Apple iOS 5 Review
by Vivek Gowri, Andrew Cunningham, Saumitra Bhagwat & Brian Klug on October 18, 2011 3:05 AM ESTCalendar
The Calendar app in iOS 5 closes the gap between it and more full-featured calendar software like iCal, Google Calendar, and Outlook. Most of these changes apply not just to calendars stored locally on your device, but also to calendars synced with iCloud or with Exchange servers.
Game Center
Introduced in iOS 4.1, Game Center is Apple’s response to Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network, and it features many of the same bullet points: Achievements, friend lists, and the rest.
The additions to the service in iOS 5 are both small and obvious: Users can now set a profile picture, see Achievement point totals across all games played, and get friend recommendations based on your friends’ friends and the types of games you play. You can now also buy games directly from within Game Center, though the recommended games I was shown seemed to have little to do with the games I actually play. You also now get native support for turn-based (or “asynchronous” in game dev lingo) games like Words with Friends, taking responsibility for building those frameworks out of developers’ hands.
Game Center itself features no built-in cloud saving mechanism, but once game developers begin taking advantage of the iCloud APIs, they should be able to support playing a game on one device and being able to pick up where you left off on another.
Newsstand
To promote subscription-based apps from numerous magazines and newspaper publications, iOS 5 consolidates all your subscriptions using Newsstand, a dedicated place for all your subscription-based apps. Apple has also released new APIs for developers that wish to upgrade their apps to enable support for Newsstand.
Newsstand is not really an app. It looks and functions exactly like a folder, but with an iBooks-style wooden background that looks like a newsstand. Popular subscription-based apps like Wired have already been upgraded to show up in Newsstand, and other updates will likely come in the next few weeks. While its not exactly a tremendously useful or groundbreaking feature, it will still help in keeping things organized.
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lurker22 - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
I disagree. Anecdotal reports better antennae reception in the 4s over the 4. Also the internals are almost completely different between the 4 and the 4s.Andrew Rockefeller - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
...but then again, I come here for the info that I don't/can't get elsewhere. Is there really any need for yet another review on a spec bump? What magical new insight could be added to the dearth of info already available??http://lmgtfy.com/?q=iPhone+4S+review
uhuznaa - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
Well, reliable comparisons of battery life and antenna performance would be good start.LordSojar - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
It's the Android notification system we've had for years with a few minor tweaks. Wow, Apple sure is revolutionary.Why isn't Google suing them again? Oh right, because Google aren't a**holes... my bad.
uhuznaa - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
I thought Android was "open" and even GPL/Apache licensed? Hard to sue anyone doing what the license allows them to do, really.lurker22 - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
Oh please just stop already it's getting old.name99 - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link
"Why isn't Google suing them again? Oh right, because Google aren't a**holes... my bad."Presumably because Google don't have a patent on the idea. Why not?
Maybe there is prior art? Maybe Google just didn't get a patent?
Either way, throwing out random statements as you are doing is not informative. The law has its flaws, but it's not just a popularity contest. If you have something useful to say about the legal issues go right ahead, but what you have said is not helpful, implying as it does that Google would never sue over patents. To take an example, if someone started copying pagerank or the adwords system, I expect Google would be suing them the next day.
Yann Bodson - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
The music app new design is inspired by the old Braun vinyl players.http://www.wearesuperfamous.com/wp-content/3511586...
cjs150 - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
There is a lot to admire about the new OS, and to be fair to Apple, the iPhone has been the class of the field since it first came out.Problem is that the field has raised their game. The rest of the field has no hang ups about making sure their phone works well with lots of software not just "Apple approved" products - particularly Microsoft products (I am not going to start on the Flash argument - lets just say it is an example of the closed universe that Apple wants).
Simple fact is the overwhelming majority of businesses run Microsoft products and in particular Outlook and exchange servers. If Anandtech cannot the iOS 5 calender to work with Outlook consistently what hope is there for the rest of us.
Great as a home phone, fantastic for kids. No better than B+ for business
More positively I really like the Apple philosphy of getting all their mobile products working the same way, there will be loads of people with mobile phones and iPads and an MP3 player of some sort. I would take issue with the idea that make OS upgrades "PC free" is a novel concept. The iPad 2 probably has more processing power than the office machine I used 7 years ago, so the concept that freeing updates from the PC is revolutionary is feeble. The real question is why did it take so long to achieve such an obvious step.
steven75 - Monday, October 31, 2011 - link
Funny because many of here at this Exchange shop use iPhones with our work email just fine, calendar and all. In fact, it works quite nicely.We have our choice of company phones and it's extremely rare for anyone to pick anything but an iPhone. I'm sure that would be different if it didn't play so nicely with Exchange.