The New iOS5
In case you haven’t heard, Apple has released iOS5 Beta to developers. At the risk of over-simplifying for pastor-geek-friends, let me explain for those that might not be a geeky.
iOS is Apple’s operating system for the iPhone, iPad etc.. iOS5 is their latest rendition of said software. Software in general usually goes through an “Alpha” stage that is mostly “in-house”, then is released as “Beta” to a select few to work out the final kinks, finally it is released to the public. iOS5 public release is expected around September.
Now for the good stuff! What’s new in iOS5? For you Andriod users, you might not be too impressed because you have seen some of this stuff before: actually quite a while before it has shown up on iOS5. However for the “I have always and only owned Apple” folks – these are great additions to the Apple operating system.
One of the “biggies” in my opinion is the Notification Center: Finally you can get notifications for new email, texts, friend requests, and a lot of other things. Again, Android users will be familiar with just swiping down from the top of any screen to enter Notification Center. New notifications appear briefly at the top of the screen, without interrupting you. Even the lock screen displays notifications! I love the way the little notification cube rotates through the information.
iMessage: You need another iOS5 user to make this work. Of course, after public release, every iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch user will have this capability. iMessage allows you to send unlimited text messages over WiFi and 3G! You can send not only text, but photos, videos, location, and even contacts with iMessage. It even allows for group messaging. (I need someone on iOS5 to help me test this out.)
Newsstand: If you are familiar with iBooks then you will have no problem with Newsstand. It is iBooks for your news.
Reminders: The older you get – the more you need to jot things down. (Just sayin’). Prior to this year, I had not been to a Sr, Pastor’s Conference in a few years and I was amazed at how much older you guys looked (Smiley face here). What makes Reminders cool is that it is location based. That means when you need milk, and you drive by a grocery store, your device will remind you! How cool is that?
Twitter: Rumor has it that Apple and Facebook couldn’t come to terms so Apple turned to Twitter for their stab as social media. Whether that is true or not, Twitter is a nice addition to iOS5. Once you sign into your Twitter account in Settings, you can tweet directly from Safari, Photos, Camera, YouTube, or Maps. You can even add your location!
Camera: Once again, this should have been done a long time ago. You can now shoot a picture right from the lock screen instead of losing the moment while clicking through menus. You now have gridlines, pinch-to-zoom, single-tap focus and you can also snap a picture from the volume-up button. If you have Photo Stream enabled in iCloud – your pics will be synched with all your other idevices.
Photos: Now you can crop, rotate, enhance, remove red-eye and even organize your photos in albums without leaving the Photos app. And if you’re using iCloud every idevice you use will have the same photos.
Safari: Can we say, “Tabbed browsing?” I have to admit that I am not a fan of Safari, but the addition of tabbed browsing makes it a lot better.
Mail: You can now format your text using bold, italic, or underlined fonts and even create indents. Drag to rearrange names in address fields and even flag important messages. Mailbox folders can be added or deleted on the fly and you can now search in the body of messages. Nice!
Calendar: Add, rename, and delete calendars directly from your device. And view event attachments without leaving the Calendar app. I really like the addition of Month view on the iPad.
WiFi Sync: This is a very cool feature! Wirelessly sync your iOS device to your Mac or PC over a shared Wi-Fi connection. Every time you connect your iOS device to a power source (say, overnight for charging), it automatically syncs and backs up any new content to iTunes. So you always have your movies, TV shows, home videos, and photo albums everywhere you want them.
Multitasking Gestures: There are several gestures built into iOS5 but the one I like the most is using all 5 fingers (can you really call a thumb a finger), all five digits to bring you back to the Home page.
AirPlay Mirroring (iPad2 ONLY): Simply put – whatever is on your iPad is on your big screen.
