Apple announced iOS 6 today, showcasing what they consider to be the most exciting features of the new mobile OS. In order to take advantage of the iPhone 5′s greater height, iOS 6 has 5 rows of apps, plus 4 shortcuts at the bottom.
Navigation
The new non-Google navigation features turn-by-turn navigation, routing, directions from Siri, zooming in, zooming out, 3D buildings, no interuption of navigation, satellite imagery. These are not terribly exciting features, and it feels like they’re emphasizing that they haven’t lost any features in the change away from Google.
Notification Center
Notification center can now tap to tweet or post to facebook.
Safari
Safari now has tab sync/sharing from desktop to phone, much like Google Chrome can do.
Mail Enhancements
iOS mail gets some enhancements that should sound familiar to Gmail users. The first feature talked about was VIP contact marking, which automatically routes mail from VIP contacts to a separate inbox. You can also flag messages for followup.
Passbook
Movie tickets, coupons, movie tickets.
Delta is onboard, and Starwood Hotels.
There’s still no indication of support for credit or debit cards, though.
Shared Photo Stream
With “just a few taps” you can push out photos to be shared. People you share with get a notification and poof, your photo is on their phone.
Siri
Siri can access sportsball stats and has access to a lot more movie databases, including Rotten Tomatoes. The feature I’m most interested in is the ability to launch apps by voice. You can also post updates to Facebook by voice.
Phone App
There are some enhancements to the phone app, too. You can send an SMS or iMessage back if you get a call but can’t take it right away. You can also make FaceTime calls over cellular networks.
So that was it for iOS 6. Are you excited by any of these announced features? Call me jaded, but I was hoping for more. There are some good features here, don’t get me wrong, but nothing that’s really knocking my socks off. Agree? Disagree? Let us know in the comments!
My socks are still on.
Nothing like I expected. Just the same stuff upgraded a little to make us iPhone lovers depressed.
I didn’t see any dates for anything. Did I miss them?
They were a bit light on dates in the announcement, but the ones they gave came later than the publication of this story. iOS 6 is due to release on Sept. 19th.
Yep, bummer. I guess Apples leave the (software-) innovation to other companies now… if just someone out there would only do it or even attempt to do new things right – but that doesn’t seem to happen either. Sad times for techies at the moment – just nothing to be excited about for quite a while already.
Apple likes to call what they do innovative, but it never has been, software or hardware. They specialize in sitting back and waiting for good ideas to appear for the first time, but in forms that don’t quite get it right. Then they refine the idea to a ridiculous degree and make everyone see how awesome it really is.
Socks magically appeared on my feet, and now I cannot get them off!