Apple’s iOS 9.1 has come out of beta in a near-record time of 42 days, according to information posted on the Thinky Bits blog by a developer who tracks these things. It’s also getting a lot of attention today for its 184 new emojis, which include a taco, a unicorn, a zipper-mouth face, an eye-in-a-speech-bubble emoji that represents an anti-bullying campaign and a hand extending a middle-finger “salute.”
The update is the first major version release of the mobile operating system since Apple came out with iOS 9 on September 16. iOS 9.1 fixes a number of bugs that existed in the previous version, iOS 9.0.2. According to Apple App Store figures as of Monday, 61 percent of the company’s devices are now running iOS 9, compared to 30 percent with iOS 8 and just 9 percent with earlier versions of the operating system.
Among the other main features in iOS 9.1 are new APIs for playback of Live Photos and improvements to the operating system’s support for Apple Pencil. The update also improves the stability of apps like CarPlay, Safari and Search, and closes a recently revealed jailbreak exploit by Pangu for the previous version.
‘Holy Grail of Emoji’
So is this an update iPhone and iPad users should embrace? Generally, the response online has been, “Yes.” Forbes gives iOS 9.1 a qualified thumbs-up, while ZDNet calls it “a much-needed performance and stability update.”
Gotta Be Mobile, on the other hand, noted that “none of the new features in iOS 9.1 are worth it for me to lose my jailbreak.” The Guardian concluded that, “The security fixes, as with all updates, make it worth updating to [minimize] your risk from hackers.” It added, however, that a large number of users appear to be rushing for iOS 9.1 because of the new rude gesture — “the holy grail of emoji” — in its emoji library.
‘A Must-Install Release’
“What’s interesting about 9.1 is what it says about the previous release,” Aaron Hillegass, author of Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X and founder/CEO of the code education and development firm Big Nerd Ranch, told us. “What we had in 9.0.2 was so reliable and useable, that the big news in 9.1 is there’s a middle finger emoji. However, If you were putting off upgrading from iOS 8, you can now be certain that iOS 9 is “rock-solid.”
Jeff LaMarche, a co-author of the books “Beginning iPhone 3 Development” and “More iPhone 3 Development,” as well as CTO of the IT consulting firm MartianCraft, echoed Hillegass’ assessment.
“iOS 9.1 is definitely what I’d call a must-install release,” LaMarche told us. “While the new emoji have been what’s getting most of the attention in 9.1, it’s actually primarily a bug-fix, performance, and security release. Most importantly, iOS 9.1 addresses almost 50 security vulnerabilities.”
LaMarche added, “Because of Apple’s ‘walled garden’ approach to their platform, iOS users are generally less vulnerable to viruses and online exploits than, say, Android users, but there are still very real threats out there. The 9.1 release closes a number of potential exploits and makes iOS devices more secure. Given how much we rely on these devices and how much personal information we store on them, that’s pretty significant.”
