I'm wishy-washy on this whole update, and I'm pretty much going to do a stream of consciousness post here.
For one, I love the raise to wake and the notifications. But being that I've used Android quite a bit in the past, this is nothing new for me and something that iOS definitely needed. I agree with what a lot of people have said before me about iMessages - this update does nothing for me at all. It seemed 110% geared towards tweens and developing countries. My 13 year old would love this. But I see it as just some more fluff. And I'm 34, I don't really consider myself old
. I feel like some of their energy would have been better spent elsewhere other than adding invisible texts and exploding balloons.
I do like opening up Siri to developers - but it seems to be up to them to make it great, not Apple. The Photos update is seriously a direct copy of the Google Photos app that I've been using for a couple of years and continue to use on my iPhone. For people who haven't used GP, this is a nice update. I'm not a fan that we still don't have really any customization of the home screen. And the keyboard still gets left in the dust. Sure they added in multi-lingual support. Which is great for those who need it. But what about everyone else? No adjustable keyboard size? No swipe features? If they aren't going to do anything to it, then open up 3rd party keyboards a little more. And why in the name of all things holy do I not have a separate alarm volume that isn't tied into the phone volume? Either I forget to turn my sound down at night and I wake up the house, or I do turn it down and miss my alarm. Not. Intuitive. At. All.
The Apple TV updates and WatchOS updates did little for me either. Nothing earth shattering for me. I'm sure the WatchOS update is nice for those who use it, but until I can get a cellular watch with 2-3 day battery life, I'm not going to use one.
So I don't know about this update. Seriously looked like a lot of fluff, that I'm sure will work well. Because... Apple. And I understand that the mobile phone space has plateaued - but this still seemed lackluster and I feel that some things that really needed to be fixed weren't even touched upon.