Apple CEO Tim Cook Introduces IOS 8
Apple CEO Tim Cook introduces the IOS 8 operating system during his keynote address at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, California Reuters/Robert Galbraith

Apple has officially announced that the public release of iOS 8 will begin on Sept 17. Currently, the iOS 8 Gold Master (GM) edition has been made available to the developers. It is the last iOS 8 iteration aimed towards the developers after which the iOS 8 will be officially released to the public on Sept 17.

The initial beta versions of iOS 8 had lots of bugs and issues. However, the developers at Apple have fixed most of the bugs in the recently released betas. Now, the iOS 8 is almost ready for public use.

The iOS 8 GM is available over-the-air and can be accessed through the iOS Developer Center. It can be downloaded and installed through iTunes. All the iPhone models that have arrived after the iPhone 4 can support the new iOS 8.

Apart from iPhone models, the 5th gen iPod Touch users can install the iOS 8 update on their devices. As far as iPads are concerned, except for the original iPad, all the iPads that arrived after it can be updated with iOS 8. The existing iPad Mini tablets can also receive the iOS 8 update.

The new iOS 8 comes preloaded on the recently announced 4.7-inch iPhone 6 and the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus. Also, the iProducts that are going to release in the near future will also come preloaded with the iOS 8.

Currently, most of the recent iDevices are running on iOS 7. However, only those devices that are currently running on iOS 7.1.2 can be updated to iOS 8. If you do not have iOS 7.1.2, you need to update your device with this build and then only you can install the iOS 8 on your device.

You can try the iOS 8 GM before the final public edition is released. However, since it is not the final version, it may have few issues. You can easily roll back to iOS 7 if you do not want to use the iOS 8 GM version.

iOS 8 resembles the iOS 7 in terms of looks but it is loaded with plenty of new features. Many of the inbuilt features like Siri, Spotlight, Safari and Messages have been improved. This link will help you understand why you should upgrade to iOS 8 from iOS 7.