iOS 5 New Features Round-Up
Apple held it’s WWDC event today, and despite no iPhone 5 news, iOS 5 was unveiled. So in case you missed the event or have one of those things, what are they called, oh yes, a life, here’s a quick recap of all the new features iOS 5 will bring this fall in a convenient easy-to-swallow format. We stare at Steve Jobs, so you don’t have to.
| Notification System | Taking a cue from Android, Apple has reworked notifications. Complete with drop down list, less annoying popup windows and all. Click here for further explanation. |
| NewsStand | Sort of like iBooks but for Magazines and Newspapers. Allows you to purchase them on a subscription basis and have them delivered to your device automatically. |
| Twitter Integration | Twitter now is integrated into the OS itself. You can sign in once in your settings menu and then give specific apps permission to use the twitter account for you to quickly post sites, photos, maps, etc. You can even use Twitter to automatically update certain Twitter users. |
| Safari Reader | A button in Safari that automatically formats a site to just have text and images so it is easier to read on your mobile device. You can also send this new format of the site via email to people without a link (the actual content from the story is in the email body itself). Also these formatted versions are saved in a “Reading List” so you can go back to them easily later. *This worries me for webmasters a little. It means less people coming to their actual sites and no ad views which in turn means less revenue for websites. We’ll see. |
| Safari Tabs | Taking a hint from their desktop browser, Apple has added tabbed browsing into the mobile browser. |
| Reminders | Syncs with iCal and basically reminds you of things you have to do, duh. One cool thing is is can be set to a location and have a “geofence”. So, you can set a reminder to tell you to call someone once you leave work, then when the phone notices you physically left work it’ll pop the reminder. |
| Camera Updates |
Click here for further explanation of the camera. |
| Mail Updates |
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| Built-in Dictionary | Built in dictionary that is usable by all apps in the OS (including third-party apps) |
| New Keyboard | If you hold down on the keyboard with both thumbs it splits. Useful for iPad typing really. |
| PC-Free |
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| Game Center Updates |
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| iMessage | Internet based messaging to allow iOS users (iPhone, iPod, and iPad users) to communicate between devices and even send pictures, videos, and do group messaging as well.
Also has read receipts, real-time typing notifications, and delivery receipts (RIM’s stock just sank…) |
| RELEASE | Developers get it today, customers get it this fall. |
So there you have it. Apple says there are more features as well, but those are the ones they have demoed so far. Hope that saved some of you some time scouring the internet. What do you guys think? Anything you think is amazing, stupid, amazingly stupid?
