What is all the fuss about iOS 12?
Which iOS do I have ?

iOS is the operating system used by the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. In the words of Wikipedia, “an operating system (OS) is a collection of software that manages computer hardware resources and provides common services for computer programs.”
Oh, yes, that makes it a lot clearer, right?

Well, trying to simplify, let’s say there’s a lot of features that are built in into iOS that allow you to take advantage of what the iPad, iPhone or iPod have to offer. For example, using Siri, connecting to WiFi or cellular networks, connecting to an external speaker using bluetooth, being able to take pictures and modify them, using location services, using gestures on the multi touch screen, listening to music and more.

As time goes by, Apple releases new versions of iOS with new or improved features (at least most of the time… Let’s forget about maps for now…).

It’s worth mentioning that not all iOS versions can run on any iPad hardware version. For example, the iPad 1 can only be upgraded up to iOS 5. iPad 2 can be upgraded to iOS 9 but not all the features from iOS 9 will be available on it (i.e. Siri, AirDrop, Picture in Picture, Split View, etc).The iPad Air 2 and iPad Pro fully support iOS 12.

Which iOS do I have?

To check your iOS version, from the home screen, tap on settings:

Then tap on General and About ( top right )

On the About screen look for the line that displays the version.

The latest and current version is iOS 12:

In this example we can see iOS 10.

In this example we can see iOS 9.1.

This example shows iOS 8.

Here we see iOS 7:

In this other example we see we have iOS 6:

On this last example we see we have iOS 5.1:

Mac OS X similarities

For those who recently purchased a new Mac or upgraded it to the latest operating system, you will notice more and more similarities between iOS and Mac OS X. The advantage for you will be learning once and using it everywhere. Due to the interfase difference (touchscreen vs touchbar, trackpad and keyboard), I recently heard statements that said that OS X and iOS will not converge into one OS that can run on all Apple devices. In fact Apple is releasing iPadOS. More to come about this soon.