Do you remember what you were doing in 2014?
I was 25 and bored.
God, that was seven years ago, man, how time flies.
But there is a milestone from 2014 worth noting, because it's when this came out.
It's the iPad Air 2, and despite its age, it will be getting the latest iOS 15 update
in the fall. That makes it the longest supported iOS device in Apple's history.
So that's through eight generations.
And on the iPhone, the 6 year old 6S and SE will get the update as well.
That's frankly unprecedented in this segment. It shows how Apple's tight integration of software and hardware really stretches the
longevity of their products. And I thought it might be a neat way to get a taste of what's to come in iOS 15 before
it gets released in the fall. So let's see how these devices run with the latest beta.
There it is. For comparison's sake, let's look at Android.
Google announced their latest version, version 12, of their mobile software this summer too.
And when it gets released in the fall, the oldest supported device that I know of will
probably be this, the Pixel 3.
It came out three years ago in 2018. Now that year I can remember a little bit better because I moved to Winnipeg.
Nevertheless, Pixel phones have been reliably getting updates for three years now, because
Google committed to it. Get any other Android phone, and chances are you'll get one update if you're lucky.
With the iPhone, only the original got three years of updates.
Everything released after got more. But that didn't mean they got all the fancy new features included in their updates.
And so there are a few things emitted from the iOS 15 update for these devices too.
Fancy 3D maps and turn by turn navigation, no live text recognition, and no spatial audio
and FaceTime calls among other things.
That's fine, and we'll dig into those when the software gets released.
Make sure to stay subscribed for that. The question is, how does the iOS 15 update run on these aging devices?
These are both old devices though, so there are slightly slower loading times here and
occasional stutters there. But it's not unusable like in iPad 2 with iOS 9.
I'm still waiting for that picture of the dress to load. Apparently it's white and gold?
If you're worried about any of the update slowdowns we remember from the past, battery
gate, I wouldn't worry too much about it with this one.
After over a week running both of these devices, they don't seem to run all that much slower
than equivalents running iOS 14. Appearance wise, the operating system is still as flat and plain as ever.
On the iPad, one can now add large widgets to the home screen, which is nice, and multitasking
is a little bit more discoverable. There are three dots on the top of open apps that allow you to move Windows to split view
or slide over. Generally speaking, it works well on this iPad Air 2, but if you do try to web browse
while watching a YouTube video, you'll hear some stutters.
The most annoying thing happens regardless of what iPad you're using, because look what
happens when you miss the button.
Mercifully it's much easier now to add apps into slide over, because before you could
only add apps available in the dock, which was a royal pain to deal with.
Here's what you had to do. Close the open app, then open the app you want to have in slide over to put it in the
recent 3 on the dock, then close that app, then reopen the original app and then drag
the new app into slide over. Now though, all apps are available on an app library located on the dock.
Now how about old iPhones? In iOS 15, many inputs no longer span across the screen.
They're grouped together in rounded squares like in the E-classic iOS days, only with
less definition. It's not so bad, except that borders take up so much space on this SE, so that in apps
like Calendar, critical information like the date gets truncated.
Why would you prioritize the year? Now there is a solution in iOS 15 to help with that.
It's a feature that lets you adjust the text size on an app by app basis, so by adding
this AA button in the control center, I can shrink the text in only the calendar app to
85% to fit the date. Great, but I'm not the only one who nitpicks Apple's design decisions to this degree.
One of the biggest changes with iOS 15 is with Safari.
They've moved the address bar to the bottom, and now you can swipe between tabs.
Yay, another swipe gesture! But this final design came after many weeks of outrage from the community.
When it was unveiled at WWDC back in June, everything was to be compacted into one interface
role on all platforms. What was problematic about this design was that it required too many buttons and options
to be hidden in an all-encompassing sub-menu, like the drunk drawer in your foyer, so things
were hard to find. And when Apple tried reintroducing the buttons back into the floating orb, it got real crowded
real quick. That, and the fact that a floating pill shape floated over many websites' bottom interface
buttons. Ultimately, the current interface is much like it was before all of this, but I'm still
a little bothered by the way tabs look on iPad OS and macOS.
They're contained in these weird and wide pill shapes that just waste space and make
it hard to tell what's open. Tab groups are the big new feature in Safari, and it lets tab fiends organize their tabs
better into groups with titles, etc. You can even turn your clusters of already opened tabs into a group to get them out of
the way. Now, they're supposed to be syncing across devices, but the tab groups that I've made
on my iPad aren't showing up on my iPhone and vice versa.
So, beta bugs? Oh yeah, notifications.
There are new focus and notification settings in iOS 15 that provide you an interesting
way to better manage your notifications for the different states you might be in.
So when you set up the work state, you could choose what apps and people can make your
phone chime. You can also set up custom pages on a home screen full of apps that you'd only use at
work and make it visible only during work time.
It appears to be a more customizable and robust version of Apple's Do Not Disturb feature.
The default focus states are driving, sleep, personal, and work.
You can choose who disturbs you and when or even where, and then label it for the times
and states of your life when this would be handy. So a work focus is good to make sure only colleagues and apps that you use at work notify you,
though it's a little tedious to have to go through one's contact list to choose the
right people for that focus. Like all your work colleagues in work, friends for personal and study buddies for study,
a select all toggle would also be really nice here.
My personal problem with this is FOMO. I always get the feeling that I'm missing out on something important when I'm in my
work focus mode, which turns on automatically whenever I arrive at the office.
But I guess that's what this feature is all about anyway, isn't it?
You do get a while in focus notification in your notification center during those times.
I think it'll be useful even though it might be yet another thing to maintain as life flows.
Now there are a lot of apps on iPhone that send you notifications right away when you
really don't care. But Apple's notification summary feature might be a good solution for that.
There are a lot of apps that you probably don't want bugging you every day.
So you can put them in the notification summary, which can be scheduled to pop up once or more
times a day to show you what you missed. But this doesn't solve the most infamous notification problem, the sharing economy.
You know those apps where you require instant notifications like when you're getting your
meal delivered, but you don't need to know about the 5% off deal right now, really?
I tried notification summary by turning on all of the apps I previously had off to see
what I get. And after a few days, I have to say it's just as annoying as using notifications that
would normally appear on the lock screen. Easier to clear perhaps, but I'm just turning this off.
And look here. I have two sub levels of notifications where my while in work focus contains my notification
summary. I feel like notifications are somehow more complicated than ever.
Perhaps the defaults will lead you into a more manageable life, and there are plenty
of options for power users, but I don't know, I just feel like my mom's going to avoid
all this anyway.
The quick obsolescence of technology has been an ongoing discussion for a while now.
But using these two seemingly ancient devices over the past week with a beta version of
the latest software, it shows that Apple's mobile devices are being given longer lifespans
than I ever expected them to get. This iPad Air 2 is impressively competent even after all these years, but there is however
one fly in the ointment worth mentioning. While Apple's software support is unparalleled in its longevity, the hardware still has batteries,
which aren't accessible, and wear out quickly.
It would be nice to see the devices last equally as long in hardware as it does in software.
Otherwise, if you own an iPad Air 2 that you bought new and still working, you made an
extremely good long-term purchase.
All thanks to iOS 15.
Thanks for updating to this Mac Address. Since you've made it this far, I think it means the video is worthy of a like or even
a subscribe. Now, one thing to note is that Apple plans to provide bug fixes and security updates
to users who choose not to update to iOS 15.
So that means that you can update this old phone, but you don't necessarily have to.