My favorite iOS 8 features for older iPhones

The new iPhone 6 is about to be showing up at stores and at the doorstep of those who ordered early but – since Wednesday Sept. 17 – the new iOS 8 operating system for all iPhone sold after 2010 has been available for a free download. Here are three three of my favorite things this new operating system does for Apple fans.

You don’t need the new iPhone 6 to take advantage of iOS 8 and things like the new camera app. Besides making it easy to find, edit and organize your photos, there’s a new time lapse camera mode feature to give you effects that speed up video and condense things captured over a long period of time to just a few seconds.

The Messaging app is beefed up. You can quickly add add voice clips, videos and when someone asks “where are you?”…you can instantly send them a map of your exact whereabouts that you can share for an hour, all day or indefinitely.

And it’s about time Apple made its keyboard better. Now, as with Andrud phones, you can get more accurate predictive texting or the very fast Swype feature that inputs words by “swyping” your finger across the screen to touch the individual keys.

You don’t need the new iPhone 6 to take advantage of this new operating system. The features I just showed you will work fine on older models, at least those after 2010. But make no mistake, the operating system’s full features are meant for the iPhone 6.