iOS 8.1 now available: Brings Apple Pay, iCloud photo library, and camera roll (updated)

By AJ Dellinger October 20, 2014

ios 8 1 news icloud photos — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Updated on 10-18-2014 by Williams Pelegrin: iOS 8.1 is now available for download. Let’s hope it doesn’t brick any iPhones.

Apple released iOS 8 just over a month ago, but it’s already touting its success and rolling out an update for the mobile operating system. According to Apple’s vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi, iOS 8 has already achieved 48 percent installed base on active iOS devices, making it the most used version of the OS. Today, the company has rolled out iOS 8.1 to build upon the success of its latest release.

Federighi stated that changes appearing in iOS 8.1 came heavily from user feedback provided on iOS 8. That means the return of the camera roll, which inexplicably disappeared in iOS 8. The update also paves the way for the release of Apple Pay, the NFC-based mobile payment system that will be available starting October 20.

The operating system update brings with it the public beta of the iCloud photo library, a feature that Apple has teased for some time. It allows users to store photos and videos from all devices in iCloud, available in their original format and resolution. iCloud provides users with 5GB of free storage. Additional space can be purchased, starting at 20GB for $1 a month. 200GB is available for $4 a month, and the tiers continue going up to 1TB.

Along with its OS X counterpart, the iOS version of iWork has also been updated and is available for free.

Apple’s had a rough go of things with its mobile releases this year, including a badly botched update process for iOS 8.0.1. The company hopes to recover smoothly with iOS 8.1, though its success will weigh heavily on how well Apple Pay works upon release.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Apple

Contributor

AJ Dellinger is a freelance reporter from Madison, Wisconsin with an affinity for all things tech. He has been published by…

Mobile

Apple’s iOS 16.4 beta brings new emoji, web app notifications, and more

Sample of new emoji coming in iOS 16.4

Apple has just released the iOS 16.4 beta for developers and anyone else who wants a really early look at the new software. This is the first beta for iOS 16.4, following numerous releases for iOS 16.3.

The first highlighted items for iOS 16.4 are the new Unicode 15 emoji. These are the first new emoji in over a year. Some of these new emoji include a shaking face, pink heart, light blue heart, goose, donkey, angel wing, jellyfish, pea pod, ginger, folding hand fan, maracas, flute, and more. These new emoji additions were originally proposed in July 2022, and they were added to the Unicode standard in September 2022. It has taken a few months for these to get added to iOS because designers at Apple needed to create the icons with the information provided by the Unicode Consortium.

Mobile

Ranking all 16 iOS versions, from worst to best

iPhone 14 Pro with iOS 16 with custom home screen

In 2007, Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone on the stage at Macworld Expo in San Francisco. It has been 16 years since that announcement that changed the mobile industry as we know it; today, we now have 16 versions of iOS software that power our iPhones.

iOS has certainly come a long way, with iOS 16 letting us do things on our iPhone 14 that we never thought was possible a decade ago. But each version of iOS has its own strengths and weaknesses, with some releases being better than others.

Mobile

iOS 16.3.1 fixes major bugs for your iPhone — and introduces a new one

Lock screen widget for iOS 16.

Apple just released a new iOS update for your iPhone: iOS 16.3.1. There are also updates for iPadOS 16.3.1 and macOS 13.2.1. All of these are relatively minor updates, but they do patch up an actively exploited code execution vulnerability that was found in WebKit/Safari. A second vulnerability was also patched up, though this second one was not known to be actively exploited.

But that’s not all that iOS 16.3.1 brings. This update also fixes an issue with iCloud settings, where it became unresponsive. Another bug fix corrects an issue with using Siri with the Find My feature, where the request would end up failing. If you have a HomePod, there is a HomePod 16.3.2 OS update that will also resolve some Siri issues, where smart home requests would end up failing.