iOS 13 installed very smoothly on my iPhone X. Between the new OS and my new glasses,
I feel like I have a brand new phone.
I'm not a power user or anything, but I've been an iPhone customer since the iPhone 3G,
so I think I know a fair amount about how the product has evolved, and how I use it.
Based on these, I'd like to tell you what I LOVE about iOS 13.
Dark Mode
I'm a programmer. I'm on a computer (full disclosure: a Dell PC, not a Mac) for over
eight hours each day. I'm a big fan of software that lets me run in dark mode on my PC,
so you can imagine how happy I was to learn that iOS was also coming to the dark side.
Now I just need the app developers to implement the new capability into new versions
of their apps.
Improved Share Sheets
Select a photo from your library and opt to forward it. Instead of seeing a share
sheet with an open area for AirDrop and some other options, you now see forwarding options
for the people you're in touch with most often as a top row, a list of applications as a
second row, and other options in a scrollable list below that. This new format is far more
useful than was previously available. I'm really glad Apple rethought this.
Memojis
The introduction of personalized animated emojis ("memojis") was a very nice novelty-—
cool that you could animate them using facial tracking. But I don't know how widely used
they ultimately were. Bringing up your memoji then recording yourself responding in
conversation was kind of a lot of work, so I think they were largely ignored. In iOS 13,
Apple introduces us to some preset memojis with various common emojis as facial
expressions — that is, YOUR memoji's epressions — all ready for you to use. It seems
many of the most commonly used emojis are represented here. Very slick.
Plus, memoji construction is more advanced. I could finally add my single hoop
earring to my left ear!
Integration of Bedtime Clock with Other Clock Functions
The bedtime feature has been pretty nice, but it always seemed weird it wasn't
integrated in with the other clock app functions (like timer, countdown, and the
other alarms). No more: this is rectified in iOS 13. The bedtime alarm may even
be disabled and enabled on the alarms form. Still, it's not fully integrated:
the bedtime alarm sounds are still exclusive to the bedtime feature.