Initial iOS 5 Thoughts

Well the day is finally here, iOS 5 is live and ready to be downloaded.  After being announced back in June, four long months ago, it’s finally available.

My initials reaction to it a little bit of “woopty doo” so this is it?  But now that I’ve really investigated all of the built-in apps, I do notice a bunch of the changes they’ve been talking about.  I haven’t figured out all 200 yet, but I’m getting there.

My biggest advice is to copy and paste the information that pops up when you click to download the software.  Nine times out of ten, I never read any of these information blurbs but this time it has helped me see more of what iOS 5 has to offer.

Here’s what I have discovered so far:

Notifications: Probably the most well known update in iOS but now instead of a box coming across the middle of the screen saying you have a text message, a small banner comes across the top of the screen for about 10 seconds.  It doesn’t affect anything you are doing whether it be Facebook, Twitter or reading an email.  When you are ready, you can go to that specific app or swipe the screen from top to bottom to get to the notification center.  You can decide what you want in your notification center and in what order in the notifications part of the settings.

Twitter: In case I didn’t tweet enough to begin with, Apple has now made it even easier.  You can tweet directly from Camera, Photos, Maps, Safari and YouTube.  When you click on the button on the bottom left corner of a picture, it pulls up the list where you can email, message, assign to contact, etc. and now Tweet has been added.

Camera: Aside from the ease of tweeting pictures, Apple has added more to the camera app.  You can get to the camera directly from the lock screen by double-clicking the home button and clicking the camera.  The volume up button now allows you to take a picture.  You can even make small edits to a picture once you have taken it: crop and rotate, red eye removal and one-tap enhancements.

Mail: Now you can format text in emails: bold, italicize, and style="text-decoration: underline;">underline.  Another addition to typing, which you can do in notes or messaging too, is the dictionary feature.  Once you select a word, a button pops up that allows you to look up the definition.

Maps: Now when you look for directions, the maps app will give you multiple routes.  You can also print out the directions now.

I haven’t had a chance to investigate iCloud yet but these are some of the new features that I have discovered in the few hours I’ve had the update.

Let me know what you guys think!