Apple iOS 5 Review
by Vivek Gowri, Andrew Cunningham, Saumitra Bhagwat & Brian Klug on October 18, 2011 3:05 AM ESTAirPlay
AirPlay was a cool feature introduced with iOS 4.2 that allowed users with an iDevice and an Apple TV to stream video, music, and photos over a local wireless network. I personally never understood the appeal until earlier this year, when I stole my friend’s Apple TV and hooked it up. Not including game consoles, it’s become the single most-used device I have in my home theater. Seamlessly streaming music and YouTube from my iPad, or friends’ iPhones and iPods when they come over, is a phenomenally useful feature to have. It’s like Remote, except for your TV. With iOS 5, Apple has given AirPlay a very ambitious makeover, and given my recent love affair with it, well, colour me intrigued.
If you have an original iPad, iPhone 4, or iPod touch 4, feel free to skip over the rest of this page - you’re going to end up being jealous. Those of you with iPad 2’s or an iPhone 4S now get the option of mirroring your entire iOS display over to the big screen. We’re talking everything - the lock screen, the endless grid of icons that substitutes for a homescreen, the multitasking bar, Safari, third-party apps, FaceTime video calls as mentioned earlier, anything that you see on your iPad or iPhone screen is wirelessly duplicated on your TV.
To enable it, bring up the multitasking bar, swipe all the way to the left, and hit the AirPlay button. Select the Apple TV, and underneath will be a switch to turn mirroring on or off. Push the slider to “On”, wait three seconds, and voila, your endless grid of icons is smiling at you from the TV. This is basically like the HDMI screen mirroring you find in Honeycomb, except wireless. Oh, and instead of a $5 HDMI cable, you’re using a $99 Apple TV. The Apple TV has to be updated to iOS 5 as well, part of the Apple TV Software version 4.4.
In practice, it all works pretty well. The latency isn’t bad at all, and in general things move fluidly across both screens. The one truly annoying feature about it is the aspect ratio. I feel like this won’t bug me quite as much with the iPhone 4S and its 3:2 screen ratio, but with the iPad 2, there are some rather noticeable black bars on either side of the display image. Yes, this is a given, because the iPad has a 4:3 screen ratio, but displayed on a 16:9 TV, it looks a bit odd.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
86 Comments
View All Comments
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.