Apple made quite a few big announcements at its WWDC 2015 event including the new ninth major version of its mobile operating system, the iOS 9.

The new iOS 9 will bring plenty of new improvements to the mobile OS including improvements for Siri and Spotlight and performance improvements on all devices.

The biggest change is a completely redesigned Spotlight Search. Being part of the Siri, it appears that Spotlight will no longer exist, at least not in the way it did and will be accessible by swiping to the right of the home screen, pretty much how you would get to Spotlight until iOS 7.




The new Spotlight Search or Siri search, whatever you want to call it, will have the same improvements as on the new OS X El Capitan OS, where users will be able to do text searches that could access via Siri on voice as well as display relevant information based on external factors such as your location and the time of day. All of these improvements were pretty much needed in order for Apple to compete with Google so it does not come as a surprise that Spotlight now looks like Google Now.

The new iOS 9 also comes with improvements for Apple Maps, which will include public transportation in major cities, as well as show information about popular nearby stores and plenty more. In addition to Apple Maps, iOS 9 will bring the new News application.




While there are plenty of improvements for iOS on all devices, Apple made certain that there are some big improvements for the iPad, including the new multitasking features in iOS 9.




These include the new Split View mode, which pretty much splits the screen vertically and will be available on iPad Air 2 as well as the new Slide Over feature, which allows you to temporary slide one application on top of the other, which should be quite useful. In addition to these feature, Apple also updated the iPad keyboard as well.




There are plenty of performance improvements for all devices with iOS 9 and according to Apple, we should see a reduced CPU usage and improved overall smoothness of the UI. There are plenty of power usage improvements and Apple claims that iPhone users should see extended battery life, up to an additional hour.

Apple iOS 9 will also bring a couple of security features, including a 6 character passcode, as well as 2-factor authentication for Apple ID logins. The iOS 9 will also bring a new app in case you are coming from Android OS smartphone, called the Move to iOS, which allows you to use wireless to transfer data from an Android device to an iPhone.




Apple iOS 9 mobile OS will be launching with OS X El Capitan and WatchOS 2 in fall of this year, and rather surprisingly, all devices running iOS 8 will be supported, including the iPad 2 2011.



Source: Apple.com.