It’s that time of year again where Apple has released their latest and “greatest” installment of their mobile operating system, iOS. This year is the 8th version of said OS and as always is said to be new, improved, and above and beyond its predecessor. Well this year that’s not so true.

Each and every year, rumors about new features spool around the internet and through word of mouth as well, which generates hype towards the upcoming OS, but with this year, there wasn’t very much of that and most of the OS was kept in the dark. There’s a reason for that; there wasn’t a whole lot to this new rendition. Normally in the new updates, Apple introduces a new feature that iOS had never seen before, for example, iOS 6 introduced notification center, iOS 7 introduced the new look of the icons as well as the control center, but with iOS 8, there wasn’t really a new, groundbreaking feature that people were to go crazy for. This is unfortunate because in this day and age, the mobile device market is continuously growing and growing, which means that every company is going to have to give it their all in order to stay in the competition. Now, I’m not saying that iOS 8 is going to ruin Apple’s fan base, because believe me, it would be pretty hard for them to ruin something of that size. But that’s beside the point, even though the majority of Apple consumers won’t truly be turned off to the brand due to the lack of actually updating in the OS, it’s just a bit of a disappointment to see that there really is nothing new to the OS. With that being said, there doesn’t have to be something that should be wowing me every time I unlock my phone, but considering I, as well as many others, use my phone on a daily basis fairly frequently, I would like to see Apple at least make an attempt to still “wow” us with new features that will make the convenience of having a smartphone even more convenient.

Although it may seem like I disapprove of iOS 8, which in most cases I do, there definitely are some positives to the new update. For example, the new quick reply has proven to be very useful when it comes to texting on the fly or if I just want to send a quick response while I’m in the middle of doing something, etc. Another great feature that isn’t necessarily exclusive to iOS but to the entire community of Apple products (iOS and OS X), is the feature of unity. By this, I mean the way that you’re now able to answer phone calls directly from say your computer, or iPad, or even iPod, or pretty much any other device that isn’t an iPhone (as long as they’re all connected to your iPhone through your Apple ID). This feature is definitely convenient for most people and definitely pretty cool to see in modern day technology. But here’s the thing, that’s one of the only cool, new features, unfortunately.

Even though I’ve already demonstrated my dislike for Apple’s newest, latest iOS, it is understandable why something like this could have happened. With the release of the new iPhones and other iDevices, I’m sure Apple and their developers have had their hands full with many other important things besides developing their new OS. But even still, a few more noticeable features could have been nice and instead of calling this iOS 8, maybe it should have been called iOS 7.2, because that’s really all it was; just a slight improvement over the previous.