iOS 10 chooses renovation over innovation and more

What focus means is saying ‘no’ to something that, with every bone in your body, you think is a phenomenal idea and you wake up thinking about it, but you say ‘no’ to it because you’re focusing on something else."

This quote, belonging to Apple design chief Jony Ive, neatly encapsulates the legacy of Steve Jobs on the thinking and decision making inside Apple’s Cupertino offices. It also helps to explain why the new iOS 10, in spite of being "the biggest iOS release ever" according to Craig Federighi, lacks any groundbreaking new announcements or capabilities. Before moving on to its next grand project, Apple is taking the time to sort out and refine the stuff it already has. That's what Ive meant by focus.

Apple Music and Apple News launched with iOS 9 last year and both are getting design reboots in version 10 this year. Neither of them was greeted with an exuberant reception at the first try, and Apple’s reset is an unspoken acknowledgement of the errors made and the need for improvement. Apple Maps joins them in the UI redesign lab as part of an obvious effort to institute greater visual coherence and unity across Apple’s major apps.

Also evolutionary is Apple’s new Home app, which builds on the HomeKit initiative that Apple has been working on for two years. The new app is basically the user interface to the underlying system for controlling connected home gadgets and appliances. To better tie in with Apple TV, iOS 10 will also bring a remote control app that emulates the real remote control. And to expand on its Continuity project to make working across various devices seamless, Apple is introducing a Universal Clipboard that lets you copy and paste between iPhones, iPads, and Macs.

PREDICTABLE, YES, BUT ALSO NECESSARY

iOS 10 is everything we expected it to be because it addresses some easily apparent and well known weaknesses. The tweaks may not be flashy, but they’ve certainly been necessary, either to rectify issues, develop fledgling services (as with the Home app), or to catch up with the lead of Google’s rampaging Android. The new lock screen is a great example of all three: it adds a "raise to wake" feature in response to people complaining about the iPhone 6S fingerprint sensor being too fast, and it uses 3D Touch to enable richer, interactive notifications that let you do a lot more without unlocking the phone. Android users are already enjoying the benefit of such features, so it was obvious that Apple had to catch up, but that doesn’t make it insignificant.

3D Touch was in dire need of a compelling reason to exist, and Apple has significantly expanded its utility in iOS 10, allowing you to use it to trigger app widgets in lieu of opening full apps. Between this and the new lock screen capabilities, 3D Touch might establish itself in the user’s mind as "the thing to do when you don’t want to open other things." Anything would be better than its present status as the most disregarded function on a modern era smartphone after the Bing button on Windows Phones.