iOS

The Flyover feature of Apple's Maps, as you likely know, gives you a 3D view of a city. A list of these cities can be found on the website Flyover Cities. In iOS 8 Apple added a fun new feature called Flyover Tour that takes you on a 3D tour of the city's major landmarks. The Flyover Tour of New York City includes the Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge, Empire State Building, Central Park, and more. Only some of the Flyover cities have a Flyover Tour. They include New York City, San Francisco, London, Paris, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, and Sydney.

Apple requires you to have the latest version of Safari or Apple TV in order to watch their live streams. So if you're planning to watch Apple's live stream of their September 9 announcement, make sure you update well ahead of time. Otherwise you may end up crying and tearing your hair out because you're missing the first 15 minutes of the announcement while you wait for Safari or Apple TV to finish updating.

Today is the day iOS 8 will be available for download, so make sure you read our rundown of all the cool new features. If you've decided to update the software on your iPhone or other device, consider waiting until the initial rush of downloads has passed; this will allow you to avoid longer download times or installation fails. When you're ready to update, make sure you check out these tips on downloading and installing iOS 8:

One of the great new features in iOS 8 is the ability to send an audio message. Sometimes it's simply a lot more convenient to make a quick recording than it is to type a message. Why not simply call the person? Because convention requires that we then engage in conversation. An audio message is more efficient. And the party you're sending it to can listen at his or her convenience rather than having to answer the phone.

I like Apple's Maps app, but a number of times it's taken me to a location that simply didn't exist: an Indian restaurant, a zoo, a hotel in a small town, a Chinese restaurant. I diligently follow Siri's directions and when she says I've arrived, the establishment in question is nowhere to be seen. And in several of these cases probably never existed. If you've had similar problems and prefer maps from third parties such as Google, you can now conveniently access these maps from within Apple's Maps app.

If you find it more convenient to listen to some text on your iPhone or iPad rather than read it, you can easily enable that capability. You might, for example, want your device to read a web page or ebook or other document to you as you drive. While this feature has been available for some time, note that iOS 8 gives a convenient new option for invoking speech.

In iOS 8 you can now quickly access your contacts via the App Switcher by double clicking the Home Button. If you don't want to look at a list of your favorite and most recent contacts every time you use the App Switcher, or if you don't want anyone else to easily see who you call or text most often, you can disable the feature in settings.

Time-lapse videos can be fun, whether of moving clouds, a sunset, a busy street corner, a tennis player — basically any situation where there's movement or change. Time-lapse videos simply take still photos at specific intervals, such that a slow-moving snail can appear to be speeding along. One of the neat features of iOS 8 is the new Time-lapse mode in the Camera app. As usual, Apple has made it simple.

Spotlight has long been a great feature of iOS, and is especially useful at helping you find apps that are buried away in a folder on your device. Since iOS 7 you invoke this handy search tool by simply swiping down on any home screen. (But keep in mind that if you swipe down from the very top of the display you'll get Notification Center instead.) In iOS 8, introduced last fall, Apple greatly expanded what Spotlight can do. In addition to finding apps and text strings in apps such as Mail and Notes, it also now searches the web, searches Wikipedia, finds related apps in the App Store, finds related movies, and even brings up results in Maps if you search on a location.

Automatic exposure (which determines how light or dark our images should be) is so convenient and accurate most of the time, but then there are those times when we end up with  overexposed or underexposed images that make us cringe. After all, our cameras are pretty advanced, but it's still impossible for them to recognize when we want our focal point darker (such when shooting silhouettes) or lighter. 

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