It was a beautiful day in New England. I had to decide whether to explore the new features of the iPhone 6S+ or take my wife for a ride to New Preston, Connecticut on the can-am Spyder RT Limited. I chose the latter. The trip was 65 miles and included a slow ride around Lake Waramug. I have fond memories of running in the Lake Waramug Polar Bear Run when I was in my 30s. The 7.6 mile loop around the lake is an annual winter tradition for hundreds of area runners.
As for the iPhone 6S+ new features, there are not many. It looks and feels like the 6+, but there are some new and interesting things inside. The new processor will make everything the iPhone does faster. The camera is incredible and will play an important role in healthcare. The most significant new feature is 3D Touch.
In addition to touch, pinch, zoom, and swipe, the new iPhone 6S+ can sense when you touch firmly instead of just touching. When you press firmly on an app icon, a new menu pops up with up to four choices of things you can do. For example, if you touch the Instagram icon, the app launches; if you touch firmly, a menu pops up giving you choices to search, view activity, or create a new post. A simpler example is if you firmly press the calendar icon, it gives a choice to add a new entry. The effect of the new feature is to make navigating around your iPhone and doing things quicker. Some analysts have said there is not much new. What they are missing is what the developers will do with 3D Touch. The iPhone 6S+ comes with 20 or so apps using the new feature. When thousands of developers get to it, there will be thousands of new ideas which will start showing up in the apps we use. 3D Touch may become a driver to move to the new phone or increase the lock-in for those who have it.
Upgrading from the prior iPhone was not as easy this time as before. The reason is I had installed the new iOS beta on the 6+. The result was I had iOS 9.1 on the old phone and iOS 9.0.1 on the new phone. The incompatibility made it impossible to restore my backup to the new phone. I won’t bore you with the details, but it took hours to get everything installed and working on the new phone and then updating the Apple Watch. That is the penalty one pays when using the latest, not yet supported, software. I will discuss more on the new features later.
