Apple iOS 6 review

                  Apple iOS 6 review

Free Apple iOS 6 for everyone

That’s right, the new update is free. When the software is available (some time on 19 September) you’ll be asked to download the latest update, and after you’ve updated your phone the shiny new features will appear.www.eraofyouth.com

Apple iOS 6 is compatible with iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, fourth-generation iPod touch, iPad 2, and the new iPad. If you’ve got any other Apple devices aside from those listed above, you won’t be getting it. By all means read on, but you might be left wanting, and that will only lead you to go and update your phone, your iPod or your iPad. Sorry.

Siri

The concept of Siri hasn’t changed since it was launched on the iPhone 4S last year, however the capabilities have. In the US there’s a stack of new tricks, such as support for baseball, hockey, American football, and soccer. However here in the UK we now get UK business support as well as the ability to ask your phone what the football scores were at the weekend.

But it’s not just about finding out how your favourite team has done. Siri now supports Movie times and restaurants in the UK and US too. Elsewhere you can now bark orders at your phone to launch apps, and if you’ve played with the service before you’ll know that it works.

Siri is available on iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPad (3rd generation), and iPod touch (5th generation) and requires Internet access.

Maps

Deciding that it can do better,  Apple iOS 6 has ditched Google Maps and replaced it with Apple Maps. Now when you go to use the mapping app it will look different. The interface is a lot cleaner, some would say more sparse, and Apple has introduced a new 3D mapping Flyover feature that makes everything look like it’s from the SimCity games.

There are some really nice tricks too. You can now change the 3D viewpoint simply by moving your finger up and down the screen, and for those who like the map to point the way they are looking you can rotate it around your axis without moving the phone – cleverly the place names rotate so you can still read them.

Facebook

Last year we saw Twitter being added at a system-wide level and this year Facebook gets its turn to embed itself in your phone.
If you think that means a far greater experience than the app then you would be wrong. Like Twitter, it amounts to a share button wherever possible to share your photos, web pages, and what you’re thinking, the ability to “Facebook” whenever you fancy via the Notification panel, and linked contacts.

It doesn’t mean the ability to see what your friends are saying or pictures they are posting without opening the app, so in some ways, it isn’t as dynamic or integrated as social networks on other platforms.

Mail

Mail, Apple’s email app, gets a few tweaks here and there as it tries to keep up with the constant barrage of emails you get. Introduced from Mountain Lion is VIPs. These are basically the important people in your life and the ones from whom you don’t want to miss an email.

Select who you want to be a VIP and they get their own Mailbox, and VIP alerts can be set up specifically for them. That’s really handy if you don’t want to miss an email from the boss. Although this feature is similar to the one on OS X, it doesn’t seem possible to sync the two so your VIPs are consistent. A missed opportunity, we feel.

Mail also now gets the ability to quickly drag down to refresh, the ability to set flags on emails, and finally to have a different signature for different accounts if you’ve got more than one email system set up on the phone.

We especially love the fact that Apple has ditched all those stupid warning messages about how your email account can’t connect to the server when you are underground on the Tube.

Safari: iCloud tabs, Offline Reading Lists, and full page browsing

If you use Mountain Lion on your Mac computer then iCloud tab support now automatically syncs your browser tabs across all your iDevices, allowing you to grab any webpage you viewed in the last session. Handy if you’ve been surfing for something on your iPad or Safari on your desktop and want to carry on doing so on the go, or vice versa.

This concept of catching up on stuff you perhaps were reading or should have read elsewhere also plays into the offline reading mode as seen on the desktop version of Safari. Now saving a webpage to your Offline Reading List means you can read it when you don’t have a connection, like on the train or a plane. Offline Reading List is available on iPhone 4 or later and iPad 2 or later.

Panorama mode

Amazingly Apple hasn’t until now offered an in-built panorama mode, instead letting developers create apps to fill the iPhone’s shortcomings. That’s now been rectified and you get panorama mode in iOS 6 that will let you snap panoramas up to 240 degrees.

The feature works in a similar way to Sony’s Sweep Panorama and lets you sweep the iPhone across the vista in front of you capturing it as you move the camera. It’s clever stuff and really easy to use with the ability to quickly change the direction you are going, left to right, or right to left. Shooting with the feature on an iPhone 5, the only problem we’ve found is that with such a wide panorama you can find yourself going beyond the scene you are trying to capture. Thankfully, you can stop the capture at any point. Panorama mode isn’t available on the iPad but is available on the iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, and iPod touch (5th generation).

Shared photo streams

Once you’ve snapped all these glorious pictures you can then share them with other iPhone, iPad, iPod, Apple TV, or iPhoto users direct from the Photo Stream feature in the Photo gallery on your device. If the people you’re sharing with aren’t using an Apple device, they can view your photos on the web.

It’s really clever and if you’ve got Grannies constantly badgering you for photos of the kids, as long as you remember not to put any of you fooling around on a Saturday night, this is going to be the best thing ever.

Privacy

With more and more apps vying for your data, whether it is your contacts, calendar, or location, giving out all that precious data willy nilly probably isn’t the smartest move. Apple have tightened up control of which app sees what details and added a new privacy section within iOS 6 to tell you tell apps to politely “bugger off” if you aren’t too keen on sharing certain things with them.

It’s all broken down into easy to see categories such as which apps want details on your photos, or your calendars, or your location, and managing it is very easy.

FaceTime

FaceTime has also finally been enabled over 3G as well as, of course, 4G, liberating it from the clutches of Wi-Fi and making it a genuinely useful feature on both iPad and iPhone. That’s great, but it will soon rack up unless you’ve got a data plan to cope.

In the UK Vodafone has said that existing pay monthly iPhone 4 and 4S customers on price plans of more than £40 a month already have VoIP included and anyone can move to Vodafone Red plans without extending their commitment provided they pay the same or more each month. However those paying less than £40 will have to buy additional data (£10 per month for 2GB) to access Voice over IP. Other operators are likely to follow suit.

Apps, and other bits and bobs

As we’ve already said there are more than 200 changes in iOS 6, and most are under the hood. One we have noticed that will help find those new apps you’ve downloaded is a banner that goes over new apps to say they are new. It’s a nice touch.

Verdict

There are lots of new features in iOS 6. Some will massively improve the way you use the phone, others won’t make a blind bit of difference. With more than 200 new elements and features that’s always going to be the case.

While iOS goes from strength to strength there is nothing here that really breaks the mould. Apple is playing it safe, perhaps overly so, and while you’ll find that the software works and works well, if there were elements of iOS 5 you didn’t like, the chances are that you won’t like them here either.

iOS 6 is a very in and out experience. That works to a point, but when you start to look at the OS compared to features being shown on Windows Phone, and some of the elements being touted for BlackBerry BB10, you wonder how long Apple can keep at what is, in reality, the same experience as the last 6 years.

For many that’s not a problem. The OS is very easy to use – children can master it – but we really were hoping for a more “connected experience” where apps talk to each other, contacts are more interwined with the interface and notifications are more than just a number count on a square grid of icons.

All that said, the update is free, there will be some treats in there that you’ll enjoy, and in reality the bits you don’t like are easy enough to ignore.