While the gold master has been out for a week, iOS 9 is now officially available and can be found by going to your iOS device’s settings and selecting the update. We’ve been following things pretty closely, and haven’t seen any majorly compelling reasons to not upgrade… But those kind of things typically snake out after tons of people download the new OS and discover [insert random game/app/whatever here] is broken on the new operating system. Personally, I’m mashing the update button while shouting “YOLO" but I might be more adventurous than most.
Device support this time around is fairly extensive. On the iPhone side of things, the iPhone 4s and everything more recent is included. As far as iPads are concerned, only the O.G. iPad can’t be updated. iPod touch support is a little more dicey, with only the 5th and 6th generation being eligible for the iOS 9 update. Better yet, the install size of the update has shrunk significantly, so it should be way easier to get going- even if your device is stuffed.
As far as major gaming reasons to update to iOS 9, I think the big one is going to be ReplayKit, Apple’s new way for developers to do things like save replays, stream things live, and more. Of course, using anything to do with ReplayKit is dependent on developers actually implementing it, which is going to take some time. Apple claims iOS 9 is going to give devices up to an hour of additional battery life, and for that reason alone, iOS 9 definitely seems worth grabbing.
