IOS 9

iOS 9.1 gets around to making some truly useful improvements: New emoji

Emojipedia Further Reading Unicode proposes a way to let an emoji black man and white woman hold hands

Unicode turned diversity in emoji into an unfortunate logistical problem.

iOS 9 is bringing improvements to Siri and multitasking to Apple's platform, but we're going to have to wait until iOS 9.1 to get a truly groundbreaking new feature: new emoji. Apple sent out the first iOS 9.1 beta today, and it includes a bumper crop of new emoji characters.

The folks at Emojipedia have a more complete list of the new characters, which include such luminaries as "nerd," "tornado," "unicorn," "levitating," and "reversed hand with middle finger extended." Most of the characters were introduced in Unicode 7 or 8, though some of the new characters apparently date all the way back to Unicode 1.1.

We don't know when the final version of iOS 9.1 will be released, but beta versions were running on the iPad Pros that Apple had on display yesterday. The iPad Pro will be released in November, so the update will show up at some point between now and then (iOS 8.1 showed up in late October, a little over a month after version 8.0).

iOS 9 will let users install ad-blocking tools, and media companies are freaking out

Phil Schiller, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing at Apple Inc, speaks about the live photo capability for new iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus during an Apple media event in San Francisco September 9, 2015. — Reuters picSAN FRANCISCO, Sept 11 — Seth Weintraub has made a career of reporting on Apple. His website, 9to5Mac.com, is one of the go-to places for news about the company. But in an ironic twist, a feature tucked inside Apple’s latest software for the iPhone and iPad threatens to undermine the way his site makes money.

IOS 9, which is set for a September 16 release, will allow owners of Apple’s newer mobile devices to download Web browser extensions that can block advertising from being shown while they browse the Web. The prospect has set off alarm bells at many media companies, but Apple extended an olive branch in the form of an app within the upcoming operating system called News, which will allow publishers to bypass blockers to serve their own ads or let Apple sell ads and share the revenue.

For Weintraub, whose blog gets about 60 per cent of its traffic from people browsing on iPhones or iPads, Apple’s ad-blocking option has led him to consider new business models to make up for lost advertising revenue. His website is starting to focus on selling more sponsored content, a newer form of advertising popularised by Internet publishers, such as BuzzFeed, in which advertisers pay for articles. Weintraub is also exploring adding more links that steer people to buy products on websites such as Amazon.com, allowing 9to5Mac to collect a fee when somebody makes a purchase. “We're looking at steps to counter” ad blocking, Weintraub says. “There is a lot of indication that people are looking forward to using ad- blockers on mobile devices.”

Computer browsers have allowed the use of ad-blocking software for years, but it’s been growing in popularity recently. More than 198 million people worldwide actively use ad blockers, according to a study released in August by Adobe and PageFair, which makes ad-blocking software. At least 20 per cent of 9to5Mac’s readers use an ad blocker when visiting the site from a PC, Weintraub says.

The trend is, of course, more pronounced for sites that cater to tech-savvy readers, but it’s becoming an issue that even the largest media companies are paying attention to. Walt Disney recently made a change to ESPN.com that rendered videos unwatchable for some users of a popular ad-blocking browser plug-in. Meredith Kopit Levien, the chief revenue officer at the New York Times, said on the company’s August 6 earnings call that ad blocking is “a real issue for the ecosystem, and we, like everybody else, are trying to understand what impact it will have on our supply.” She said the effects haven’t been “material” but that the addition of mobile devices could make it “a bigger issue.”

Many publishers have been struggling to respond to a trend that undermines the central business model for much of the Internet. “You see a rapidly accelerating rate of adoption,” Jason Kint, the former head of CBS Interactive and head of the online publishing trade association Digital Content Next, said in an interview. “It’s a very big problem.”

AdBlock, one of the biggest makers of ad-blocking technology, says it’s working on software to release alongside iOS 9. “This is a very big deal for us,” says Gabriel Cubbage, the president of AdBlock. The software, which has about 40 million active users, works by identifying advertising content and preventing it from ever reaching the browser. Most Web ads come from a relatively small pool of servers owned by Google and other major online advertisers. “Ad servers are centralised, so it’s very easy to block them,” Cubbage says.

Eyeo, a German company that makes a similar plug-in called Adblock Plus, released a browser on the App Store on Tuesday that lets users of iPhones and iPads surf the Web ad-free without needing to update the operating system. Eyeo also said it will release a plug-in for Apple’s Safari browser after iOS 9 comes out, which is expected to operate similarly to its PC tool, which racks up about 3 million downloads a week, according to the company.

AdBlock and Eyeo have both said they aren’t against all types of online advertising but want new standards created. The companies say they are giving people a way to fight back against online marketers, which are using increasingly intrusive practices that violate people’s privacy. “We are being disruptive, but that’s what the industry needs,” says Till Faida, the co-founder of Eyeo.

Eyeo allows advertisers to bypass the blocking if their ads meet certain specifications, such as ensuring their content is clearly marked as advertising and doesn’t run preroll ads before a video. This program, which has allowed Facebook and Google to serve ads after paying a fee to Eyeo, is not universally loved. Meanwhile, AdBlock works with the Electronic Frontier Foundation to permit advertisers to avoid being blocked if they join the Do Not Track list, which aims to limit what tools advertisers use to keep tabs on people’s online activities.

Apple hasn’t publicly articulated why it will start allowing ad blockers on iOS, but Tim Cook has criticised Internet companies in the past for violating people’s privacy to boost ad revenue. “They’re gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetise it,” the Apple chief executive officer said in June during a speech at the Electronic Privacy Information Centre. “We think that’s wrong.”

For publishers such as Weintraub’s 9to5Mac, the morals of today’s online ads are not as black and white. He said some websites will go out of business if they can’t sustain themselves through advertising. “If you go to a site, and you’re blocking their ads, then you’re not giving that site any reason to be in existence,” Weintraub says. “I don't hate the companies that are doing it or the users that do, but people are hurting the sites they are enjoying.” — Bloomberg

iOS 9 Actually Makes the iPad Usable for Work

 Since the iPad’s launch in 2010, people have debated whether the iPad is an amazing productivity tool, or a toy for games and movies. With iOS 9 though, the iPad’s usefulness is a bit clearer.

iOS 9 (coming September 16th and available in public beta right now), brings a new multitasking system, better keyboard shortcuts, easier text selection, and a picture in picture mode for watching videos while you work in other apps. Apple even announced a whole new iPad made specifically for work. None of this stuff is revolutionary, but they are features people have asked for on the iPad for years. So I spent a week working from mine to see if it’s actually a pleasant experience or not. And they do make the iPad a bit better as a laptop replacement...for some people.

iOS 9’s Multitasking Is Fantastic (If You Have a Newer iPad)

Apple’s new multitasking is pretty useful on normal people-sized iPads, and I assume it’ll be even better on the Pro. Multitasking comes in three flavors on iOS: Slide Over, Split View, and Picture in Picture.

 Slide Over allows you swipe your finger from the right side of the screen to pull up a second app in a small overlay, much like Control Center. Here, you can quickly jot down a note or look something up while keeping another app in full-screen. It’s handy for notes, mostly, but I also used it to look something up in Safari while I was typing elsewhere.

Split View is more of a traditional multitasking feature. With it, you can have two apps open at once, side-by-side. I found this most useful when researching stuff and to grab pull quotes (you can use and edit both apps at once, so copy/pasting from one side to another is as easy as you’d think). It was also handy when comparing notes or browsing online. I imagine artists working off various source images will also find this handy. I mean, it’s nothing earth-shattering (and it’s available on other tablets); it’s the same as having two apps open on your desktop, but it’s useful nonetheless. 

Picture in Picture shrinks down a video and plays it in the bottom of the screen. Unless you’re watching lectures or something, it’s pretty hard to think of how this would be useable while working. I didn’t bother with it, but I also don’t ever watch videos on my iPad.

Here’s the rub, though: Split View only works on the iPad Air 2, Mini 4, and iPad Pro. Slide Over and Picture in Picture only work on the Air, Air 2, Mini 2, Mini 3, and Mini 4. Older users are out of luck with most of these features. In fact, I had to borrow a friend’s iPad for this experiment because mine didn’t support any of the new features, and these certainly aren’t revolutionary enough to justify a new purchase.

With Keyboard Shortcuts, You Don’t Have to Touch the Screen

Multitasking is nice if you have a newer iPad, but if you don’t, all you’re getting out of this update is some keyboard shortcuts. Good thing that some of them are actually pretty nice.

Keyboard shortcuts come in a few different varieties: on-screen shortcuts and hardware shortcuts. The hardware keyboard shortcuts are the real star here. Each app gets a number of shortcuts and most are similar to their desktop counterparts. Some of these are new, some of them aren’t. For example, you can tap Command+T to open a new tab in Safari, or Command+N to open a new message in Mail. But you can also hold down the Command button to open an overlay that shows you all available keyboard shortcuts in the app you’re using, which is pretty helpful. These have been rolling out slowly in iOS for a while, but you’ll find a ton of them now.

More helpful is the new app switcher shortcut: Command+Tab (yes, that’s the same shortcut for Windows and OS X). When you tap Command+Tab, you get an overlay of the last opened apps and you can use the arrow keys to pick an app to switch to just like you can in OS X. You never have to touch the screen, which makes using a hardware keyboard way more useful.

The new on-screen keyboard shortcuts are less useful. The big new addition to the keyboard is the new Shortcut Bar located directly above the keyboard. Here, you’ll find buttons to quickly copy/paste, bold, italicize, and underline, or add an attachment. It seems handy to have these around, but I rarely used anything in the Shortcut Bar because it was never any easier to use than just tapping a word to get the same menu.

iOS 9 also adds new “easy text selection” for selecting text and moving the cursor around. Just tap and hold two fingers on the iPad’s keyboard, and you can move a text cursor around to any part of the text. Once you have it where you want it, you can double-tap to select the current word or triple-tap to select the entire paragraph. It’s nice, but not that much better than the old text selection.

All told, the on-screen keyboard improvements feel pretty useless, but the addition of keyboard shortcuts and app switching to hardware keyboards make it feel a heck of a lot more viable as a replacement to a laptop. For the first time, I actually enjoy using the iPad to write and work off of. Before, I’d deal with it when I had to, but having to touch the screen always felt awkward. Now, I don’t have to.

Who Really Benefits from iOS 9?

After trying it out, I feel like students are going to get the most out of this update. The iPad’s always been a decent tool for taking notes in class because it’s so small and light, but now it’s really useful. With multitasking, you can now keep a book open in the Kindle app alongside the notes you’re taking in class. Or you can keep a lecture video open in a small window while you’re working on other tasks. Even the simple task of typing a research paper is far more doable when you can actually have your paper and notes side-by-side on the screen. That said, when it came to writing about Apple’s big event yesterday, I returned to my desktop computer. You can certainly work with the iPad in that capacity, but it’s not always pleasant.

For the rest of us, the benefits are less obvious. Writers of all types will certainly appreciate the new keyboard shortcuts alongside the new multitasking options, but time will tell if general users will care. The iPad’s always been good as a distraction-free writer, but now it’s a bit more powerful, too. So if your job includes a lot of writing, note-taking, or other basic typing skills, iOS 9 makes it a lot better. If you never figured out what you’d even want an iPad for, though, nothing’s changed.

Illustration by Tina Mailhot-Roberge.