WWDC 2011: iOS 5 Unveiled and it’s A BEAST

Most will agree that iOS is the most advance and most polished mobile operating system out there (other than the die-hard android nerds who will attempt to tell you otherwise – here’s a tip, just smile and nod when they are ranting, it gives them a sense of empowerment and will ease their insecurities), however it wasn’t flawless and numerous issues needed to be addressed.

I kid you not when I say that when Scott Forstall (Apple’s SVP) came on stage to unveil ten of the 200 NEW FEATURES (yes your eyes are not deceiving you), he went along way to addressing almost all of these issues in a serious way. Continue reading to see the key features unveiled today.

1) NOTIFICATIONS!

Yes finally Apple have listened and completely revamped their notifications getting rid of the annoying, obtrusive push notifications. They have been replaced by a slick notification bar that appears at the top of the screen (screenshot below). The best thing about these is that they don’t interrupt your workflow and you can continue to use the phone.
One of the major complaints was that notifications were poorly organised, with no way to view all your notifications without cycling through all your popups. This is where ‘Notification center’ comes to the rescue. This aggregates all notifications which can be accessed at any point with a swipe down gesture, which is very similar to Android’s notification drawer. However Android’s notification drawer is an absolute mess, making it very difficult to quickly glance at your notifications. Notification center is a much more polished version, in a way only Apple could do.
Finally the lockscreen finally becomes useful. Upto now all iOS users could see on the lockscreen was a clock and your latest push notification. Apple have revamped this too making the lockscreen much more informative. Now you can see all your current notifications as well as a weather and stocks widget, making it the MOST INFORMATIVE of all mobile lockscreens. The lockscreen notifications are also interactive, allowing you to slide them which will open the app. You can also slide voicemail notifications to play them.
Feast your eyes on the image below which nicely summarises the different aspects of the new notification system.

2) WIRELESS ACTIVATION, SYNCING AND UPDATES

Another huge feature was the introduction of a PC-free iOS device. Apple have been huge proponents of the ‘post-PC’ era but the cynics amongst us have said how can an iOS device be ‘Post-PC’ when there is so much dependency on your PC. Well they have just addressed that in a major way. As of iOS 5, devices will be activated wirelessly, and you will no longer be greeted by the ‘connect to iTunes’ screen. Daily syncing will occur over wi-fi and finally we will receive OS updates OTA. They have made this possible by introducing ‘delta updates’ i.e only the new features will be downloaded to the phone as oppose to the entire OS which happened previously. This should also hopefully make updating much quicker.

3) iMessages

The one thing Blackberry users would harp on about was there beloved BlackBerry messenger. Well, say hello to Apple’s answer to BBM – iMessages. Works in a similar way with delivery and read receipts, and you can also see whether the person is typing. They didn’t detail whether it would use a pin system in a similar way to BBM, or whether it will be linked to a phone number/email address as is the case with FaceTime (I suspect the latter). It will work across all iOS devices supported by iOS 5 - iPhones, iPads and iPod touches

4) REMINDERS

Pretty self-explanatory – a to-do list that integrates into the calendar apps. Something I have been waiting for for ages!

5) TWITTER INTEGRATION

This had been doing the rounds prior to the Keynote, and the rumours were spot on. There is a system-wide implementation of Twitter, allowing you to sign into a vast number of apps including safari and photos. Now it’s even easier to tweet photos and web pages.

6) GAME CENTER TWEAKS

This includes recommendations, user avatars and game downloads. They also revealed a crazy stat – there are now 50 MILLION game center users. To put that into perspective, that’s more than XBOX LIVE!

7) SPLIT KEYBOARD

This is an iPad only feature where the keyboard splits allowing you to type with your thumbs much more comfortably

8 ) MAIL CHANGES

Additions to mail include indentations, draggable addresses, rich text formatting, flags and full text searching

9) SAFARI CHANGES

They have also made significant improvements to Safari bringing it more in line with the desktop version. Tabbed browsing is now possible, as well as ‘Reader’. This allows users to remove distracting objects from a webpage, making it more ‘readable’. Reading lists are also present which allows you to save web pages you want to read for later, and is also synced between devices.

10) OTHER STUFF – NEWSSTAND, LOCKSCREEN CAMERA, ON-THE-FLY PHOTO EDITING

The remaining features they highlighted in the keynote included Newsstand. This is similar to iBooks but for newspapers and magazines.
You can now access the camera much quicker, even if your phone is your locked. By holding the up volume button you can now activate the camera app.
Finally you can do simple editing of photos such as red-eye reduction prior to sending out to friends, nothing fancy, just on-the fly stuff.

WHAT DEVICES ARE SUPPORTED AND RELEASE DATE?

It will support all iPads, iPhone 3GS and above, and iPod touch 3rd gen and above. Here’s the bad news it won’t be available to the public until Autumn, which I suspect will coincide with a new iPhone release. If you are enrolled in the developer program then you can get your hands on the beta TODAY!

CONCLUSION
So those were the key features highlighted today, and just a handful of the 200 new features available. It’s a huge update and they have addressed almost all the major issues in iOS 4, and to think I haven’t even discussed the most innovative feature of iOS – iCloud!
As they do EVERY SINGLE year, Apple have left their competitors trailing in their wake, just this year they have gone way out in front.

Image Source: Apple