Saturday, June 16, 2012

iOS 6: New Maps Is Nice But Bunch of New Small Improvements Key

Apple announced a bunch of new features like Maps and Facebook integration.  They got all the attention. Oh, Passbook is nice and it's not getting much love from blogs.  Nor are a bunch of small unhighlighted improvements that taken together shows how Apple's attention to details make iOS and the iPhone and iPad so popular among mobile warriors.

Here are a couple that I like:
  • Geofencing for Find My Friends and Reminders.  Seriously, how awesome is this?!
  • Better privacy features - this will give the user more control than Google or Facebook will ever give its users.
  • Store improvements - as good as the App Store is now, Apple will continues to try to make it even better for app discovery.  The same goes for iTunes.  In fact, Apple is moving the podcasts over to a standalone app.  And when you download/update an app, iOS doesn't take you away from the store.  It has been an annoying "feature" we've had to put up with for years.
  • Different mail signatures - not a big deal for me but it's nice to have if I never need it.
  • When a call comes in, the ability to dismiss the call with a reminder or text is pretty awesome.  
  • Government/Emergency Alerts
  • Better notification controls.  You can control what notifications come in first for e-mails.
Lastly, I have to mention Passbook again.  And I warn you.  I'm gonna want talk about this quite a lot because more than television, it'll be Passbook that could be one of the legacies of Apple like Siri has the potential of becoming.  Passbook is Apple dipping its foot into the mobile payment arena.  With or without NFC capability, Passbook could revolutionize retail and how we pay for goods and services.

Oh, and there's something about emoji improvements that I'm not particularly interested.  But it's here if that's your kind of thing.  

So, there you go.  Worthy iOS 6 improvements that in their own rights could have been mentioned at the WWDC keynote last Monday.  Among those I mentioned above, geofencing and privacy control are my favs.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Info strikes deeply in the mind.Thanks for sharing the blog. Passbook is an passbook iOS 6 app fully integrated into iOS 6 with developer APIs to extend current features to other iOS apps.

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