Yesterday, Apple released the latest update to the iPhone operating system. Apple just calls it iOS 13.5, but to me, this is the COVID-19 update. It includes a number of changes to make the iPhone work better in a world in which we are dealing with the coronavirus. Here are the major new features.
Mask detection
We all need to wear masks in public, but if you have a newer iPhone with Face ID, that means that you cannot simply look at your iPhone to unlock it. Face ID examines your eyes, nose, and mouth to confirm that you are really you, and it won’t unlock your iPhone if your nose and mouth are covered up. Before iOS 13.5, it took the iPhone a short period of time to scan your face looking for a nose and mouth that it would never find because of a mask before it would finally give up to switch to a mode where you enter your passcode.
With iOS 13.5, your iPhone notices in a fraction of a second that you are wearing a mask and jumps directly to the screen where you enter your passcode. Even though this only saves seconds, it actually removes quite a bit of aggravation. This was a great idea — and one that most of us never would have thought of before a few months ago.
Exposure notification
Experts such as the CDC say that contact tracing is a “key strategy for preventing further spread of COVID-19.” When someone gets COVID-19, it is helpful to quickly notify others who may have caught the disease from that person so that they can be quarantined before they unknowingly spread it to others. Contact tracing is often done by a public health official asking a sick person where they have been. But nobody has perfect memories, and even if you know the exact time that you were in an exact place, how do you know who else was close to you?
iOS 13.5 includes the first version of the exposure notification software developed jointly by Apple and Google. And it is done in a way that protects your privacy. If you choose to participate, once a public health official confirms that you have COVID-19, then other smartphones that were sufficiently close to your smartphone (as measured by Bluetooth) for a sufficient amount of time give their owner a notification that they may have been exposed to COVID-19. All of this is done with privacy in mind. You have no way of knowing who they are and they have no way of knowing how you are. And unlike some contact tracing software in which the government keeps a central database of everywhere that your phone has been, the Apple/Google approach doesn’t make this information available.
The privacy emphasis is good not only because it is inherently good to protect your privacy but also because that encourages more folks to turn on this feature. The more people that use the system, the more that the system can do to protect us all.
Note that iOS 13.5 is only the first step, just the back-end software that exists on your iPhone. To actually take advantage the exposure notification feature, you need to do two things. First, you need to download a free app provided by your country or state or other locality that is designed to work with the Apple/Google data. Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal reports that, here in the United States, the states of North Dakota, Alabama, and South Carolina will soon have their apps available. Parish Dave of Reuters reports that 22 countries are considering releasing compatible apps.
Second, you need to turn on the feature in the Settings app. Go to Settings -> Privacy -> Bluetooth -> COVID-19 Exposure Logging to turn it on. You can see this setting once you download iOS 13.5, but you cannot do anything with it until you have installed an authorized app.
I hope that we don’t have to wait long to see apps in all 50 states and many other countries. Also, I hope that lots of folks take advantage of this feature. Much like wearing a mask, the more that people participate, the more that we are all protected.
Eliminate FaceTime nausea
Before COVID-19, I only used FaceTime to talk to one person at a time. But now that we need to stay apart from our friends and family, I’ve had more group FaceTime calls to talk to several family members at once. Unlike some other services like Zoom and Microsoft Teams that have fixed rectangles to indicate different people, a group FaceTime calls uses an interesting feature in which the rectangles float around the screen and the rectangle for the person who is speaking grows largers while others get smaller. In theory, it is a neat trick.
In practice, it sometimes makes me feel seasick to see shapes moving around the screen getting bigger and smaller. Fortunately, iOS 13.5 gives you the option to turn this off. Go to Settings -> FaceTime -> Speaking to turn off the automatic prominence feature that changes the size of the tiles based upon who is speaking.
I’m glad to see this option, because other than this annoyance, I find the quality of group FaceTime calls to be very high. Now that I have this option, I’m much more likely to use group FaceTime to talk to a group of people who are all using Apple devices.
Tell emergency services who you are
Hopefully, none of us will ever need to call 9-1-1 or whatever the emergency services number is in your part of the world, but it is nice to know that the service is there if you need it. In iOS 13.5, if you call emergency services — whether for a COVID-19 reason or something else — you can choose to have your iPhone share a limited amount of your health data automatically, information that can make it faster and easier to get the medical attention that is best for you.
Before discussing this new feature, let’s talk about the iPhone Medical ID, a feature that has been available since the release of iOS 8 on September 17, 2014. In the iPhone’s Health app, you can add information selected by you such as your name, age, medications, blood type, and emergency contacts to a Medical ID card. If someone finds you in a state in which you cannot communicate, they can pick up your iPhone and (if you have it enabled) see the information on your Medical ID without having to unlock your iPhone. (When on the lock screen on which the keypad is displayed, tap Emergency, then tap Medical ID, both of which are at the bottom left.) That way, even if you cannot tell a medical professional or police officer this critical information, your iPhone will do it for you. If you have a contact listed on your Medical ID with an associated phone number, that person can even use your iPhone to call that number without unlocking your device. For example, the person could call your spouse to advise that you have been injured.
The new feature in iOS 13.5 is that your iPhone can share this information with emergency services when you call them. That way, they not only know where you are located but they also know who you are and other information that could be critical in a time-sensitive situation to help you as soon as possible.
Etc.
There are a few other minor new features. For example, Ryan Christoffel of MacStories describes a new feature that lets you share a song, album, or playlist in Apple Music to Instagram and other services.
Also, like every update to the operating system of the iPhone and iPad, this update fixes some bugs and improves security. Thus, I always recommend that folks update their iPhone and iPad when an update is available, except that you might want to wait a day or two just in case there are any problems with the rollout that Apple needs to fix. I had no trouble yesterday when I updated my iPhone to iOS 13.5 and my iPad to iPad OS 13.5, nor have I seen reports of others encountering problems, so I think that this update is safe to install.