Lion, iOS 5, iCloud, & iPhone 4S
Well, it has been a busy month for Apple, to say the least!!! If your reading this article and don’t know why it’s been a busy month…I’m not going to tell you!
After I spent several hours yesterday updating my iPhone 4 to the new iOS 5, gaining access to iCloud, and after a couple of months, or so, of getting used to Lion, I will say this: I’m as big an Apple fan as ever! With the needed upgrades to the iPhone 4, (now called the 4S) iOS 5, and iCloud–iPhone is sure to continue it’s domination over the cell phone industry. I know many were expecting, or hoping for the iPhone 5, but that is Apple. The iPhone 4 is a beautiful product, did it need improvements, or a complete overhaul. I love it when a company has the insight to build on a great product rather then continually trying to reinvent the wheel. If the American car companies, from 1970-1990, would have taken their five best selling cars, and focused all energy on improving only those five cars? Instead of saying, “Let’s try to make a seat for every ass!’ We would have some finely tuned machines.
I haven’t had the opportunity to try one out yet, but judging by my already fantastic iPhone 4, I’m sure the improvements only make it all the sweeter. Siri is borderline creepy cool!! When computers begin to understand what we are saying and can decisively talk back…AI is right around the corner.
My wife and I use our iPhone cameras almost exclusively now over carrying a point & shoot, so the 4S camera is almost enough by itself to make me want to upgrade now!
I’ve been playing around with iOS 5 now for few days and have experienced a couple of bugs, but overall the new notification system, iMessage, and Reminder app have made up for it. The majority of the bugs have been related to converging my MobileMe account with iCloud. It seemed to double up some of my contacts and calendar events, and is confused on user account info. However, once iCloud is ironed out the mobile sync, photo stream, backup, and app, music, and movie stream are going to be a game changer.
For those of you still stuck on Leopard or Snow Leopard–it’s time to take the plunge to Lion, rest assured you’ll have to sooner then later. It took me month, or so, to get used to a few of the differences, but now I’m having a hard time on Snow Leopard. I will say, if you are using a multi-touch trackpad Lion is even more brilliant. The new multi-touch gestures are fantastic when multitasking. I love the new swipe forward and back in Safari, but being a web developer I find myself in Google Chrome and Firefox a lot. Chrome and Firefox are yet to have the same swipe function of Safari.
The are a couple new features I don’t use often:
- Full-screen Apps
- Luanchpad
The new features I use daily:
- Screen sharing
- Multi-touch gestures
- Mission Control
- App store
- Resume
- Versions
- Auto save
Apple’s had a busy month to say the least! I can’t wait to see their next innovative product. Hopefully with Jobs no longer at the helm they can stick to their tradition of quality.