iOS 15ベータレビュー（ハンズオン）：大きな変更を伴う大きな更新

マップへのより実用的な追加は、アプリの新しいものです道路の周りのドライバーの視点を提供する3Dドライビングビューnd複雑なインターチェンジ。私はマップをマッカーサー迷路の周りで回し、一連のインターチェンジ、レーンの合流、イーストベイでの潜在的な間違った方向転換をしました。マップは、私が心配しなければならないレーンと、単なる高架道路であるレーンを明確に示しました。 （1つの不満：このビューでは、Mapsは高架下にあるが出口のない通りにラベルを付けています。これは、少し気が散るような不必要な詳細レベルです。）また、道端の建物の3Dレンダリングは、私がどこにいるかを示すのに役立ちました。

There are additional Maps improvements that don’t appear to be fully fleshed out in this beta. Apple is promising an improved transit map that now includes key bus routes and lets you pin your favorite transit lines. iOS 15 is adding immersive walking directions that will overlay directions and street names on a live image of the scene around you, so you know what direction to head in. (This is another feature that will require an iPhone XR or later.) It’s only available in the Bay Area at the moment, and I’m still looking for an opportunity to head into San Francisco to take the feature for a spin.

iOS 15: Safari’s new Look

We can argue about what the biggest changes are in iOS 15, but there’s no question as to what will be the most controversial addition. Safari in iOS 15 sports a new look inspired by Apple’s efforts to streamline the version of the browser in macOS Monterey. And I don’t think I’m going out on a limb when I say that this new approach is not going to be universally loved.

Safari’s tab bar is now at the bottom of the screen, which continues to be disorienting to me even after weeks of use. Eventually, Apple is betting that we’ll all get used to it, especially since placing the tab bar down by your thumb makes the browser easier to navigate with one hand. I certainly had no problem doing so with an iPhone 12, and I imagine people with Max-sized screens will feel similarly.

At least the tab bar is unobtrusive, disappearing into the bottom of the screen as you scroll through a page. Tapping the bottom causes it to pop back up again.

In a change that’s more likely to be widely accepted, Safari also adopts a new grid view to show you an overview of your open tabs. This is a more handy view than the stacked windows featured in previous versions of iOS, as you can see all your tabs at a glance.

Apple introduced this tab overview grid to better support another addition to Safari in MacOS Monterey — grouped tabs. Whether on your Mac or your iPhone, you can now group related browser tabs together. I find it useful when looking for online recipes to store them in one collective tab, for example. Jumping between pages is as simple as swiping right or left on your iPhone screen.

In addition to those changes, iOS 15’s Safari adds support for web extensions, a feature I haven’t had a chance to dig into yet.

iOS 15: Live Text and Visual Look up

For a while now, Google Lens has offered AI-driven super-powers that allow you to use your camera for everything from finding out more about the world around you to capturing and acting upon the text in images. iOS 15 follows suit by adding Live Text and Visual Look Up to your iPhone’s bag of tricks. It’s very much in line with Apple’s history of not necessarily being the first to add a feature, but attempting to do it better than its rivals. It’s early days for both Live Text and Visual Look Up, but the promise is there.

Live Text does what it says in its name. If there’s text in a photo you’ve taken, you can tap on it to capture it and copy it. You can then pin the resulting text in a note, email or text. The feature works best with clearly printed text as opposed to handwritten notes, but it’s a step in the right direction.

An even better component of Live Text is the ability to call phone numbers or look up addresses directly from the photos you’ve shot containing phone numbers and addresses. Just long press on a phone number, for example, and a pop-up menu appears giving you the option of starting a phone call, sending a text message, adding a number to your contacts or even placing a FaceTime call. Results with addresses have been more hit and miss — sometimes, Live Text picks up the street number but not the city, so you can get directions to entirely the wrong location.

Visual Look Up is similarly hit or miss — some things Siri recognizes, other things it doesn’t. For instance, when I swiped up on photos that I took in the Musée de l’Orangerie, Visual Look Up correctly identified paintings by Monet and Rousseau, though other shots produced no such knowledge. The feature couldn’t — or wouldn’t — recognize baseball and football stadiums, but it did have plenty of info on the iconic Sather tower on the University of California, Berkeley campus.

iOS 15: Shared with You

Past iOS updates have introduced a lot of changes to Messages, as Apple’s chat app has evolved into a place where a lot of iPhone users spend most of their time. The Messages additions are pretty minimal in iOS 15, unless you’re hankering for new Memoji clothing and accessibility options. But there is one fairly significant addition — Shared With You — that touches a number of your iPhone’s built-in apps.

Now, when someone shares with you a web link, photo, song, or podcast, it will not only appear in Messages, but also in a Shared with You section in the relevant iOS app. (Apps supporting Shared with You include Safari, Music, Podcasts, News, Photos and TV.) The idea is that you don’t always have the time to look at what someone’s sharing with you right at that instant, but when you do have a free moment to look, you can find it more easily in the relevant app.

For example, when my wife finds a web article she’ll think I find interesting, the subsequent link now lands in a Shared with You section in Safari that lives on Safari’s start page underneath frequently visited pages and above the browser’s privacy report. Similarly, photos that my friends text me now get a Shared with You section on the For You tab.

Even better, I have the option of replying to all that shared content from within the relevant app instead of having to schlep back to Messages. A reply box lets me respond to those web links my wife is sending me or to the photos I’ve gotten. In the iOS 15 beta, it’s not always clear when I’m able to respond — I find that group texts with shared content that may include people who don’t use iPhones don’t always extend the courtesy of a reply, but this may just be a quirk of the beta.

While we’re on the subject of photos in messages, it’s a lot easier to save them now in iOS 15. To save a photo from Messages in iOS 14, you had to long-press on the photo, then select Save from the ensuing pop-up menu. iOS 15 simply adds a save icon right next to the photo in your Messages conversation; tap it, and the image is saved to your Photos library.

iOS 15: Photos improvements

I’ve come to appreciate the Memories feature in the Photos app, as it’s a nice pick-me-up to sometimes go back and look at these auto-assembled collections of photos from various trips and events. (This was especially true during the pandemic.) iOS 15 further boosts the experience by incorporating songs from Apple Music, but the real treat is being able to personalize your memories.

You can tap on the Memories as they play and hit an icon that looks a lot like a music note to adjust both the song th at plays and the filter that appears on your images. I wish the controls lingered on the screen a little longer — they have a habit of disappearing while you’re still trying to figure out what button takes you where — but this is an addition that will really let you flex your creative muscles and put your own stamp on various photo collections. You can control playback, too, and iOS 15 introduces new Memory types. It really makes the Photos app more engaging.

That’s clearly the highlight of Photos, which also adds more detail to the info panel that appears when you swipe up on an image to see when and where it was taken. New info includes the lens used as well as the shutter speed, if you’re the type that likes to drill into these sorts of things. You can also tell Photos to not show certain people or memories as frequently by tapping a Feature Less option.

iOS 15: Other changes of note

“We could go on”has never felt like a more apt phrase when it comes to iOS 15. Apple’s software update contains numerous other changes, some of which aren’t even live yet in this beta. Wallet, for example, is going to support house keys, office keycards and hotel room keys, along with adding support for additional car keys. But testing that feature requires the cooperation of assorted car makers, hotel chains and smart lock companies; that’s not available just yet. The same thing goes for Wallet’s newfound support for importing your driver’s license — that’s going to require assorted state governments to sign off on that feature, and that doesn’t appear to have happened where I live just yet.

Other iOS 15 additions can be addressed quickly. Weather adds a new design highlighted by colored bar charts in its 10-day forecast to give you the range of possible temperatures at a glance. That’s a helpful enhancement, and the app’s richer, animated backgrounds make for some engaging eye candy. But some of the expanded details like full-screen weather maps feel like overkill — a”because we could”enhancement rather than something Weather truly needed.

Health adds a new sharing table, where you’ll be able to securely share health data with trusted family members and, eventually, your doctor. That’s not something I’ve had a chance to set up yet. I’m more intrigued by an addition to both Notes and Reminders that adds tags to the two built-in apps. With Tags, you’ll be able to better organize notes and tasks, using social media-style hashtags.

You can now do Spotlight searches from your iPhone’s lock screen simply with a downward swipe. (Don’t worry — if your phone is still locked for whatever reason, Spotlight searches on the lock screen are restricted to web results, so people won’t be able to rummage through the contents of your phone.) Whether on the lock screen or from a home screen, Spotlight searches also produce more results, including photos from your library, text within photos and Web images. If you’re the sort of person who uses App Clips — please, explain to me the benefit, because I still don’t get it — they’ll now appear on searches in Maps, so you can access features that let you pay for parking or order takeout.

There’s more — on-device Siri searches, Mail privacy protection that blocks senders from tracking you and an app privacy report in settings that lets you know how often your apps are tapping into you location, photos, camera, microphone, and contacts over the past week. Even better, you’ll be able to see what third-party domains they’re contacting, too. Our thoughts on these features and more will emerge during the months-long beta process as we move toward iOS 15’s fall release.

iOS 15: First impressions

Any time Apple releases a software beta, users of its hardware have an internal debate about whether to give it a try or not. In the case of this initial public beta of iOS 15, unless you’re really curious to give Focus mode and SharePlay a try, you might be best served by waiting for a few updates for things to get tidied up.

It’s not that the iOS 15 beta is buggy, though you’re bound to run into a few of those as you use the app. It’s just that things feel a little unfinished at this point. Future updates should flesh out a lot of features and give you a more complete view of what iOS 15 is going to deliver come the fall. Right now, this beta is best used by people who know they’re not seeing the finished article when they install iOS 15. And again, I can’t emphasize this enough — only try out the beta if you’ve got a spare iPhone lying around. Depending on which phone you use, you may notice a hit on battery life. This happened to me with the initial developer beta on an iPhone 12, though the subsequent update improved things.

Should all that apply to you, you’ll find a lot of intriguing changes to sort through, some of which feel more complete than others. It’s clear from using the early releases of iOS 15 that Apple has ambitious goals for this software update; it will be interesting to chart the company’s progress throughout the iOS 15 beta process.