Some may find this trivial, but we have used Zoom at work long before the pandemic and, having family overseas, FaceTime has also been a huge daily/weekly driver in my life. One of the nice tweaks/improvements in iOS/iPadOS 15 is (A) you can now directly set-up that FaceTime Link/Scheduled FaceTime directly in Calendar itself; and (B) if you add a Zoom (or other videoconference app) event/invite to Calendar—even if you’ve copied and pasted the meeting info from Mail or Messages, etc., into the Calendar event Notes field—iOS automatically detects which video conference app/service you’re using and can launch you into the call from Calendar when it’s time. A “Join” button appears in the event. No copying, no pasting. No back-and-forth: Click “Join” when it’s time—or automatically jump in from an event alert notification—and voila, you’re in the meeting.
Is that a groundbreaking, revolutionary tent-pole feature? No. Is it a really nice, actually significant improvement to day-to-day life? Absolutely. Especially great for my family who sometimes forget how to copy or join zooms, etc., or when we agree to FaceTime.
Finally, given how stable iOS 15 Beta 1 is, overall (compared to previous Beta 1 releases, especially iOS 7, 10, 13, 14), I would much rather have polishing & ground work or foundation laid for a huge upgrade in iOS 16, versus tons of bugs and issues this year. It’s like Snow Leopard: Most, in hindsight, now regard that as one of the best Mac OS X updates ever—even though it was, much like iOS 15, not super “flashy” or full of “major” new features; rather, lots of smaller improvements that added up to a better user experience and without tons of bugs. I suspect, as others have noted, the pandemic played a big part in having 15 be smaller. Again, I’ll take it. It’s honestly a solid update in day-to-day life — and still less buggy than iOS 14 has been of late.
