Apple has been running OS X public betas for both Yosemite and El Capitan, but it only began offering public betas for iOS in March, and those were only for smallish point updates. Now the company is taking a bigger step: it just released the first public beta of iOS 9, the next major release of the company's mobile operating system due out this fall.
iOS 9 is mostly focused on polishing up the big additions in iOS 7 and iOS 8, but there are still new things for people to play with. It refines the iOS 7-era UI with the new Apple-designed San Francisco typeface. It includes a more versatile version of Siri that responds better to natural phrases like "show me pictures from last week" and can present information more proactively. The Notes app is better at adding and organizing links, photos, and other things, Maps picks up public transit directions in select cities, and a new News app lets users get a specially formatted, customizable stream of news from a variety of publications. iPhones also get a new Low Power Mode that turns off some background services to prolong battery life in a pinch.
iOS 9's biggest changes are reserved for newer iPads, which get some long-rumored multitasking features that make better use of their larger screens. The iPad Air 2 is the only tablet that gets everything—it can run two apps side-by-side in Split View mode, something we examined in greater detail last month. In addition to the iPad Air 2, the iPad Air, iPad Mini 2, and iPad Mini 3 can all use Slide Over, a sort of temporary multitasking that lets you slide an app in from the right side of the screen and work with it for a moment before returning to your main app. And all four of those tablets can also use a new "picture-in-picture" video mode that lets you watch a video as you do things in other apps.
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