iOS 13: The Ars Technica review

[Karlston]

iOS 13: The Ars Technica review

There's a lot more to this update than Dark Mode.

Enlarge / iOS 13 on an iPhone 11 Pro.

Samuel Axon

Last year, Apple set users’ expectations with iOS 12, saying it would be focused on improving performance and fixing bugs and stability issues instead of adding a bunch of new features. And while there were still plenty of bugs over the course of the iOS 12 cycle, performance was improved—particularly on older devices.

 

Apple hasn’t tempered expectations for iOS 13 this year, so users might be expecting a big leap forward. iOS 13 does bring a new look to the software that runs on iPhones, overhauls a few oft-criticized first-party applications, and puts additional emphasis on user privacy. Most of all, it adds new, powerful interactions for power users—some of which we thought we'd never see in Apple's mobile software.

 

iOS 13 is successful at most of what it sets out to do, even though it leaves some things that users have wanted to see overhauled—like the home screen—relatively untouched.

 

The big story this year is about the iPad. Apple has spun off iOS 13 into a distinct version for iPads, called iPadOS. But that’s not part of the initial iOS 13 release—instead it’s coming several days later, alongside iOS 13.1. For that reason, we’re focusing entirely on the iPhone experience in this initial review, and we’ll address the iPad after iPadOS goes live.

 

Today, we’ll take a look at Dark Mode on the iPhone, assess Apple’s latest efforts on privacy and augmented reality, and examine the changes to the most overhauled apps, including Maps, Photos, and more. There’s frankly more in this update than we can get to in one article (even though several thousand words await you, dear reader), but we've been spending a lot of recent time with iOS 13 in order to thoroughly consider Apple's most significant changes, like those to Reminders and Files, for example.

 

We’ll also consider what all these changes mean for the future direction of iOS, which is gradually evolving away from its original philosophy of user experience. There’s a lot to talk about, but let’s start as we always do: with device compatibility.

Table of Contents

• Compatibility
  • Supported iPhone models
  • Supported iPad models
  • Support iPod models
  • Devices used in the course of this review
• Design: Dark Mode, Share Sheets, and more
  • The new share sheet
  • Context menus and other design changes
  • Seriously, one of the best changes in the history of iOS
• Major app updates
  • Photos
    • The Photos tab
    • Photo editing
    • Video editing
    • Photos grab bag
    • The Camera app
  • Maps
    • Improved map data and visuals
    • Look Around
    • Collections and Favorites
    • Other Maps improvements
  • Reminders
  • Files
  • Notes
  • Messages
    • Memojis and Animojis
    • The keyboard
  • Safari
    • The download manager
    • New tabs functionality
    • Other Safari changes
  • Mail
• Siri
• ARKit 3
• CarPlay
• Performance
• Privacy
  • Sign in with Apple
• Apple Arcade
• iOS 13 grab bag
• A more powerful and consistent OS
  • The good
  • The bad
  • The ugly

 

(snip) This is a lengthy review with several image galleries. Best viewed from the link below or the Table of Contents links above.

 

 

 

Source: iOS 13: The Ars Technica review (Ars Technica)