iOS has come a very long way from the days when the Control Centre wasn’t even a thing, and the entire UI had that shadowy look and feel to it, and when opening apps took 10 seconds instead of 1. iOS has evolved until, now I feel it is finally complete, like all of the other versions were just leading up to this release, where everything works, and flows correctly, as iOS should. This year the tech community is disappointed by the lack of changes and features of iOS 12, but I am not. The ones that are there feel meaningful and have a real use, unlike the things that just get thrown at the OS every year so that Apple has something to talk about at WWDC. This is the year that iOS is finally the complete package that feels good to use, and even on older phones, it is optimised, not buggy, and a modern fluid interface that you want to use. Disclaimer: this is not a comparison to Android, this is a comparison to iOS 11 and older versions of iOS.

User Interface and Apps

This year the UI didn’t change much, but that isn’t a bad thing. The UI in iOS has always been good, but in iOS 12 it feels great. Default apps have a modern look and feel to them, and this translates over to the other App Store apps that are updated recently. This unification is great, and it makes the OS feel complete and well rounded, something that changing the UI like Apple frequently does leaves apps that have smaller development teams in the dust, and I still occasionally see apps that haven’t even reached the iOS 7 stage, but updates like this help bridge the gap, and let those small dev teams catch up. The rounded edges and nice animations are something I really like about iOS, and with my older iPhone 6, these animations finally aren’t buggy on my phone like they were the entire way through the development cycle of iOS 11. Opening default apps are fast, but I don’t typically use Apples default apps, because I am not heavily invested in their ecosystem. I use Google’s apps, which are a mess on iOS, I don’t know whether it’s Google’s or Apples fault, but whoever it is fix it. The one minor bug that I did experience on iOS 12, is really weird, and I can’t seem to fix it. When on the updates screen in the App Store, swiping up to reveal the Updates text lags the phone massively, it’s just a weird bug and a little bit annoying when I go to updates apps.

Optimisation

Here is where iOS 12 shines, and where finally iOS feels like a complete package. Instead of killing the last two phones with 1GB of RAM, the iPhone 5S and iPhone 6, my daily driver, they chose to in a way base the whole update around them, making them almost feel new again with fluid animations and speedy app opening. The one place that the 1GB of RAM really shows it’s age is in multitasking, where neither phone is capable of having more than 3 apps open at once before it deletes them out of RAM, but that isn’t a software problem, it’s a hardware problem. iOS 11 was a buggy unoptimized mess on these phones and even newer models like the iPhone 7 in some cases. The one thing I would really like to see in iOS is better alternate keyboard support. I use Gboard, and iOS hates it to the point where in some cases it takes 2 or 3 seconds to bring up the keyboard, which really annoys me, so it would be great to see some better integration in that department.

Major New Features

While there are only a few new features in this update, most of them are useful changes that I welcome with open arms.

Grouped Notifications

Finally, iOS finally can compete with Android in the notification department. Grouped notifications make every notification feel so much more organised, and it’s such a simple fix, that makes the entire experience feel so much more rounded, especially when you post a photo on Instagram, and you get 30 likes, and it only takes up a tiny proportion of your notification screen which is just great. Thank you, Apple.

Siri Shortcuts

Really great addition to Siri and I am very glad that Apple took the leap and bought Workflow to make Siri more useful for everyone. Easy to set up, and overall a great feature to have on any virtual assistant, although I couldn’t seem to get it to send my friend a message when I reached the gym, which is probably just my fault not knowing how to program it to do that.

Screen Time

For me, I really didn’t care about this feature a whole lot, but it’s great if you have smartphone addiction and want to break the trend. It easily shows how many times you pick up your phone, how many hours you spend in each app and all sorts of other useful statistics for tracking your usage. I was quite scared when I found out that 4 hours 30 minutes was my good day 😅.

Group FaceTime

The name speaks for itself, but finally, thank you Apple for adding this. Although up to 32 people is a little bit excessive, I won’t say no. But why not iPhone 5S and 6. I mean sure, they have 1GB of RAM, but why not just limit them to 4 or 6 people instead of completely taking the feature away.

Measure

Great addition to iOS, maybe a little unnecessary, but I can see this being really useful if you don’t have a tape measure around, and you want a mostly accurate tape measure always in your pocket. But once again, please bring these to the 5S and 6, they are at the end of their life cycle, and it would be great if they could have some cool new features that people enjoy using.

Summary

Thank you, Apple for finally completing the iOS experience, and making it an enjoyable fluid experience to use. Update today, there isn’t any reason not to, because it’s a performance update and none of those massive bugs that typically plague the first iOS releases aren’t here. Good job Apple.