With any major new OS revision, you have to ask yourself: Should I update now, or wait a while?
Every time Apple drops a major new operating system update—whether macOS or iOS—there’s the question of whether or not you should upgrade right away or wait a while. Certainly, there’s a case to be made either way and plenty of variables at play. What are your needs? How willing are you to live with a few problems? How stable are the latest beta releases? What features are you going to gain? Over the last several years, the latest version of iOS has been released at any time in the days following a September event—everything from the day after (in 2020) to nine days later (in 2019). Now that iOS 15 has launched (as of Monday, September 20), the question is once again: Should you mash that update button right away, or wait? Here’s the case for and against. Update 09/30/21: An iOS 15 bug is preventing the Unlock with Apple Watch feature on some iPhone 13 devices. Another bug can delete images from Photos if they were saved from a Messages conversation and you delete that conversation and then perform an iCloud backup. Some users are having intermittent touchscreen issues on iPhone 13, too. These bugs are enough to cause us to change our recommendation to “wait” for most users. Obviously, the biggest reason to update right away to iOS 15 is to get all those cool new features. There’s a lot of new stuff in FaceTime including different microphone focus modes, a new layout, and links for others to join your FaceTime conversation from the web on other devices. There are new “Shared with You” sections in apps to show content that people send you in Messages, Focus modes to limit distracting notifications, Safari improvements, the ability to scan text and translate text almost anywhere…the list goes on and on. Apple Perhaps one of the biggest improvements is that Safari will process many requests entirely offline. If you don’t need an internet connection for the function (like getting a sports score or weather report), Siri processes the request entirely on-device.
