techcrunch: Want to be the master of all things iOS 9? We’ve...

techcrunch:

Want to be the master of all things iOS 9? We’ve compiled a list of some of the neat but not-so-obvious features, many of which are tucked away enough that you might not otherwise stumble upon them on your own.

Check out the 15 hidden features tucked away in iOS 9. 

Just check out all of iOS 9.

via Tumblr http://bit.ly/1MuwKvM

Welcome to hell: Apple vs Google vs Facebook and the slow death of the web

Welcome to hell: Apple vs Google vs Facebook and the slow death of the web:

nerdology:

And then there’s this article by Nilay Patel. Articles like this one have an unstoppable momentum to them. You just buckle up and keep reading. He opens innocently enough:

So let’s talk about ad blocking.

You might think the conversation about ad blocking is about the user experience of news, but what we’re really talking about is money and power in Silicon Valley. And titanic battles between large companies with lots of money and power tend to have a lot of collateral damage.

And before you know it you’re wide eyed leaning into your monitor and you read this:

So it’s Apple vs Google vs Facebook, all with their own revenue platforms. Google has the web, Facebook has its app, and Apple has the iPhone. This is the newest and biggest war in tech going today.

It’s a great followup to Casey’s piece that I posted earlier, such a good followup that Nilay actually links out to it in his article. So take some time today and read these two articles. Not only are they written by two of the best writers in the industry, they also make perfect points on why you shouldn’t install an ad blocker.

No, you should install a content blocker.

via Tumblr http://bit.ly/1UZftds

Quick Today Widget Access in iOS 9?

In iOS 8, Apple introduced widgets in the Today menu of the notification shade, and this was met with both criticism and delight on the part of users. On the one hand, iOS finally had third party widget support. On the other hand, they aren’t easy to get to.

As such, I wonder if Apple will implement some sort of quick gesture to pull down the notification center into the “Today” screen for widget access in iOS 9 (or whatever it ends up being called). Perhaps they could use the two finger swipe down gesture from Android that is used to access the Android quick toggles, since that is not a mapped gesture in iOS yet.

Of course, we must consider that Apple has so far focused on one-handed used in iOS, and a two finger pull down requires two hands no matter how hard you try. Perhaps there is another gesture that they could use, then. Or, an alternative would be that this is only a feature on 5.5" screen devices and above (iPhone 6 Plus, 6 Plus S, iPad). Those devices require two hands to operate anyway, so this wouldn’t be a major concession.

This is a feature that I have sorely missed, and is something that I think holds back the utility of the widgets in iOS. Most of the time I want to have notifications on pull down, meaning that an extra swipe is required to see widgets.

One reason why Apple may consider doing this is that the next generation iPhones (and the current generation iPad Air) are rumored to include 2 GB of RAM. This should theoretically allow Apple to keep the widgets updated better, making them more useful, and making the experience of a quick pulldown to widgets gesture work well and smooth.

Let me know what you think about the subject via comments. If you liked this post, consider giving it a “recommend” and share so that others can see it.