News

Apple Releases New iOS 9.2 Update Today – Skip it or Install it?

By Andre Da Costa

Updated May 31, 2021

Apple today released a new update, iOS 9.2 for its iPhone and iPad devices. It also released updates for OS X, Apple Watch, and Apple TV. Let’s review the updates and make the call to install it or skip it!

Apple released the second major update to its mobile operating system iOS 9 which was launched in September 2015. Apple began testing iOS 9.2 in October, and the final update is available now for download. To get the new update to your iPhone or iPad, head to Settings > General > Software Update. The question is however, is it a good idea to install this update and possibly introduce more issues/bugs/slowdown or?

Before I answer that question, let’s take a look at what’s included in the update!

Apple iOS 9.2 Update

Today’s release includes a long laundry list of improvements and fixes. The Safari browser features a major update to the view controller and its interaction with third party apps. Instead of being limited to Apples own extensions, third party apps can now be added. AT&T users can now accept calls on any device through the NumberSync Wi-Fi calling feature.

This update also contains the following improvements and bug fixes:

• Apple Music improvements
• You can now create a new playlist when adding a song to a playlist
• Your most recently changed playlist is now listed at the top when adding songs to playlists
• Download albums or playlists from your iCloud Music Library by tapping the iCloud download button
• See which songs have been downloaded with the new download indicator next to each song in My Music and Playlists
• See works, composers, and performers while browsing Classical music in the Apple Music catalog

• A new Top Stories section in News so you can stay up to date with the most important news of the day (available in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia)
• Mail Drop in Mail for sending large attachments
• iBooks now supports 3D Touch to peek and pop pages from the table of contents, your notes and bookmarks, or from search results inside a book
• iBooks now supports listening to an audiobook while you browse your library, read other books, or explore the iBooks Store
• iPhone support for the USB Camera Adapter to import photos and videos
• Improved stability of Safari
• Improved stability of Podcasts
• Fixing an issue that caused mail attachments to be inaccessible for some users with POP email accounts
• Resolving an issue for some users that caused attachments to overlap text in mail
• Fixing an issue where Live Photos could have turned off after restoring from a previous iCloud backup
• Addressing an issue that could cause search in Contacts to display no results
• Resolving an issue that could have prevented Calendar from displaying all seven days in week view
• Fixing an issue where Camera screen on iPad could be black when attempting to capture video
• Addressing an issue that could cause instability in the Activity app when viewing the day of Daylight Savings Time transition
• Fixing an issue that could prevent data from appearing in Health
• Fixing an issue that could prevent Wallet updates and Lock screen alerts from displaying
• Addressing an issue where updating iOS could prevent an alarm from going off
• Fixing an issue where some users were unable to login to Find my iPhone
• Fixing an issue that prevented some manual iCloud Backups from completing
• Addressing an issue where using the iPad keyboard could unintentionally trigger text selection mode
• Improved keyboard responsiveness when using Quick Reply
• Improved punctuation input on the 10-key Chinese (Pinyin & Stroke) keyboards with new expanded view of punctuation symbols and better predictions
• Fixing an issue on Cyrillic keyboards where caps lock would be enabled when typing in URL or email fields

• Accessibility improvements
  • Fixing issues with VoiceOver when using Camera face detection
  • Adding support for VoiceOver to wake up the screen
  • Adding support for VoiceOver to invoke app switcher with 3D Touch gesture
  • Fixing an issue with Guided Access when trying to end phone calls
  • Improved functionality for Switch Control users when using 3D Touch
  • Fixing an issue with speech rate of Speak Screen
• Siri support for Arabic (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates)

Apple’s previous update iOS 9.1 included superficial improvements such as:

• Live Photos now intelligently senses when you raise or lower your iPhone so that Live Photos will automatically not record these movements
• Over 150 new emoji characters with full support for Unicode 7.0 and 8.0 emojis

If you want to know how to get more out of using your Apple device with iOS 9, check out our article here.

It’s also worth noting that Apple released updates for other platforms today including OS X, Apple Watch, and Apple TV. With today’s update to the new Apple TV, the Remote app finally works — which was a big complaint about Apple’s new set-top box. Our very own Steve Krause in fact has left his new Apple TV in the box until this feature was released…. (such as drama queen…).

Anyway — Back to our question of “Install it or Skip it?”, with all the new enhancements and bug fixes included in this update, my reccomendation is to definitely move forward with the install. As you can see from my screenshot above, the udpate is fairly small (under 300 megs) however, despite its size, be sure to connect your device to power before you start the update.