iOS 5 review

Well we are very close to the iPhone 5 and iOS 5 release coming this week and the betas of iOS 5 done I think it is time for a full review of iOS 5 so everyone can know what to expect for Tuesday or whenever the public release is. iOS 5 I’d the best iOS yet and for the full overview hit the break! Eventually I will have a video up for everyone!

Notifications

This was a must for iOS 5. Something that has always plagued iOS is the notifications. They would always pop up stop what you are doing and you would sometimes forget you had one or never be able to check what app they would come from. Not anymore. Well of course unless you want that. Notifications are simple. A little bar will now come up on the screen when you get a notification and your app will of course still be running. No more pressing close or view. Of course if you press view then you will be able to open the app with the notification. Notification center is amazing and in fact it is our next topic.

Notification Center

Notification center is something great and it is easily one of the most important featured other than new notifications in iOS 5. Notification center displays all the things you need to know right then and there. It displays your calendar, the weather for your local area, and stocks for widgets, it will even show unread mail if you tell it to. There is all your unread notifications is one place where you can clear them all or 1 by 1. It is easy to access just a simple slide down of the menu bar and don’t worry when you are using a game or viewing a photo there will be a little bar so notification center won’t pop up. If you slide down though it will still appear so might want to be careful about that! Notification center would be a great place to host widgets in a near update or even iOS 6 which is in a post I made a while ago about what I thought apple should do with notification center which you can see here. Overall notification center is basically one of the best things in iOS 5.

iMessage

This makes it so if you have a BlackBerry it is time to ditch it. iMessage is a better approach to the same operating system communication. It is simple to use too all you need to do if you have an iPhone your automatically done. For your iPod and iPad you set it up much like FaceTime. Go into settings iMessage and enter your Apple ID and your done. Your messages will be sent throu each device if you have all the same account set up on each device so when you are messaging someone on your iPhone and you want to take it to iPad you can. But be warned you can not send SMS using your iPad without a jailbreak tweak with a 3G iPad. Sad I know. This is a great service and it will eventually be coming to iChat as well as proof I stated here. I think a lot of people will love this service and it might take away from blackberry because the only real reason to have a blackberry is BBM and with apples take on it and iMessage being so easy I can see some people switching.
Reminders

I have not seen myself using reminders really at all which is somewhat surprising for a high school student with all my assignments. Honestly it makes great sense. You set a thing you have to do and it will remind you. It will even use your location if you tell it to so when you enter or leave a place it will remind you no matter what the time you set it to do is. In my experience though you cannot set locations in the App from the iPad. Might wanna fix that Apple.
iCloud

This is what is the biggest feature and most important in my case for iOS 5. By now you have all probably researched iCloud and you know what it does. Basically iCloud is a server. It will upload all your documents and back up your whole iDevice if you tell it too. Also you can get a me.com email so your email will be pushed throughout your devices. It will sync your photos amount your iDevices and your mac. Also your bookmarks and reminders. This is better than mobile me all though in the transition some mobile me things will no longer be available such as iWeb after the first year of iCloud. It is amazing and easy and when you are able to get our hands on it with your mac and iDevices you will love it I promise.
iPad 2 mirroring with an Apple TV

For teachers and business people who have an Apple TV in the classroom or wherever you have meetings this will be great for you. All you need is iOS 5 in both your Apple TV and iPad 2 and you are good to go. All you need to do after that is double click the home button and slide to the right and you will see the airplay and then simply select your Apple TV and switch the mirroring switch on and your done! It doesn’t have as great quality as the HDMI plug but it gives you freedom!

Twitter INTEGRATION

I thought this would be something a lot better than it is. For some people I can see how this would be somewhat useful. Twitter integration allows you to share web pages and photos directly from the app but that’s not something I really wanted. It is a great start but I would love to see it so I can tweet anywhere and check the newest tweets from notification center. Maybe in a future update! It is a great start and will be improved over time!

Video:

Please check back soon! Will be uploaded later!

Sum up

iOS 5 is the best mobile operating system I have ever used and it is only going to get better! You will enjoy all the new features.