Dos and Don’ts of iOS 10 Public Beta

Today is the day some of us have been waiting for, the iOS 10 public beta is here. As I type this I’m sacrificing my iPad Air 2 to the beta gods. This got me thinking, other people are doing this too and some of them might be first timers. Which is fine its a public beta anyone can sign up and get the bits. So I thought it might be helpful to make a quick list of dos and don’ts when using the public beta, and a lot of these things can be used for other betas as well.

Back-Up

Before you do anything at all, even before you sign up for the public beta program do your self a favor and do a local backup to your computer. Even if you do iCloud back up do a local backup. If you need to roll back to a stable build of iOS it will make things go quicker if you have a local backup.

Play with your Apps

After you have installed the public beta bits, open some of your most used apps and mess around with them to see if they still work. Just remember this is a beta and none of the apps from the app store are optimize to run on iOS 10 so just be thankful they even open up. Also make sure your apps are all up to date. Sometimes its not an OS thing that is making them crash it could just be a bug that the developer already fixed. But if they do not and you really need the apps to work just roll back to iOS 9, that is why the first tip was to backup.

Don’t bug the Devs

Maybe some of your apps don’t work and it might be, because of some changes under the hood in iOS 10. Please for the love of god don’t go to the app store and write bad reviews about the app and give them a 1 star. Right now the 3rd party developers can not fix any iOS 10 related problems. If you have a problem with a app that could be a iOS 10 issue file a bug report in the feedback app.

Feedback App

The feedback app will help not just you but also apple and 3rd party devs too. This is a public beta test so the whole point is to get feedback from users to find bugs and to suggest things you might want to see in iOS 10 or future updates to iOS 10. This is also where you can tell develops about crashy apps so they can make fixes and can have them ready when they can put iOS 10 optimized apps on the app store.

I hope these tips help when you are trying out iOS 10. Just keep in mind that this is beta software and it will be buggy so don’t get too mad when things break.

New Everything

Well the announcement happened and yes we are getting a new iPhone 6S and 6S Plus. But we also got a few other things like a new Apple TV and iPad Pro. Booth these things I really didn’t think we would ever see.

Apple TV:

After years of waiting we finally get a new Apple TV. The new Apple TV has an app store we finally get an app store, and Siri. The updated hardware also allows for concal gaming. The new remote has touch area, controls for volume, mic, and a button to switch the source on your TV.

The App Store finally comes to the apple TV. We have been waiting for this for years. The apple TV will be able to use apps like your phone or tablet. Though they will have to make some changes to there apps to make them work on the TV but they can be universal just like the App store on your iPhone or Tablet. You buy once and have access on all your iOS devices. Though the new Apple TV docent run full iOS but it runs a version called TV OS.

I do find it interesting that the new Apple TV is like a conceal it has it own games and exclusives just like an Xbox or PS4. Though your probably not going to be playing Halo or Call of Duty on the Apple TV, so they wont have to worry about Apple. Who should worry is nintendo they have had a lock on kid and casual gamers. With the DS and the Wii U Nintendo has been happyish with their market. Apple has been slowly eating the way at Nintendo’s hand held monopoly with the iPhone and iPod Touch and now with the Apple TV being able to play those iOS games on the TV Nintendo might have a problem.

iPad Pro:

Since I got my first iPad which was an iPad 2, Ive wanted a iPad with a bigger screen. But we are getting just blows what I wanted out of the water. The iPad Pro isn’t just a bigger screen though it is 12.9 inches, its a way more powerful iPad that takes advantage of iOS 9. Really when you think about all the stuff that iOS 9 is going to do it should have been obvious that something like the iPad Pro was coming vary soon. The Pro will have some accessories a Smart Keyboard cover which is just like the Microsoft Surface though its an Apple device so maybe it will be better than the surface keyboard. The other accessories that artist might like is the Apple Pencil. Its a styles for the iPad Pro that will allow the iPad to detect force so you can have darker lines or lighter. Depending on what you are a pro in I think will depend on what accessories you get. I guess I should shatter your dreams like they did with me. The iPad Pro will start at $799 for 32 GB and goes up to $1079 for 128 GB and Wifi+cellular. Though remember its as Pro device so these prices do make sense. I was a little disappointed with the storage sizes I would have thought maybe we might see at the high end a 500 GB iPad Pro. But at least they didn’t do a 16 GB modal.

iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus:

Well hear is what everyone knew we were going to hear. The iPhone 6S and 6S Plus which really was what people where expecting. It was a lot of improvements. 3D touch was one of those things, its like the right click of touch. Depending on how long or hard you touch something on the screen different things will happen. One of the things they showed off was touching the camera app gives you a jump list of different options like quickly getting to the selfie camera or taking a video. Speaking of videos they showed off a thing called live photos which is something the camera will do by default. If you touch a photo it will give you a short video of when it was taken. If you have every seen any of the harry potter movies and notice how the pictures and paintings come to life, its almost like that. The other improvement is the camera it has a 12 Mega Pixel camera. Other than that not much has changed. If you are ready for a new iPhone the 6S or 6S Plus will probably be a good upgrade. Now as far as getting the phone Apple is giving you a new option, the iPhone upgrade plan which will allow you to get a new iPhone every year. Apple will let you pay a $32 fee and when they come out with a new iPhone you just return your old one and get the new one. The 3 major carriers in the US will let you do this. Though Sprint has a iPhone for life deal right now which is only $15 a month. Though thats really only good if you are in a area where Sprint works well.

Final thoughts:

 

I think this is probably one of the most star studded line ups Apple has had in awhile. We got a lot of things that we have been waiting for, for awhile. Out of everything I have seen I want the Apple TV the most. I will probably get the 32 GB model cause who am I kidding I’m probably going to load it up with games.

The Big Day

Tomorrow is the big day for Apple fans. We get to see the new iPhone and maybe afew other things. The first thing being the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus. Its a S update so there probally wont be too much of a change to the phone. Im sure it will have that one thing that will make you most of us want to get it. Though from all the rummors forse touch might be that thing. To me that really dosent compel me to want to get it. But we will see tomorrow what will be the sell for it. We will also brobally see a iPhone 6C and 6C plus. These will be slitly cheaper verions of the the current 6 and 6 Plus. They may also come in bright colors like the current iPhone 5c.

Rummors of seeing a iPad Pro with a bigger screen. This is something I’m intrested in because Ive wanted a iPad with a bigger screen and with true multitasking coming in iOS 9 I think it makes sence that we would see a this. I have been using the public beta on my iPad Air and being able to do PiP with videos is just sooooo cool.

The last thing people have been talking about is a update to the Apple TV. This rummor has been flooting around for years now and truely I will not beleive it untill they say it. The new Apple TV woud have updated hardware and have access to the app store. They are also saying a new touch screen remote that has access to Siri. Im not really sure about this cause we have seen the headlies before “Apple set to refresh Apple TV” then after the announcement the headline is “Apple pulls new Apple TV from presentation”. We’ve just been burned to many times be this. Though it is a needed.

Though there is another thing I have been thinking about. The invetation for the event is “Hey siri give me a hint” This has been fun to play with on the iPhone but could this be a clue for something. Some have been saying this could be a clue about a new Apple TV that could have Siri. This would but them inline with Roku and Amazon TV since they have voice search having siri would but them little ahead of the compation. But what I really think what we might see is siri coming to the Mac in an update to El Capitan like a 10.11.2 or somehting or they could do it as like an app and put it in perveiw like they did with the App Store when it came out. It would be something to compete with Cortona on Windows 10. Also I just would really like to have it. The closes thing we have to it now is Google Now in chrome but I really would like to have siri.

Well we will see what happens tomorrow.

OSX Now With Photos

For everyone running OSX Yosemite and waiting for the Photos app well its finally here. Back at WWDC last year when Apple was showing off OS 10.10 they showed the new Photos app which would come in a later update that would replace iPhoto.

Photos app is made to look and work just like the photos app on iOS. This will also allow you to use iCloud Photo Library on your Mac. This will upload all your photos to iCloud and allow you to view any photo in your library on any device. Up until now the only way to could do this on a desktop was by going to icloud.com.

Photos also have the same controls for editing your photos which are a lot better than what was in iPhoto. The one tool I noticed that is in the desktop version that isn’t in the mobile version is the heal tool. For those who don’t know the heal tool lets you get rid of any pimples or scares that you might have when you take selfies.

When Photos was announced it left me and I think a lot of other people with a dilemma. I had recently bought Aperture which is more powerful than iPhoto. But Photos is a replacement for booth iPhoto and Aperture and they as of today are no longer getting any future updates. choices were switch to Adobe Light Room or wait for Photos to come out and switch to it. Well Im impatient and so I went to Light Room. Now that Photos is out I regret my decision. Light Room is a grate if you are a pro photographer. But for me I’m not a pro I’m not shooting in RAW with a DSLR I’m shooting with my iPhone. I went to Aperture because there was some editing tools I wanted that iPhoto could not do. Now Photos can do a lot of what I wanted that iPhoto couldn’t. So after paying for a year of Light Room and PhotoShop I will probably be using Photos as my management system.

Well at least PhotoShop was part of that deal and I do use PhotoShop enough that its worth it. But back to Photos you can get it today by going to the Mac App Store and checking for updates you should get an update for OS X 10.10.3 which has Photos and a lot of other changes. Its just Photos is kind of the major thing.

Here are the Patch notes for this update:

iCloud Redesign Coming Soon

It looks like Apple pushed out a new iOS 7 design of icloud.com. All the web apps but the iWorks web apps have been redesign to have a flatter look to them. I didn’t see any new functionality to any of the apps. The only thing new I saw was in the reminders app their is a schedule view for reminders. But out side of that nothing new but there looks. I’m still hoping one day they will add Photo Stream to icloud.com. You can check out the new look today if you want at beta.icloud.com just know things might be buggy. Here are some screen shots I took of some of the apps.