Apple iOS 5 Review
by Vivek Gowri, Andrew Cunningham, Saumitra Bhagwat & Brian Klug on October 18, 2011 3:05 AM ESTFind My Friends
Yet another feature, that Apple’s included under iCloud’s umbrella is called Find My Friends. It is a standalone app that allows you to share your current location with other iOS users without any further interaction on your behalf. One a friend is allowed access to your location information (by "following" you) he/she can request your current location at any time. The process is simple: you submit a follow request through the Find My Friends app, and your friend either accepts or declines your request.
Once accepted, there's nothing more for you to do. Note that the process isn't automatically two-way: just because you let someone follow you it doesn't mean you can follow them, you have to initiate a request and be accepted to follow anyone - period. Access can be revoked at any time as well. If you don't have a passcode set on your phone you'll also be required to type in your password every time you launch the app. Requiring authentication at launch guarantees that no one can simply pick up your phone and spy on the locations of your friends. Despite the obvious scariness of the idea, it seems like the FMF app is a reasonable way to share your current location with people you trust.
The app is invariably tied to your Apple ID, which is currently the only means to find an invite other people. It is nice to see Apple steadily increasing the number of services that are tied to an Apple ID. With Find My Friends, it brings the grand total to 7 with the iTunes Music Store, App Store, iBookstore, Home Sharing, iMessage and iCloud, if we consider it as one service.
Find My Friends has several built-in privacy settings that let users control whether they can receive follow requests. A “Hide from Followers” option lets users snoop around without advertising their locations; sort of like an incognito mode if you don’t want to let your gym instructor know you were at McDonald’s. The temporary sharing feature allows you to share your location with a group of people, (who don’t necessarily have to be your followers), only for a specified period of time. Once the set deadline has elapsed, your location is no longer shared, and life returns to a state of normalcy.
The app also lets users assign labels to frequently visited places, so your followers don’t rack their brains too hard trying to figure out where you are. Currently, the only way to add friends is to manually type their email addresses, a la Mail or Messages. It would be great if Apple could let the app scan your contacts and automatically invite people with email addresses. There are also built-in parental controls, which can be accessed from Restrictions under General Settings. The app has a slick interface, much like the new Address Book in Lion. It is tightly integrated with Maps, Contacts and iMessage.
Maps
The biggest improvement to the Maps app in iOS 5 is that you can finally choose between multiple routes, same as in the Google Maps web app. It still doesn't display some of the useful information you can get from Google directly - for example, which roads have tolls and which do not? - but it's handy if you come up against traffic or closed roads on your way from Point A to Point B.
Spellcheck and Autocorrect
The iOS spellchecker can now suggest multiple words to correct your misspellings, similar to spellcheckers in most word processors and web browsers on the desktop. The pop-up you use to make these corrections is also slightly larger than before, allowing for easier tapping.
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Aikouka - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
Have you guys noticed any weird issues with WiFi sync? It seems that whenever I would unplug my phone, iTunes would start freaking out because it couldn't find the phone. That's pretty obvious why... it's no longer on the network since iOS only keeps WiFi alive while plugged in. It would constantly pop up an error about being unable to find my iPhone or iPad.Not to mention leaving "Open iTunes when this device is connected" would cause iTunes to constantly open up... even when closed. Turning this off caused my device to enter some weird limbo state with iTunes. Plugging it in gave me an error, "Another iPhone has sync'd with this computer." The only options were to restore or setup as a new iPhone. A little Googling revealed that the only option was to hit setup as new iPhone and quickly unplug the cable.
It worked, but now my device just comes up as "Apple iPhone" instead of how it used to.
I really don't like iTunes.
kezeka - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link
I just straight up cannot get it to function with my iPad 2 and MBP. I have tried pretty much everything I can think of without any luck. Not that it bothers me that much, I would just like to have it working to simplify the syncing of the two.name99 - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link
There are two things you might want to try.(a) Shame on Apple for not making this clear, but you have to go to iTunes and, while the phone is plugged in, toggle the "Sync with this phone over WiFi" checkbox. It is not set by default, and when you try to sync on your phone, the phone gives a useless error message rather than telling you this setting needs to be toggled.
(b) You have to ensure that your phone in on the correct wifi network. If you have a modern Airport base station and have a guest network setup, you must ensure that the phone is NOT on the guest network --- best is to tell the phone to forget the guest network. This makes perfect sense --- the whole point of the guest network is to contact the outside world, without allowing you to contact machines on the local LAN.
StormyParis - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
Guys, I think devoting graphs to gains of 0.1s is... mmmm.... we French say "sodomozing flies". I think the coclusion is 1- don't do graphs for irrelevant sutff (especially, not lots and lots fo thm) 2- a 0.1s improvement is not forth more than a "slightly speedier" comment in passing, and 3- those times are so low to start with, lobel them "very good", and talk about some interesting ?I know benchmarking is fun and all, but we're well past the point of irrelevance.
dingetje - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
hmmm we dutch say f**king Ants.it seems u french are way more pervy than us ;)
cjs150 - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
In depths of northern England we go for sheep - but I think that is a lifestyle choice rather than pithy phrase describing graphs!!Samoht - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
interesting.. in danish it's called flyf**king. Maybe the translation from french to danish didn't carry all the way over ? Or maybe we do not need the specifics;-)Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
What they show is that there is no difference, which is kind of their point.grkhetan - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
I didn't know AnandTech did software reviews... I have been coming here every day since the last 3-4 days to see the iPhone 4S review, but finally I see here is an iOS5 review. But even this was high quality as your hardware reviews are -- I love how you go into detail of everything and don't cut back on prose. With hardware your reviews are unmatched in the industry considering your technical depth.Anyway, nice review and great coverage. However, when is the iPhone 4S hardware review coming out?
Blaze-Senpai - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
Go read an iPhone 4 hardware review; it's basically the same thing. The only (physical) changes are minute and you'll get different bar charts.