06 Other apps
BEYOND THE BIG CHANGES, THERE ARE PLENTY OF SUBTLE ONES TO DISCOVER.
NEWS AND NEWSSTAND
News is a brand-new app that provides timely information in a single place, much like you might once have caught up with website updates in an RSS reader. However, it comes with its own publishing format that enables the use of animation and other engaging interactions. At launch, it’s geared towards the US, but it’s expected to launch in Australia soon a er.
If you read digital editions of TechLife or other magazines, you might wonder what News means for them. Newsstand is gone in iOS 9 — sort of. If you already had magazine apps, Newsstand will have been converted to a regular folder, and apps can be moved out of it. Future magazine downloads go straight to the Home screen.
WALLET
Wallet is the new name for Passbook. It still contains your passes for airlines, hotels and other services, and bank cards registered to use with Apple Pay. To make accessing these things more convenient, go to ‘Settings > Wallet & Apple Pay’ and ensure the Home button shortcut is switched on so you can double-click the button to open Wallet while your iPhone is locked.
PHOTOS
When viewing a photo full-screen, a strip across the bottom of the screen shows other images in the same album, collection or moment. Swipe across it to quickly browse through them.
In the Photos tab, tap Select then drag your nger from one photo to another to select them and those in between, rather than having to tap each one you want in the selection.
Rather than reaching for the back arrow at the top-le of a full-screen photo to return to its album, swipe downwards to dismiss the picture. is is particularly handy on larger iPhones.
If you put screenshots on social media, as some of our friends do, you’ll be ecstatic that iOS at last adds them to a Screenshots album, making them much easier to clear out of your library later on. ere’s a Selfies album too, but it isn’t powered by intelligent face detection; any photo taken with the front-facing camera appears in this album.
Rather than tapping and holding on a photo for an option to hide it, you must now tap Select, tap a photo, then the Share icon and nd the Hide action in the bottom row of the share sheet. at takes a little longer for a single photo, but the advantage is that you can select additional photos in the share sheet and then hide them all at once.
MAPS
e latest step in Apple’s attempts to bring Maps up to scratch is the inclusion of public transport data to help you get from A to B, rather than just driving and walking directions. Previously, Apple made it so third-party transit app developers could plug into Maps, but now it’s starting to add its own data to the app by default, including details of problems on your route, like it does for driving directions. However, transport data is available for a limited number of cities at present, which is pretty normal as similar localised services grow.
Tap the Transport tab while plotting directions and the app will try to use Apple’s own data before suggesting you look at transport apps in the App Store. Tap the ‘i’ at the bottom-right and switch to the Transport view. In all three views, a ‘3D’ badge next to a city indicates you can take a Flyover tour of it. Zoom out in the Transport view and other badges will indicate where public transport data is available.
PODCASTS
Podcasts has been given a makeover to be more consistent with the Music app added in iOS 8.4. Music’s MiniPlayer — a bar above the tabs at the bottom when something is playing — is replicated, as is the use of an ellipsis (…) to indicate more options for an adjacent item.
e My Podcasts and My Stations tabs have been consolidated under the former, and the new Unplayed tab is more immediate in showing what you need to catch up on.
More detail is shown in the Top Charts tab (star ratings and the date of each podcast’s most recent episode) but some control has been sacrificed; categories in Featured and Top Charts no longer have subcategories.