As in iOS 13 long term support. No new features to be added. No 13.6.5 or 13.7 with last minute features.
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Apple Seeds Second Betas of iOS and iPadOS 13.6 to Developers [Update: Public Beta Available]
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As I said, that isn't a thing. It never has been with iOS (nor Mac OS X / macOS), and I see little reason to believe they'll start with it now.
I don't understand the point of all of these updates and they are just a few months away from iOS 14. Why not just figure all of this out and put into a good working 14.0
Custom (or even unchangeable) keyboard function shortcuts would be a great and obvious feature to add in a minor update.
To reduce the burden of a monolithic release, which comes with a higher risk of bugs.
Suppose there's a new bug in 14.0 (there will be). If they can also reproduce it in 13.6, they know it's from one of the changes in 13.6. If they can't, odds are it isn't.
Most things area already in iOS 14 and work on that largely goes on independently anyway. These things are to get more issues addressed and perhaps some more things surfaced to the public that is already using iOS 13.
2020 is a strange year in general; if there even is something like a “normal” year
If iOS 14 cuts off any devices, you want to leave them on the most stable and secure version. also, a public release of iOS 14 is still at least four months away, possibly more.
so this will not be the final version most likely. Expect a 13.6.1, a 13.6.2, etc.
iOS 10 got an update last fall to 10.3.6. It’s all about keeping as many devices as secure as possible.
They added new developer-facing API, so they bumped the version to 13.6.
In particular, they added a new feature to ExposureNotification API and appear to be adding symptom tracking to HealthKit. I suspect 13.6 will have a shorter development cycle to get this out, and that we might see more 13.x releases as various health authorities ask for more functionality by Apple (since their apps are somewhat sandboxed off from health data).
Hmm, I know it doesn't mean anything, but since it's a "C" build, we might see it earlier than expected.
Looks like 13.6 added support for saved reading position in the News app.
This is a sorely needed feature, especially within News+ magazine articles which are often lengthy. I’m thrilled to see they’ve added it.
Note - in my testing, it seems there’s an intentional delay on saving reading position within an article. Opening an article, scrolling down, and immediately leaving the article won’t save the state. But as long as an article is open for ~30 seconds, it will then start to save the position.
This is a sorely needed feature, especially within News+ magazine articles which are often lengthy. I’m thrilled to see they’ve added it.
Note - in my testing, it seems there’s an intentional delay on saving reading position within an article. Opening an article, scrolling down, and immediately leaving the article won’t save the state. But as long as an article is open for ~30 seconds, it will then start to save the position.
Another iOS update iOS 13.6 developer beta 2 with significant new features including, customise auto updates, and Health app symptom logging, but yet again no Accessibility improvements. People with severe physical disabilities still waiting to control Auto-Answer with Siri and Shortcuts, answer/end calls with Siri, and more.
That’s likely due to to the “task-oriented” design. If you open Messages, tap on a recent conversation then quickly ask Siri “remind me about this tonight”, she’ll have no clue what you mean. But if you sit at that last message for 30-ish seconds, then ask Siri “remind me about this tonight”, she’ll set a reminder for 7pm with a reference to that last message. In Reminders, you’ll have a link/reference to that message you can tap on to open the message. Same with an email. Probably a few other system things, too.
That delay is the “task oriented” behavior; it has to be some “task” you’re clearly doing or seemingly working on in order for Siri to figure out what you mean (Siri context). Some developer can probably explain that in more detail than I’m doing here, but the gist is similar.
Remember, computers are incredibly stupid. They only do exactly what you tell them (and with unwavering aplomb), whether or not that’s what you MEANT for them to do.... (and those two things aren’t exactly similar either).