Yesterday, Apple previewed its upcoming Apple TV+ service and Apple Arcade game service (coming out this Fall) and its Apple Card credit card (coming out this Summer). Apple also released iOS 12.2, which adds immediate support for Apple’s new Apple News+ service. For a $9.99 monthly fee (free for the first month), you get access to articles from hundreds of magazines, articles from the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, and other sources. There are virtually no ads (for some issues of some magazines you see a PDF version of the full issue which includes ads, but for most newer articles you don’t see ads), your privacy is ensured (feel free to ready Us Weekly and Star while others assume you are reading The New Yorker), and the monthly fee covers your entire family (for up to six members). I’ve just started to try it out, and it is fun to be able to read interesting articles from magazines that I would probably never go out and purchase, even if I had a long layover in an airport.
Having said that, note that if you have a library card from your local library, you may already have free access to electronic versions of digital magazines on your iPad using an app such as Flipster. Contact your local library for more details.
iOS 12.2 also adds a useful search enhancement to Safari. In the past, as you started to type search terms in the search bar, Safari gave you suggestions of what you might be trying to find. If you saw exactly what you are looking for, you could just tap it and go. But what if the suggestion is just PART of what you are looking for? For example, let’s stay I was looking for the New Orleans Saints schedule from back in 2016. If I type New Orleans Saints one of the suggested options is New Orleans Saints schedule:
In the past, tapping on that would give me the current schedule, which is not what I want. But now, instead of tapping on “new orleans saints schedule” (which would immediately perform a search for those four words) I can tap on the arrow to the right of that entry. That adds the words to my search bar without hitting Go so that I can continue to type, in this case adding 2016 at the end. Now I can hit Go and run the search that I want. I love this feature and I suspect that I’m going to get a lot of use out of it.
If you own an iPad Pro, iOS 12.2 also adds support for the Logitech Crayon, which was introduced in early 2018. At only $69, the Crayon is much less expensive than the $129 Apple Pencil 2, and the Crayon includes much of the guts of an Apple Pencil inside of it. If you aren’t sure how much you want to use a stylus, the Crayon might be a good option for you. Having said that, note that the Crayon can’t attach to the iPad Pro using magnets, doesn’t have inductive charging, doesn’t support pressure sensitivity, and doesn’t support double-tap on the side of the stylus to switch devices.
iOS 12.2 also improves support for AirPlay 2, adds new Animoji (shark, giraffe, owl, and warthog), adds greater customization to the Downtime feature (customize based on the day of the week). There is now support for the second generation AirPods (which should be customers’ hands starting this week), and lots of other smaller improvements.
And finally, like every iOS update, iOS 12.2 enhances security in numerous ways and patches bugs — and for this reason alone you should update all of your devices.