SAN FRANCISCO—As expected, Apple used its WWDC keynote today to take the wraps off iOS 9, the newest version of its operating system for iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches. While iOS 7 and iOS 8 ushered in big changes, iOS 9 will instead focus on speed and stability. In other words, iOS 9 will be to iOS 8 as OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard was to OS X 10.5.

That said, Apple isn't promoting iOS 9 using Snow Leopard's "no new features" label. The new operating system harvests some of iOS 8's lowest-hanging fruit and continues the work of opening the platform up to developers. It also tweaks the aesthetic introduced back in iOS 7.







Among the highlighted updates for iOS 9, Apple VP Craig Federighi started by detailing an improved Siri. The assistant now has an updated UI to match WatchOS, but more importantly Siri has evolved into a more proactive assistant. For examples of this functionality, Federighi mentioned Siri can automatically play music you like from the lockscreen while on a run. iOS 9 Siri can add things to the calendar alongside a "time to leave" reminder that keeps traffic data in mind. And when unknown phone numbers reach out, the newly proactive Siri will scan your e-mail to try to identify who is getting in touch.

Other iOS 9 additions include a newly unveiled Quick Type keyboard. "What makes a multitouch keyboard so special is that it can transform—when you want to move the cursor or make a selection, put two fingers on the keyboard and it becomes a trackpad," Federighi said. The idea is to allow for editing quickly without your fingers leaving the home row. Rather than fiddling with long presses and slowly moving the parameters of a copy and paste highlight, using the trackpad you can move the cursor, make selections, cut, drag, and paste.

The keyboard's troublesome Shift key has also been fixed: though it wasn't explicitly announced on stage, all the letters on the iOS 9 keyboard appear in lower or uppercase depending on whether you have the key pressed or not.











Numerous enhancements for the built-in apps were also announced, including richer editing for Notes, public transit directions for specific cities in Maps, and new views to help you scroll through your photos.

But perhaps the biggest reveal was improved multitasking in iOS 9. This encompasses things like utilizing the full screen when previewing apps, having a fully interactive Slideover for things like messages while Web browsing, and accessing a Split View mode where you can interact with two apps at the same time. Slideover is only available on the iPad Air, iPad Air 2, iPad Mini 2, and iPad Mini 3. The Split View mode is only available on the iPad Air 2, presumably because of its beefy tri-core CPU, fast GPU, and 2GB of RAM.

Apple introduced a few other notable iOS 9 features, including News. This personalized content feed pulls in articles from across the Web, personalized through curation based on user habits. Content partners as large as Ars-parent Conde Nast and The New York Times are on board, and stories can be specifically created for News to include fluid multimedia and elegant typography.

Finally, Federighi made sure to highlight a few notable macro initiatives for iOS 9. Currently 83 percent of all iOS users are on the latest version, compared to only 12 percent for Android 5. iOS 9 will be 40 percent faster and provide phones up to an additional hour of battery life according to Apple. And this update does all these things with less of a footprint, as Federighi said Apple was able to reduce the amount of free space you need from 4.6GB for iOS 8 to 1.3 for iOS 9.

iOS 9 is unique among recent iOS releases because it supports all of the same hardware that will run iOS 8—this includes old, out-of-production hardware like the iPhone 4S and the iPad 2 (both of which date back to 2011). Though the number of these devices in the wild will slowly dwindle as they're replaced with new hardware, iPhones and iPads typically retain a high resale value and remain in service for years after they're introduced. We'll need to wait and see how iOS 9 actually runs on this hardware (these early betas aren't going to be indicative of the final version's performance), but for now we're cautiously optimistic.

The first preview builds of iOS 9 should be available to registered Apple developers today. A public beta will follow in July after Apple has had a chance to work on the beta's speed and stability.