Technology: The iPhone 6S (and WatchOS 2)

Apple iPhone 6S - 128GB Rose Gold Unboxing

I like to write these for my own sort of posterity in how Apple’s mobile ecosystem changes year over year. The iPad Air 2 didn’t receive a refresh and since the iPad Mini 4 and iPad Pro are not devices that I’ll be buying, I’ll limit my focus to iPhone 6S and Apple’s WatchOS 2.

Watch OS 2 feels like the OS my watch should have came with but I’m stoked that Apple took their time and perfected the functionality the watch did receive. Battery life is improved, the apps launch faster and custom complications are awesome. The Watch is such a small screen and such a passive device that I’m certain improvements Apple makes have to be carefully considered and almost curated to be the most bang per kilobyte of space and CPU cycle. I’m really happy with the Watch OS update. I’d like for Apple Watch to not require an iPhone to be tethered and instead work with any Apple device even iPod Touch or iPad but the iPhone connection is the most logical choice. Watch OS 2 has caused me to switch from the Utility Face to Modular. The room for more complications as there are more apps that support this feature is nice. I prefer utility but it’s sort of a throwback to satisfy my love of real watches and it restricts the power of the apps that are now natively loaded on Apple Watch. I’ve been using Sleep++ which runs on the device and I’m now wearing my Apple Watch 24/7 and charging for half an hour in the morning and at night to keep the device fully charged while operating in Airplane Mode at night. Sleep++ is an app on my device but also has its own complication which I use to signal I’m going to sleep and waking up. With Sleep++ not on the face, I’d probably forget to disable it when I wake up. This is just one example why modular is now my favorite face.

iOS 9 has been in use on my iPad Air 2 since WWDC. I enjoyed the incremental improvements and as apps slowly gained OS 9 specific features. As I’ve written before, the iPad is my reading and occasional web-browsing device so I’m not the primary case for multitasking and other “pro” features. I need reliability in my mobility so my iPad + iMac received OS 9 + El Capitan as a part of the public beta and my iPhone + MacBook Pro remained on iOS 8 + Yosemite. This worked quite well and there were no issues with compatibility during this phase.

With OS 9 on my new iPhone 6S, there are some things that are nice. The proactive features are nice but I don’t use them much and the photos features are nice but also not quite used. 3D touch is something I’ll have to get used to but I admit that I forget to use it quite often. iOS 9 just feels more refined, a natural evolution to the momentous changes to iOS in the past 2 years. I think a part of my ability to accurately review new software updates is because I’m getting a bit old and set in my ways so I don’t really play with new features like I used to.

I can say that Siri in iOS 9 / WatchOS 2 is the first time I’ve found myself using it every single day. Voice recognition of “Hey Siri” during the iPhone 6S setup was very easy and now I just shout thing off to Siri throughout the day. I’ve even been using it with CarPlay but am still frustrated about the safety element of Siri not displaying what I say or what she says in return on my car’s main screen. For safety, Apple doesn’t want you reading while driving but sometimes I think she mis-hears me and I don’t know what she heard so that I can accurately correct it.

Siri now is understanding me much better and I’m able to utilize natural language more fluently. The habits of learning how to talk machine are difficult to learn and since I know key commands on my Mac or have my iOS devices well organized, I usually just defaulted to taking up tasks manually. It was quicker to create an event tomorrow at noon to have coffee at Starbucks with Tom in Calendar for Mac than it was to ask Siri to create the appointment. iOS 9 has made a huge step in improving this. I’m really looking forward to using it on AppleTV OS once that device is shipping.

The iPhone 6S hardware is pretty remarkable. It’s probably the biggest improvement in iPhone technology I’ve ever experienced. I’ve used every iPhone since release and I’ve owned all but 1 of them and the 6S is an upgrade that everyone should be making no matter what device you’re currently using. I don’t really use the iPhone Camera for anything but Untappd (beer) photos but the speed of the 6S alone is worth it. The TouchID improvements make reading my fingerprint too fast. Apps launch faster, Safari pages load quicker (also in part due to the content blocker functionalities) and even the restore from my iPhone 6 backup was insanely fast compared to the last time I did it a few months ago.

I’d say now is the time to buy an iPhone 6S along with an Apple Watch Sport and an iPad Mini 4 (if you’re still on a 2+ year old iPad). It’s frankly pretty amazing at the strides in Apple’s mobile ecosystem both hardware and software. There’s never been a better time to be an Apple Customer.

Apple iPhone 6S - 128GB Rose Gold Unboxing

Apple iPhone 6S - 128GB Rose Gold Unboxing

Apple iPhone 6S - 128GB Rose Gold Unboxing

Apple iPhone 6S - 128GB Rose Gold Unboxing

Apple iPhone 6S - 128GB Rose Gold Unboxing

Apple iPhone 6S - 128GB Rose Gold Unboxing

Note, this is a personal blog. My statements are my own.

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