Best Features of iOS 8

This was a tough post to write. I really had to think about what the best features that came with iOS 8, even after shuttering many of the new functions. What can I say. I like the minimalist approach to what I allow the phone to do.

Podcasts App:  Under 'Settings', if you want to preserve the battery life, you'll want to refresh episodes manually. Podcasts are MP3s, so the more you have on your device, the more it'll take up in your native storage. Fortunately, you can also stream from the app without having to download any of the episodes. The "featured" and "top charts" shows the top subscribed to podcasts.

iCloud Family Sharing: Have not activated this yet; not sure it'll be all that useful at the moment.

Time-Lapse option for Camera - Maybe this will work better than the panoramic option that I can't get to work right. The concept videos look nice though.

Battery Usage by App - Shows a percentage used in the last 24 hours or last 7 days. I don't know what I'm doing other than checking the time, but the Home & Lock Screen shows that it eats 9% of the battery. Even with the cache cleared, I'm not sure why Bing hogs 747 mb of device storage. Compare that to Chrome which uses 162 mb or Safari with 130 mb. 

Hey Siri - only for the truly lazy. Siri still eats up battery power like candy; so, it's best to use her if you are connected to a wired power source.

Bold, Italics, Underline in Notes - I have not noticed this before the update. But now when I copy/paste from a website to Notes, some of the formatting stays.

There doesn't seem to be any way to disable the default view from showing up as 'Recently Taken' and 'Recently Deleted' folders for the Photos folders.

iOS 8 Update

It took quite some time to get around to updating to iOS 8 because I had more than 2,000 photos on my phone and the update says it needs at least 5 GB to download. I had to archive the photos off the phone (sadly, this means I have to use a second machine to do this instead of eating up 1/5th of cloud storage), and then individually select photos to delete them off the phone. I'm sure there is a better way, like a batch delete? I have not found it. After manually deleting 1200 photos, I had enough storage space on the iPhone 5 to download the update. Seriously, I have to tap onto each photo just to delete it? Double ugh.

I even let the download run overnight. WTF would add an "Install" prompt to the download. I mean, why would you want to just download the update and not install it? Anyhow. The actual update took a lot longer than I thought it would. 46% adoption rate from iOS 7 to iOS 8 isn't terrible. It would probably be higher if the update wasn't filled with bloatware.

I don't think I want to upgrade to the latest hardware version. The iPhone 5 is large enough, even with the rugged case I have it in. I think I'll wait until the 6's durability issues are resolved.

iOS 7: Things You Should Know About this Update

If you are a Gmail app user and you update to the current version, you may notice a few things. Like, Gmail ceasing to work. Much of my day was spent like this:

Delete. Reinstall. Delete. Purge cache. Reboot. Reinstall. Delete app. Delete acct instance within native mail app. Reinstall. Add gmail acct back to native mail app.

I found out a lot about the new features. I mean really, who has time to read Apple release notes? I spent a lot of time looking at the settings and turning all the new things "off". 

Apple's iAd

Since when does ownership of a mobile device entitle the manufacturer to broadcast third party ads to your service plan? Has something changed radically in the way technology handles multimedia that users can block out advertisements if they don't want to see it? And, if that isn't the case and this is rolled out to everyone who owns an iPhone or i-device, who pays for the additional bandwidth these ads are going to suck up? Obviously, the end-user if they don't have an unlimited bandwidth plan for their mobile device. 

The revenue model sounds great for Apple with its very high barrier to entry for those who want to advertise on the exclusive and closed system iAd network. 6.4 million iPhone subscribers in the US isn't paltry. It may not make the most sense or make the best use of online advertising budgets right now; but in time it could grow from being a mere goldfish to an invasive carp species in a few more years. This is just one channel in Apple's distribution network for content that leapfrogs beyond how traditional media is served up.

End-users already pay subscription fees for bandwidth for their mobile device, they are now (or soon will be) at the mercy of ad serving on a device that used to offer a more private space.
Where should marketers draw the line when it comes to exclusive ad networks?


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