sharpen the
image.
Saving you storage space: Photo storage
figures to be a little friendlier in iOS 11, at least if you're using
the latest iPhone or iPad. The iPhone 7 and iPad Pro support the HEIF
and HEVC formats for photos and videos, respectively, which results in a
50 percent reduction in file size while maintaining the same image
quality. (It's the processing oomph on those more recent devices that
keeps the image quality up; on other devices, such as my iPhone SE, the
compressed images wouldn't look as sharp, so that feature isn't
supported here.)
My colleague Mark Spoonauer shot a 50-second video on
an iPhone 7 with HVEC turned on and off. The HVEC file was 160.2MB
versus 289.4MB for the one shot in H.264. The HVEC file was a much
faster transfer, too. iPhone 7 owners are really going to appreciate
that space and speed.
App Store total makeover: The App Store is
another part of my iPhone I've long ignored, launching that app only to
search for something specific to download. iOS 11 introduces an App
Store where you may want to spend some time browsing the virtual
shelves. The store is laid out in a more manageable way, giving games
their own section. A new Today tab highlights specific apps with
extensive profiles. While this App Store redesign will specifically
appeal to developers, giving them more ways to promote new software,
it's likely to encourage you to discover new apps in the process.
Messages made easier: Probably the biggest
improvement introduced by iOS 10 was a reinvigorated Messages app . iOS
11's changes are more modest, but certainly welcome. You've got a pair
of new screen effects for text messages in Spotlight, which puts your
text in a halo of light, and Echo, which causes the message to pop up
all over the screen. Even better is the new app drawer — a strip of
icons for all the apps that interact with Messages . Accessing those
apps in iOS 10 involved a lot of taps and felt very cramped, especially
on iPhones with smaller displays. In the iOS 11 version of Messages,
accessing an app like Fandango to share movie times or Google Maps to
text your location is a lot more convenient.
A better approach to screenshots: The most
welcome enhancements in iOS 11 may be the slight changes that give you
more control over what you can do with the operating system. I'm a big
fan of the new way iOS 11 handles screenshots: For example, a thumbnail
appears in the lower left corner of the screen after you take a
screenshot, and you can tap that thumbnail to mark it up with text and
drawings.
Similarly, iOS 11 expands share sheets to include new
functionality like saving a web page in Safari as a PDF (which you can
then mark up) or turning a photo into an Apple Watch face.
Respecting power users: There are plenty of
power features to be found poking around iOS 11's settings, too. The
iPhone Storage section of General settings now lets you automatically
offload unused apps when you're low on capacity; documents and data are
preserved. iOS 11 redesigns the Control Center into a single screen of
more compact, tappable controls for things like your iPhone's built-in
flashlight and toggling Airplane Mode on and off. Even better, you can
dig into Settings and add new controls, giving you easier access to
things like turning on low-power mode, turning off notifications as you
drive and launching a screen recording. (Those latter two controls are
new additions to iOS, by the way.)
What's not so hot
Notification confusion: iOS 11 brings
notifications to the lock screen, and its intentions are honorable, even
if the implementation is a bit of a dog's breakfast. One of my
complaints about previous notification iterations was that I would see
them flash on my iPhone screen, just as I was unlocking my phone — only
to have them disappear forever. That's unlikely to happen in iOS 11, as
all recent notifications will appear on your lock screen with an upward
swipe. You can then tap an always visible X to dismiss them. (Or, if you
have a 3D Touch-capable phone, a hard press clears all the
notifications at once.)
The trouble is that Apple did away with other
notification behaviors, like a leftward swipe to view or clear the
notification. Instead, that swipe will launch the camera app. And if
you're like me, you'll launch the camera app a lot after you install iOS
11. (Tap notifications from third-party apps doesn't seem to do
anything at this point, but I'm chalking that up to a beta quirk that's
likely to change in future updates.)
News and Music still meh: The News app, which I
only ever seem to launch when it's time to review Apple's latest
version of iOS, adds a new Spotlight tab featuring editor-selected
content. That's unlikely to make me pay any more attention to News than I
have before. The same goes for the marquee addition to the Music app,
where you can set up a profile on Apple Music to share playlists and
highlight favorite albums and stations. Every few years, Apple seems to
want to add a social element to its music offerings, and I guess this is
the 2017 version of that yearning.
The iPad gets (most of) the love
At this point, the biggest iOS 11-triggered shift
will be felt by users installing the beta on their iPads. Apple
acknowledges as much on its iOS 11 preview page where the iOS update is
called a "giant step for iPhone" and a "monumental leap for iPad."
Quibbling over adjectives aside, Apple's certainly
correct that iOS 11 has a lot to offer iPad users. iOS 11 introduces
drag-and-drop, a great productivity enhancement for Apple's tablet that
moves the iPad a step closer to being a credible laptop stand-in. New
Work Spaces keeps apps grouped together, which really bolsters the iPad
multitasking capabilities first introduced in iOS 9. iPad users now even
have a macOS-esque Dock available from any screen, letting you switch
between apps with ease.
It's all part of Apple's grand scheme to make the
iPad more of a productivity tool that takes advantage of iOS's
touch-driven interface. It's not quite the radical departure that came
when iOS 9's multitasking features turned your old iPad into a new
device, but iOS 11's new features still expand the iPad's powers in
quite a noteworthy way.
Some features still MIA
The trouble with evaluating iOS 11 at this beta stage
is that many of the marquee features have yet to be activated. Were you
looking forward to using Apple Pay to exchange money with your friends?
That's not a part of this beta. Files, a new app introduced by Apple
for both the iPad and iPhone, promises to bring better file-searching
and organizing capabilities to your mobile device. But Files lacks the
promised tie-ins to third-party cloud-storage services like Box and
Dropbox at this point, making it feel like a glorified interface for
iCloud Drive.
One of the most exciting iOS 11 additions I saw at
WWDC was ARKit , a developer tool that promises to help app makers add
augmented-reality features to their offerings. Any iOS device with iOS
11 and an A9 processor will be able to run an ARKit-built app, sparing
you from having to buy a fancy new phone to enjoy the benefits of mixed
reality. But those apps aren't likely to appear before the fall, as
developers have had access to ARKit for only a few weeks.
The biggest missing feature in the iOS 11 beta also
won't arrive until the fall, and even then, it will need more time to
make its presence felt. Apple promises that the iOS 11 incarnation of
Siri is going to get smarter the more you use it, and those smarts will
show up in things like suggested News stories based on topics you've
searched for or adding reservations to the Calendar app when you've
confirmed them in Safari.
Siri has a pretty good track record in this regard,
as I've found QuickType suggestions in iOS 10 have gotten more tailored
to what I text and tweet about. (The names of assorted Oakland A’s
players pop up a lot as a suggested word when I'm typing, for example.)
So I'm interested to see how these expanded smarts will work in Siri;
they're just not there yet a few days into the public beta.
iOS 11 outlook
How you feel about the iOS 11 beta will likely depend
on which device you use to test it. iPad owners will find this to be a
significant upgrade, thanks to the improved multitasking. iPhone users
like myself will consider iOS 11 to be a more modest advance over the
current OS, with a lot of helpful features to be found if you're willing
to poke around in iOS 11's settings.
The true measure of iOS 11 will arrive in the coming
months, not just as Apple gets closer to releasing the shipping version,
but beyond that. That's when we'll see just how app makers will take
advantage of iOS 11's new augmented-reality and file-organization tools
and whether Siri delivers on the promised contextual learning.
From http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2017/07/03/ios-11-hands-on-here-s-how-it-changes-your-iphone.html
