 Apple's calling iOS 8 its biggest update ever, and while it may not look like it on the surface, there are enough changes here to justify that claim. iOS 8 represents a big change for Apple, it's finally becoming a modern mobile operating system. If you've used iOS 7, iOS 8 is going to feel instantly recognizable and comfortable. In fact you have to dig quite deep into iOS 8 before you find what's actually different compared to iOS 7. Unlike last year's complete visual overhaul, iOS 8 is a refinement, with few actual visual changes. It's a recent contact picker when you open the multitasking menu, notification center has shrunk from a confusing three tabs to a much more logical two, and the animations are ever so slightly faster than before. You can also respond to notifications right from notification center, and apps can insert widgets of their own right in there too. But iOS 8 looks and feels just like iOS 7, nobody upgrading from one to the other is really going to be completely lost. Spotlight has been updated to provide results from Wikipedia, news sources, maps, iTunes and more based on your location and other pieces of context. It's the universal search app Spotlight should have always been. iMessage is now more like Snapchat and other hot messaging apps of the day with audio messages, video clips and location sharing. You can finally manage group messages, you can silence your noisy friend or leave the annoying group chat that never seems to end, but we did have some issues getting that to work on our end. iOS 8's new health app acts as a central hub for all of your personal health data, whether it comes from a connected scale, your Fitbit, a heart rate monitor, or the iPhone's own built in step tracking. It's a more comprehensive look at all of the quantified life statistics you might track these days than other platforms have done and it lets third party apps share their data with it. But without third party apps supplying data, health doesn't do much on its own right now, but it's really going to be a big deal when Apple releases its watch next year. Apple's Safari browser has been upgraded with a new desktop mode and the ability to send links to other apps so you can save a webpage to Evernote without ever leaving Safari. It's a really fast browser and a great mobile experience, but you still can't set a different browser as your default in iOS 8, which is frustrating. Apple's upgraded the virtual keyboard with next word suggestions which appear above the keyboard as you type. They're pretty good, not quite as eerily predictive as SwiftKey, but iOS 8 now lets you install third party keyboards, so if you really want SwiftKey's crazy smart predictions or Swype's useful tracing features, you can just download them from the app store. Android has had this capability for years, but it's definitely a welcome first for iOS. Apps can put widgets right in the notification center, so you can get a prediction from Yahoo Weather or the latest headlines from New York Times Now without ever opening an app. This can either be super useful like Evernotes, which lets you create notes right away, or kinda pointless like Dropbox, but thankfully by default they're disabled and you can pick and choose which widgets you want to display. Third party apps can now talk to each other in more ways than ever, letting you do things like share pictures and send data from one app to another. I can save articles to Pocket or Instapaper right from the New York Times app without ever having to do an annoying copy and paste dance, but like Messages, we found this to be a bit unreliable, at least for now. Photos can now be edited with third party apps right from the main camera roll. It takes more taps to get at the editing tools of an app like Lightly than it really should, but it's still more convenient than having to switch around apps. Again, Android users aren't going to be impressed with these capabilities, but they're entirely new for the iOS world. iOS 8 represents a great leap in connectivity between your iPhone and iPad and your Mac. Apple's calling this continuity. Once OS X Yosemite launches, sometime later this year, you'll be able to answer incoming calls, reply to text messages, and do more right from your desktop. But right now you can actually use your iPad to answer calls made to your iPhone. The new handoff feature lets you start something on one device and pick up where you left off on another, whether that's browsing a webpage, or composing an email, or reading an article in a third party app like Pocket. It makes everything in your life more cohesive and connected, if you're fully bought into Apple's world. But we'll have to wait until later in the year to see the full benefits of it. That's the story with iOS 8. It's not a massive visual overhaul like iOS 7, but Apple did enough things under the hood to make this one of the most significant OS updates ever. iOS 8 is more open, plays nicer with others, and just feels like a much more modern mobile platform than its predecessors. And frankly, that's exactly what Apple needed to do.