iOS has given us the power to swoop, swipe, and pinch our screens with a single touch to get us what we want, when we want it. iOS has provided us with incredible connectivity to applications and social networks that keep us sharing, growing and learning on a minute-by-minute basis. iOS is what makes the iPhone my favorite phone and the iPad my favorite tablet.
Social Media Leaps Ahead With iOS 5
And now, Apple has announced iOS 5 will be out to the public this fall. I couldn’t be more excited! If social media wasn’t already deeply engrained in your every move, iOS 5 is about to make socializing bigger, better, and easier than ever. Faster, too. With iOS 5, your Apple product (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) integrates your Twitter account information into multiple applications, enabling you to tweet whatever you’d like, from whichever app you’re engaged with (Photo, Safari, Google, Maps).
Remember all those pesty push notifications, interrupting your work and play?
With iOS 5, the pop-ups will be replaced. Instead, notifications will appear subtly in your top banner. Also, with the new Notifications Center you can view all of your notifications in list form.
Notes will now be Reminders, integrated with iCal and Outlook, providing location-based reminders. That means when you’re at the grocery store, the list you wrote yesterday in Reminders will notify you to remember the milk & eggs.
Notifications just got polite, smart, and worth reading - all of the time. From the locked screen, the notifications you care about will now show in list form, providing access to one at a time or all at once. With a slide to the right, you can select to view a single notification and open that app directly from the locked screen.
That same locked screen can open up Photo for you, too. Access your iPhone’s camera directly from the locked screen. Take a photo, edit the image, and post it to Twitter without leaving the Photo app. Easy.
Consider the current route used to share photos with friends:
- Tap 1: open your camera app on your phone
- Tap 2: snap a photo
- Tap 3: save the photo
- Tap 4: select where to send the photo
- Tap 5: get ‘outta’ that app, you want to post this photo on Twitter!
- Tap 6: open your Twitter app
- Tap 7: create message
- Tap 8: select to upload photo
- Tap 9: choose photo
- Tap 10: upload photo
- Tap 11: thumbs hurt. Relax.
Now, consider the iOS 5 route:
- Click 1: take photo from your iPhone’s locked screen
- Click 2: edit photo
- Click 3: share photo
- Click 4: send to Twitter
More integration means fewer clicks. Fewer clicks mean more time. More time means more sharing. My smart phone just got smarter, and could probably even get me a few more friends.
What are you excited about with iOS 5?
