3 Reasons to Upgrade Your iPhone/iPad to iOS 9.3

Released on March 21st, 2016, iOS 9.3 is Apple’s latest update to their mobile OS. Although on the surface, the OS looks pretty much identical to the last iteration, there are some pretty awesome new features available to users in addition to the usual stability improvements and bug fixes.

It’s always a pleasure to see what Apple has in store for us so without further ado let’s get to it.

1. Night Shift

With the release of iOS 9.3, users will finally be able to get their hands on one of the most anticipated and talked about features. Your iOS device’s display emits a mixture of red, green and blue light. Varying the intensities of each color of light allows for the display to produce different colors as needed.

Displays, in general, tend to produce a relatively large amount of blue light which is fine for daytime use but research has indicated that exposure to blue light at night can affect a person’s sleep cycle due to the suppression of the production of melatonin, which is a hormone that makes us sleepy at night.

Mobile devices are now a staple of everyday life but research indicates that exposure to their blue light at night prevents us from falling asleep as quickly as we should, subsequently reduces morning alertness.

Night Shift is Apple’s take on a software solution to counteract this issue. It cuts the amount of blue light emitted by the device’s display at night and increases the amount of red light, resulting in a warmer colors being displayed with the aim of facilitating better sleep at night.

Users can set their desired Night Shift schedule as well as choose to manually enable the feature. The color temperature can also be adjusted.

2. Classroom

Also new to iOS 9.3 is Apple’s Classroom app which opens up powerful educational possibilities for students and teachers alike.

The Classroom app facilitates iPad sharing where students have the ability to login to an iPad which is setup for Classroom use and all of their apps, books and documents will be loaded.

Instructors can view the screen of any iPad in their class, project any student’s work onto a bigger screen via apple TV, launch an app, website or book on every iPad in a class and assist in helping students reset passwords directly from their iPad.

This is quite the promising feature and it will be quite interesting to see the impact it will have in the classrooms of today’s world

3. Secure Your Notes With a Password

This all comes back down to the sharing of devices. We will in many cases share an iOS device but not necessarily in the context of the classroom, meaning that the iPad sharing features from Classroom won’t be available.

What is written in the Notes app can be very personal and although a user may be willing to share their device with someone, they may not be willing to give access to their private notes.

With iOS 9.3, users now have the ability to password protect their notes, thus adding another layer of security and/or privacy.

You must first set your desired password from within Settings.

Within Notes, you can then select which notes you wish to protect. You don’t have to put a password on all of them.

Conclusion

So there you have it, guys. iOS 9.3 brings some exciting new features to the table which allow you to get closer to realizing the full potential of your Apple Device. Yes, even the password protection of Notes, due to the way in which it is implemented. Users can select exactly where they want their password protection.

These 3 particularly stood out to me as being significant and will more likely than not make the everyday iOS experience better for many. Were they enough reasons for you to upgrade? Let us know.

ALSO READ: How to Get iOS 9’s Picture in Picture on Your Mac