New features in the iOS 9 beta

Apple released a public beta for IOS 9 today, and we're going to take a first look at some of the new features. Let's start with the news app. While there are tons of third party options, Apple's news app lets you pick your favorite sites and get a news feed from publications you like. It has explore features that give you suggested channels and topics, or you can browse categories by scrolling down. A search button gives you suggestion searches. Or you can type in a topic and look for news stories. Now onto the notes app, great for jotting down any type of info. You'll now be able to create checklists, add photos, and even scribble with your finger with different pen types and a selection of colors. What's cool here is you can also send things to notes So I might find the perfect recipe in Safari and I can send it straight to my notes with a centered share sheet. All these notes are shared across all my devices, connected by my Apple ID. Switching over to navigation, the map set now has transit direction, so I can quickly do a search, then find the best public transit information for getting there. It's useful that the map shows bus and rail stops. And you can touch one to see the lines that go through that stop. You can also see what's around you with the new nearby feature by performing a search, and using the buttons at the top to find things like food or shopping in your area. Siri gets smarter in IOS 9 by searching more sources to give you better results. One of the coolest new features is that you can ask specific questions like, show me emails from last Wednesday and Siri will quickly grab those emails so you can find what you want. But the general search features are better too, even when you launch Search by swiping right from the first screen, you'll now get your most common contacts, recent apps you were using A few things you might want nearby and news stories. When you choose a nearby item, you'll quickly go to maps to see all the locations that match your choice. So that's a quick overview for the iOS 9 public beta, but we'll show much more when the official version comes out this fall. I'm Jason Parker for CNET and thanks for watching. [MUSIC]