iOS 9.3 beta 4 — What’s New?

It appears that iOS is the one which is evolving most of the bunch, not that that’s a bad thing — there’s still a lot of work to do, especially after introducing the new iPad Pro, multitasking features, and external keyboard support. I just hope that Apple doesn’t continue down the path of crippling the Pencil in iOS 9.3…

What’s New?

It appears that iOS 9.3 has disabled Apple Pencil support for navigating the UI, manipulating text, and so forth — this is most probably an intentional move, and a bad one at that. I truly hope that this returns in the full iOS 9.3 release for one good reason: putting down the Pencil just to touch something with your finger (in Split View for example) is too much of a hassle; it’s just faster to do it with the tool in your hand. Please don’t break this Apple!

new Night Shift icon in Control Centre

disabled navigation and selection support for Apple Pencil (does not apply to drawing and note-taking apps)

new ‘star’ icons in Music.app, the ones next to the track numbers

Beta 3 added or changed the following:

modified Night Shift pop-up dialogue in Control Centre

fixed icons in landscape mode

Wi-Fi Calling for Verizon iPhones

Apple News for Sweden and Germany (perhaps other countries too)

Beta 2 changes:

Night Shift — detailed on Apple’s iOS 9.3 Preview page, it slowly changes the colour temperature of the screen to a warmer shade as the sun goes down, which is supposed to help a person fall asleep (similar to f.lux on OS X)

Night Shift toggle in Control Centre

Notes.app — ability to individually password protect select notes (also works with Touch ID)

new 3D Touch shortcuts for Settings — quick access to Battery, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi screens

Apple Music and Maps integration for CarPlay, including For You, New sections, and Nearby

Apple Music Playlists toggle in settings — it sets whether a song added to a playlist should also be added to the users iCloud Music Library or not

Media Library Privacy settings

ability to pair multiple Apple Watches to one iPhone (must be running watchOS 2.2 beta or newer)