Max DeVille – Special to the Southern News
Accompanying the iPhone 6, Apple released iOS 8 which is compatible with iiPhone 4S and above, iPod touch 5th generation, and most iPads.
While the previous download file was approximately five gigabytes, the current update is 958. According to Dan Emmans, freshman at Southern Connecticut State University, the size of the file has played a big role in students’ decisions to download it.
“I have only a 32 gig iPhone and I have four gigs free. There is no reason for me to update and have to delete photos and apps, when there isn’t much of a need to,” he said.
This seemed to be the major complaint about the latest update.
Many students who updated had to delete photos, apps, and many other faculties of their devices so they could fit the update.
John Simeone, a senior at Southern, said there is a glaring similarity between the prior iOS 7 and iOS 8.
“I don’t see a point in downloading it, my iPhone works just fine as is, I can’t see much of a difference between the two iOSes”
Some of the operating system’s new features include highly predictive text, voice and video texts, improved health and fitness app functions, and better photo editing capabilites.
When asked about whether these features were noticeable, senior Veronica Andravanovich said there were no notable differences.
“I did not notice much new about the update, besides it taking up space–the texting is better, definitely an improvement,” she said. “But the whole thing with photo editing and management, I know of at least three or four third party apps which work just as well if not better than what Apple is offering.”
Freshman James Brown was satisfied with the changes to the fitness app.
“I think the changes here are great–all my fitness and health apps talk to one another, and the details it goes into are incredible,” he said. “I can check the oxygen saturation in my blood, my heart rate, there’s a whole mess of things that I can view now after a run or whenever I log in some exercising.”
One of the major updates with iOS 8 is the improvement of predictive texting. Predictive texting is slightly more advanced form than autocorrect; the iPhone messaging system will take notice of the users typing patterns and mimic that to speed up the sending of a text.
Sophomore Josh Cohn purchased almost every current Apple product and weighed in about the new texting features.
“Okay, so iOS 8’s texting is a pretty decent step–the texting prediction is accurate, but I really see no point in the adding voice or instant video,” Cohn said. “Overall though if you have the space get it, if not there’s no necessity to get iOS 8.”
According to sophomore Zach McCoy the user interface looks extremely similar to iOS 7, and there was little change in performance: “ The look and feel of the update is pretty much the same. I don’t know if Apple meant it to be just updates with the apps and stuff, or just make a new update to go with the iPhone 6, but its alright.”
Photo Credit: Marco
