Opinions on Ios5

FetchTheGin

So to the people who are lucky enough(heh) to have Ios5 installed without complication, what are your opinions?

After about 2 hours playing around, I found the only difference was that my IP4 was a bit faster than normal.

naasrd

Sort of sorry I rushed into it and lost my jailbreak. None of my contacts have updated so imessage isn't happening for me.

Tom Dunne

Haven't really had a chance to play with it properly, but it doesn't look a whole lot different.

Which in fairness is probably a good thing.

coolegrain

i like the features like notifications and camera features.

but am having issues with icloud on ipad2 (fine on iphone4) when it cannot connect to it.
(on the ipad though when i turn on icloud (through settings) it says "icloud backup failed" "there was a problem enabling icloud backup")

and on the ipad2 on the new "find my friends" app it has my sons name listed as me and no option anywhere to change it, i've checked my apple i.d. is ok.

i'm concerned a little, out of ignorance though, about this "newstand" app...how much control has an installed paper/mag got to your itunes payments...i am looking at the discriptions of some of the mags you can add and it sound like by just downloading the app you are subscribing to it...probably wrong on that though.

i havent got my head around the "home sharing" feature yet...i presumed i could easily send a song stored on my iphone4 to the ipad2, seemingly i can't

and..on "photo stream" it seems there is no option for deleting photos on it

Sad Professor

coolegrain wrote: »

i'm concerned a little, out of ignorance though, about this "newstand" app...how much control has an installed paper/mag got to your itunes payments...i am looking at the discriptions of some of the mags you can add and it sound like by just downloading the app you are subscribing to it...probably wrong on that though.

Subscriptions come from your Apple ID/iTunes payment method, yes. You have to subscribe within the app. Download the Guardian one (which is free for a couple of months) and you'll see what I mean. Most of the apps themselves seem to be free.

i havent got my head around the "home sharing" feature yet...i presumed i could easily send a song stored on my iphone4 to the ipad2, seemingly i can't

It doesn't work like that. Home Sharing is for streaming the contents of your iTunes library to other devices/computers. See here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3819

and..on "photo stream" it seems there is no option for deleting photos on it

You can reset your Photostream using the iCloud website. But you shouldn't do so. Anything in Photostream will be automatically deleted after 30 days or 1000 photos, whichever comes first. If you want the photo, move it to an album.

biko

I like it. It actually feels faster than 4.3.5 I previously had on my 3gs.
Also now I can use the Find my phone feature.

waynegalway

Overall, I like it. Some of the changes from iOS 4 are subtle, for example the shortcuts in the email and messaging keyboard. A few other things I like are the swipe to go from camera to photos and back again, iMessage (tried it with mt iPad earlier and it works really well), the split keyboard on the iPad version, and of course the Notification Centre.

The reminders app is very handy too, and when it's set up to work with iCloud all the reminders get sync'd across the devices and on the iCloud website. I use Keynote a lot on my iPad and the way it works with iCloud is very handy.

I thought the locations reminders would work better than they do: it's not that they don't work, it's just that to set up a location you have to save it as a contact, and when you want to set a location for a reminder you then choose it from the contacts list. A bit time consuming to begin with, but probably good for locations you're going to use over and over again.

Another subtle change that I like is being able to set up custom vibrations for different contacts. Very handy if you're in a meeting and the phone goes off in your pocket: no need to take it out to decide whether to take the call or not.

Something that should work well but has a shortcoming: the new way Photos can be used to set up albums directly on the device (instead of the old way of having to do it through iPhoto and iTunes). I like this feature a lot, but when you move a photo from the Camera Roll into an album, it still remains in the camera roll as well.....it's not a "move" it's more of a "copy" function. I'd prefer if the original came out of the camera roll.

It's the syncing to the iCloud feature that has really impressed me so far: along with iMessage and Notification Centre these are the 3 big advances in iOS5 as far as I am concerned.

coolegrain

thanks for the reply.

also...in the notifications (on an iphone4) it doesnt save when you manually arrange them, well not for me anyway...i was putting stocks at the top above weather but it would revert back to its own order itself

Danbo!

I like it. It seems a lot of people are unhappy because of the tedious update process, but once you're done and if everything restored its actually one of the best updates yet.

iPhone 3GS
Much, much faster. The fact they're keeping it for sale obviously means they wanted the update to work well, and it does. Everything is snappier and it's made me rethink upgrading to a 4s. Notifications are excellent, I've been getting texts all the day and the way they appear at the top of the screen is great, same with mail, etc..

iPad 1
Again, faster. The app store was dog slow on 4.3.5, it's actually usable again. Split keyboard is nice, although will take a little getting used to. iMessage is handy to have on all devices. Newsstand doesn't interest me too much, it's just a fancy folder really, and I use pulse or flipboard for news anyway, though I can see myself subscribing to a magazine or two.

iPod/music app
The new (old) music icon in place of the iPod icon is a terrible decision. Looks like a first gen iPod touch.

Safari
Wow, huge, huge improvement. Tabbed browsing is instant, and no more page reloads between switching. Nice when you're replying to a post here and go off to get links on another page, no need to re write your post. The board beta skin works now and the top bar stays in position as you scroll. Loading large pages is much faster, example being you laugh you lose or internt vids thread on cool vids n pics n links. Scrolling through there is no checkerboard, it just loads.

iCloud.
So far so good, buying music on either device is no longer a pain in the hole. All bookmarks photos and contacts synced.

Syncing
Haven't tried wireless syncing yet, but nice that you can now use the phone as it syncs and calls won't interrupt it.

FetchTheGin

I must be the only one that has seen no difference in Safari.

Bigcheeze

The most noticeable change for me is if you use email a lot for work, there's a big difference in seeing a brief preview of the mail without having to go into the Mail app every few minutes.

Bigcheeze

FetchTheGin wrote: »

I must be the only one that has seen no difference in Safari.

Most noticeable on the ipad due to tabbed browsing. Not much difference on the phone apart from the "reader" function which is handy.

faceman

I voted meh. Heres what stands out:

iMessage
This is great and replaces the need to have WhatsApp etc

Notifications
Buggy at first, took a few resets and turning notifications off and back on to fix. However its ok. Notifications overall seem to be more reliable now which is good.

Reminders
Welcome to the nineties Apple! However location based reminders is useful.

Safari
Found a bug in Safari when you use private browsing.

Camera
oooh using the volume button as the take photo button. Wow ground breaking innovation there. Badly needed too.

Twitter
Twitter notifications are great, my favourite feature

Newsstand
Why why why cant Newsstand be filed in a folder? I will never use it!

Video App / Music App
This is a bit stupid IMO, having 1 app (iPod) to open both was far more efficient.

Accessibility - new features
Although I dont use these myself, friends do and find the new features great. One chap wears a hearing aid and finds the new setting fantastic. There is also an option to have the LED flash for alerts too.

Shortcuts
Little known new feature. Its in Keyboard. You can define shortcut abbreviations for phrases etc.

iCloud
On my ipad 2, it wont connect. Works fine on iPhone 4.

Tabbed Browsing (iPad 2)
finally, yay!

Mail - "Mark as Read"
Finally you can do this to bulk email! (welcome to the nineties again!)

Dades

Haven't had time to test all the random features as have been out and about all day... however it gave me a great opportunity to rate the notifications feature - love it!

Keeping tabs of two emails (organising football!), facebook (Estonia - yaay!), iMessage/texts, reminders, and a few Whatsapps from the missis - it's really, really useful when you want to see at a glance what you need to deal with.

Will check out iCloud and the rest when I have some time another day.

[Also, Vodafone texted me to tell me I'm eligible for an upgrade to a 4S. I think I'll see my contract expire in the Spring, thanks!]

murpho999

faceman wrote: »

I voted meh. Heres what stands out:

iMessage
This is great and replaces the need to have WhatsApp etc

Notifications
Buggy at first, took a few resets and turning notifications off and back on to fix. However its ok. Notifications overall seem to be more reliable now which is good.

Reminders
Welcome to the nineties Apple! However location based reminders is useful.

Safari
Found a bug in Safari when you use private browsing.

Camera
oooh using the volume button as the take photo button. Wow ground breaking innovation there. Badly needed too.

Twitter
Twitter notifications are great, my favourite feature

Newsstand
Why why why cant Newsstand be filed in a folder? I will never use it!

Video App / Music App
This is a bit stupid IMO, having 1 app (iPod) to open both was far more efficient.

Accessibility - new features
Although I dont use these myself, friends do and find the new features great. One chap wears a hearing aid and finds the new setting fantastic. There is also an option to have the LED flash for alerts too.

Shortcuts
Little known new feature. Its in Keyboard. You can define shortcut abbreviations for phrases etc.

iCloud
On my ipad 2, it wont connect. Works fine on iPhone 4.

Tabbed Browsing (iPad 2)
finally, yay!

Mail - "Mark as Read"
Finally you can do this to bulk email! (welcome to the nineties again!)

I don't understand why you say 'meh' when you find a lot of the upgrades were badly needed?

Regardless if they were behind or not, surely that makes it a good upgrade?

iMax

Still working through it all. I like the reminders app but dislike newsstand & in particular the inability to remove it.

I think I've found a bug in icloud though. The calendar is eight hours behind.

I kind of noticed it earlier, but wasn't sure what was wrong & I'm just after going back in & it's obviously on pacific time (& none of my devices are)

Sad Professor

Newstand is actually pretty cool imo. There's loads of stuff on there now. I know publishers pissed and moaned about it, but having all subscriptions go through Apple is far superior to what it was like before. I'm much more likely to consider subscribing to newspapers/magazines now that I can easily cancel them without having to jump through the various hoops that publishers set for you.

cococoady

Anyone else notice the battery life is crap on the update. And I've actually used the phone less today than what I usually do

Luckycharms_74

With regards to Newsstand. When I log in to the Newsstand store it shows a lot of publications are free like NY Times, etc. I assume when you download the publication you get charged when you subscribe to a particular edition ??

Sad Professor

Luckycharms_74 wrote: »

With regards to Newsstand. When I log in to the Newsstand store it shows a lot of publications are free like NY Times, etc. I assume when you download the publication you get charged when you subscribe to a particular edition ??

Yeah, subscriptions are signed up to in-app. How much, how long, etc, varies depending on the publication. The Guardian is free for a couple of months.

ElBarco

Quick question - on the lockscreen weather app I'm seeing the current weather for the area I'm in but on some reviews I've looked at it seems the 5 day forecast is shown. Am I missing something as I can't figure out how to get it to display like that?

Not having it is killing my small talk ability.

Sad Professor

ElBarco wrote: »

Quick question - on the lockscreen weather app I'm seeing the current weather for the area I'm in but on some reviews I've looked at it seems the 5 day forecast is shown. Am I missing something as I can't figure out how to get it to display like that?

Swipe across.

ElBarco

Sad Professor wrote: »

Swipe across.

You utter, utter genius.

efb

iMessage rocks!

kingshankly

ElBarco wrote: »

Quick question - on the lockscreen weather app I'm seeing the current weather for the area I'm in but on some reviews I've looked at it seems the 5 day forecast is shown. Am I missing something as I can't figure out how to get it to display like that?

Not having it is killing my small talk ability.

how do ya get this up

Basq

Not had it updated long on my 3GS (an hour or so).. feels a little more laggy than 4.3.4 methinks. Particular areas of lag seem to be in iMessages where there's quite a long conversation.

I like Notifications although it did seem to be fussy enough in predicting the downward swipe (at least for me). Just noticed it brought in a second copy of all my calendar entries! :mad:

Like the ability to access the camera from lock screen, although my case makes accessing the volume buttons not quite as easy as tapping the screen.

I did notice that the areas that were mainly concerning me with lag sped up considerably once my restore of apps was finished.

Will need time to test iMessages as WhatsApp (etc) is not something I was too familiar with.

Have it jailbreaked too - main reason for JB-ing is SBSettings (working flawlessly thank feck) and iScheduler for timing aeroplane mode (not working! ).

As I've said elsewhere, am leaving my iPad til the untethered JB is available as couldn't live without XBMC / IceFilms on that.

I'd giving it a preliminary 7 / 10 til I investigate further.

Donnelly117

my i message works on my iphone but not on my ipad, it says my contacts are not registered with iMessage when i know for a fact they are. does imessage work on a wifi ipad?

coco_lola

To be honest the only things I'm enjoying right now are the notification centre and custom vibrations. I have free texts to everyone so imessage makes no difference (but on a general scale I can see it is great), but I'm kind of sorry I updated and lost my jailbreak...I liked my Android Lock so no one could get into my phone, as opposed to passwords

Basq

People are aware they can still do a tethered jailbreak, right?

Fat_Fingers

Basq wrote: »

People are aware they can still do a tethered jailbreak, right?

thanks didnt know that.
But personally i wont be updating my 3Gs, friend updated his and he said his battery is now rubbish...

keane2097

Fat_Fingers wrote: »

thanks didnt know that.
But personally i wont be updating my 3Gs, friend updated his and he said his battery is now rubbish...

That'll be the notifications - just turn them off for non-essentials and it'll help a lot.

FWIW, updating my 3GS has been a great success so far.

The Mad Hatter

So far I'm really liking it. Don't have a compatible phone, but really liking it on my iPad. It's an incremental update, but brings some features I was sorely needing. Notifications are much neater and easier to manage now, and I will probably wind up spending money on Newsstand, especially when it goes properly international. I want my Irish Times! Also, it's an interface niggle I had, but I'm glad you can now swipe to turn pages in the daily calendar. iMessage is brilliant, and will hopefully be another nail in the coffin of SMS, and plugging in my iPad to charge last night and seeing the words "Preparing sync" was a rather nice treat.

My only gripe is with the Music app, which is appalling. It's difficult to navigate, buggy and puts a garish store button right next to your thumb. It's also impossible now to edit the categories, so I'm stuck with Playlists, Songs, Artists and Albums. That's a pretty big pain in the ass when I mainly use the app for podcasts and audiobooks.

But for audiobook listeners it gets worse - they have totally borked the interface for this: the slider bar no longer has variable-speed scrubbing, and they've gotten rid of the "back 30 seconds" button, which means if you're trying to get back three minutes in an eight-hour long track, you may as well just give up. On top of that, chapter titles can no longer be viewed or selected (though they can be skipped to with the navigation buttons), and if a book is in several parts, it doesn't continue directly from each part to the next.

It's almost like, in taking a step forward with everything else, they felt compelled to take a massive step backwards with the music app. What a shame.

loinnsigh

Sad Professor wrote: »

Yeah, subscriptions are signed up to in-app. How much, how long, etc, varies depending on the publication. The Guardian is free for a couple of months.

Good recommendation re The Guardian, cheers - very nice on iPad

Sad Professor

The Mad Hatter wrote: »

and I will probably wind up spending money on Newsstand, especially when it goes properly international. I want my Irish Times!

There's already an Irish Times "epaper" app, but it's crap. I'm also pretty sure it's in breach of current App Store rules as it links to an outside site for setting up a subscription. I'm surprised Apple haven't pulled it already.

The Mad Hatter

Sad Professor wrote: »

There's already an Irish Times "epaper" app, but it's crap. I'm also pretty sure it's in breach of current App Store rules as it links to an outside site for setting up a subscription. I'm surprised Apple haven't pulled it already.

Yep, I have it, but it's easier to just read the site

fattestman

How do I enable the "quick access" camera option, that lets you start the camera app from the lockscreen? I've update my iPhone4 by it ain't there.

Sad Professor

fattestman wrote: »

How do I enable the "quick access" camera option, that lets you start the camera app from the lockscreen? I've update my iPhone4 by it ain't there.

Double press the home button on the lock screen.

fattestman

Sad Professor wrote: »

Double press the home button on the lock screen.

Ah sure that's super! Thanks.

Now, I hope you don't mind if I ask you about iMessage, like...am...how does that work? If I have an iPhone running iOS5 and my mate has an iPhone running iOS5, does the iMessage service automatically kick in and the message send through that rather than as a text?

Wolflikeme

I'm surprised by the amount of people who 'liked it'.

I like it, but I went for 'meh'. I mean, I liked the previous i OS too, this is hardly the big deal we were all expecting. There are some nice new touches, but that's it - and nothing we haven't seen before on other phones (apart from the icloud integration).

Wolflikeme

fattestman wrote: »

If I have an iPhone running iOS5 and my mate has an iPhone running iOS5, does the iMessage service automatically kick in and the message send through that rather than as a text?

Yeah as far as I know it'll default to an iMessage if the recipient is running i OS5.

fattestman

The biggest drawback for me is not being able to see the calendar from the lockscreen. I wish they'd just adopted Lockinfo. It (along with themes) was the main reason I had my iPhone jailbroken before.

One thing I must say now though, is that my iPhone is a lot, lot, quicker than it was yesterday!

jester77

Bit of a meh from me.

Lack of calendar on the lock screen is a big fail. Landscape view in calendar is nice, not sure if it's a bug but it's annoying that every time you scroll right you get a new time column between Sunday & Monday. Not needed.

Notifications are finally done right.

I had to turn off Photostream, nice idea but the fact that you can't delete photos from it is ridiculous. If I take 5 photos of something and disregard 4 of them from my camera roll, thus keeping the best one, the 4 I don't want still get sent to the stream. Where's the logic in that

Quick access to the camera is good.

iMessage is nice.

Apart from that, there was nothing else that caught my attention.

Eire Go Brach

keane2097 wrote: »

That'll be the notifications - just turn them off for non-essentials and it'll help a lot.

FWIW, updating my 3GS has been a great success so far.

Yeh I agree it is great update for the 3gs. But its is hammering my battery. Its also a pain now to turn of notifications. You have to do them all individually. Also Im now scared to turn off location services