Hope you’ve been having a great Wednesday! I have (for the most part). Yesterday, Apple announced during their Time Flies event that iOS 14 would be launching today. With that announcement, I did what I always do: I signed up for the iOS 14 public beta and got all of my devices up to date. I could have waited for the proper launch today but I really didn’t want to be a part of the mad stampede that usually occurs on Apple’s servers during a major software launch.
Since I’ve been using the software for about a day now, I have some thoughts on what Apple has released.
First and foremost, my favorite feature (so far) is the automatic AirPods switching. I realize that the steps needed to switch between devices with AirPods Pro aren’t exactly the most difficult, but it doesn’t make it any less magical when I finish listening to a podcast on my phone and pick up my iPad to watch a YouTube video and have the devices just magically know that they’re needed. Sometimes it’s the little things that I really like.
Right now my home screens are in utter disarray on my phone, though. Because of the addition of both the App Library and Home Screen widgets, I have a lot that I’m trying to figure out. Which apps do I keep on a Home Screen vs which do I send to the App Library. Which apps are most important to me in regards to the real estate they take vs a widget stack that I could have in a spot. I feel like it’s going to take days for me to figure everything out and get it all set up in a way that I really like.
Some of my apps have been updated with widgets, but it’s very important that we don’t fault the developers if an app we love isn’t updated yet. Apple really made a bad move in releasing the software only one day after the event as it stripped smaller developers of a proper amount of time to get their app finalized with the Gold Master build of iOS and submitted to Apple for review. I’ve had a handful of apps I use push out updates with new features like Widgets today, but there’s some that I know I won’t be seeing for a while. No developer saw this coming really, so I understand their frustration.
Over on the watchOS side of things, I did mess around with sleep tracking last night. It was easy enough to set up and I’ll probably do it for a few more days before I decide for sure if I’m going to stick with it or not. I’ve only tried the hand washing timer at my day job so far. We have those motion activated sinks that don’t have the best track record for staying on, so I’ve had some issues with that feature, but I’m looking forward to trying it on a real sink when I get home tonight.
I look forward to playing with the software across all of Apple’s devices over the next week or so and getting some deeper opinions on what they’ve done. I’m not going to tell anyone to install it versus waiting a while, but I will say that if an app you need hasn’t been updated yet, it may be best to wait a while…just in case.
That being said, if you have as much self control as I do and you’re already running iOS 14: what do you think. What do you like and what do you hate? Let’s talk about it down in the comments!
Dan Stransky 