As an iOS Developer and a keen interest in all geeky stuff, I downloaded the beta version of iOS 5 for my iPhone and iPad after it’s release at Apple’s WWDC event on Monday. For those of you who didn’t understand that last sentence, iOS 5 is the latest update for your iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch device. After a few days of playing around with it, much to my girlfriend’s annoyance, I thought I’d write about my experiences.
First off, it’s not a finished product, so I have experienced a few bugs and crashes. But on the whole, they’ve added quite a few nice new features. You can read all about them on Apple’s site. Here’s just a few I really liked:
- iCloud integration
- Notification Center
- iMessages
- Reminders
- Twitter integration
iCloud integration
For the last 3 years I’ve been a Mobile Me member. This is a service from Apple which keeps all your contacts, calendars and bookmarks in sync with all your devices (including your Mac/PC). It also kept in sync your Mac desktop machines in sync with each other too. iCloud integration is replacing this, for FREE! But not only does iCloud sync your contacts and calendars, it also allows you to backup your device to it. What does this mean? Well, instead of having to plug your iPhone into your Mac/PC and sync/backup it up your iPhone will automatically do it for you to iCloud. This means if you lose your phone or get a new one, you enter in your Apple ID and password into your new device and restore everything to it – Contacts, Calendar, settings… everything.
Notification Center
Currently, if you receive a notification on your iDevice you get a pop up alert which stops you doing anything until you press a button to remove it. And on the lock screen if you receive a message, missed call etc. they are all listed in a box. Once you unlock your device there’s no way of finding out what those messages were. This whole idea of alerts has been one of iOS’s biggest criticisms compared to say the Android platform.
Apple has now fixed this problem with what’s called Notification Center. Instead of getting a pop up for an alert, you get a small bar across the top of your screen telling you of the alert, which most importantly doesn’t stop you doing whatever it is you’re doing. Then, if you want to see a list of all your notifications or alerts, simple swipe from top to bottom on your screen and the notification center slides down showing you all of your alerts.
iMessages
Simply put – BlackBerry Messenger for iOS. You can now send messages, for free, including pictures and videos, to other iOS devices. And best of all, it’s so so simple to use, you probably won’t even know you’re using it instead of sending a normal SMS or MMS messages. All you need to do is open up your Messages App, enter someone’s phone number of e-mail address in the To field. Your iPhone will then ask Apple if this number or e-mail address can be used for iMessages. If it can, then it sends it with iMessage, if not it sends it as normal (unless you’re on a Wi-Fi only iPad or iPod Touch). I think this is going to really take off and will be another nail in the coffin for BlackBerry and its owning company, RIM.
Reminders
Reminders are like a powerful To-Do list. You can set a reminder as part of a list (e.g. a shopping list) or to alert you at some specific time. But what’s really neat is you can get it to alert you when you arrive or leave a particular location. Let’s say you want to be reminded to call the wife when you leave work, but don’t know what time you’re leaving. All you do is create a new reminder and set it to alert you when you leave the office. What is does is create a ‘geo-fence’ around your office. When you pass through this fence your iPhone will alert you.
I’m not a really a user of Twitter. I’m more of a Facebook person myself. But for all those keen tweeters out there, Twitter is built into iOS allowing you to tweet from anywhere be it a link to a web page or a picture you’ve just taken.
There are many other new features but I just thought I’d write about the ones that have impressed me the most. When Apple release this in ‘The Fall’ (that’s American for Autumn) this is going to be a big hit. Especially now they are pushing the whole cloud concept to the ‘normal’ user. Once again, Apple leaves the other mobile platforms for dust.
