iOS 9.3

What to expect in iOS 9.3

Life
iOS 9.3. Image: Apple

12 January 2016

Apple released the first beta of iOS 9.3 to developers on Monday – visit the Developer Center if you’re enrolled in the programme – which means users who participate in the public beta should get it shortly. To whet your appetite, Apple posted a iOS 9.3 Preview page on its website, teasing what’s to come in this new dot-release for iOS 9. Here’s an overview of what to expect.

Night Shift
Many of our favourite apps, like Tweetbot, Kindle, and Instapaper, have a night mode because reading a bright white screen in the dark can be killer on the eyes. Apple’s catching on with the all-new Night Shift feature, which works a little differently but has the benefit of being system-wide.

Night Shift doesn’t change screens of black text on a white background to white text on a black background. Instead, it starts adjusting the colours shown on your iPhone or iPad screen “to the warmer end of the spectrum,” cutting down the bright blue light that supposedly messes with your internal clock, fooling you into thinking it’s daytime when it’s not. Apple says Night Shift will automatically turn on at dusk in your location, and revert to the regular display settings in the morning – presumably it’ll be optional, in case you’re trying to keep yourself awake.

If this sounds familiar, that’s because a third-party app called F.lux already did this, until Apple pulled the plug on the iOS side last November. F.lux is still available for the Mac for free, as well as Windows and Linux.

Notes
Apple’s Notes app will get more secure in iOS 9.3, letting you set a password or use Touch ID to keep your notes under wraps. Other security-minded apps such as Evernote, Day One, and 1Password already let you use Touch ID to log in, keeping your information private without your thumbprint or a master password to unlock it. It should be a nice addition to Notes, and we wonder if Apple will extend this to apps like Mail, or even Safari, where your thumbprint could unlock your saved passwords, for example.

News
Apple’s News app is having trouble catching on, and tweaks in iOS 9.3 aim to make it easier to use, so you’ll keep coming back. Additions include inline video you can play without leaving your feed, landscape support throughout the iPhone version of the app, and a supposedly better-tailored For You section.

Health
Apple’s database for HealthKit info has never been much to look at – it’s more a clearinghouse for all the health-related data you’ll collect and interact with in third party HealthKit-enabled apps, like RunKeeper, Withings Health Mate, and MyFitnessPal. In iOS 9.3, the Health app will help you discover new HealthKit apps to install, adding a side-scrolling list of relevant apps to the bottom of the category pages for weight, workouts, and sleep tracking. The Health app will also show the move, exercise, and stand data collected by your Apple Watch, which right now is mostly locked into the Activity app. That’ll make it easier to share, say, the stand data with other HealthKit apps.

CarPlay
If you connect your iPhone to a CarPlay stereo, you’ll get a couple new features in iOS 9.3. The Apple Music app will finally show the New and For You sections, instead of just your collection and playlists. And the Maps app will finally support the Nearby feature that was added in iOS 9, way back in September. Nearby helps you find businesses in your vicinity by category, like parking, coffee shops, and restaurants.

Education benefits
IOS 9.3 has some features aimed at schools as well – Apple launched a separate Education Preview page to explain. Regular users probably won’t benefit directly from these features, but schools that deploy multiple iPads will get a new Apple School Manager portal to manage them, they’ll be able to create Managed Apple IDs and assign them to students, and a Shared iPad feature that will let those students log in to any iPad in the school and pick up where they left off the day before.

Teachers get a Classroom app that lets them peek at any student’s screen, launch specific apps and sites on every screen at once, and lock them in place so the kids can’t surreptiously surf over to their social network of choice.

IDG News Service

 

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