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Apple iOS 5 Review

 by Vivek Gowri, Andrew Cunningham, Saumitra Bhagwat & Brian Klug on October 18, 2011 3:05 AM EST
86 Comments | Add A Comment
86 Comments

Most of the applications near the heart of iOS core competency have also gotten a refresh here. We’re talking stuff like Safari, Mail, Messaging, Photos, Music, Calendar, heck, even the Camera application gets a redesign here.

Music

I’d like to start by lighting a candle for the iPod application on the iPhone and iPad. It has joined the ranks of the dearly departed, having now been split into “Music” and “Video”, as on the iPod touch. Other than the branding, the major overall changes are being able to play music while syncing your device and a couple of interaction changes. You can swipe sideways on a song to bring up the option to delete it from the device, and a long press on a song title will bring up the extended song information. But for the most part, on the iPhone/iPod touch side of things, the Music app stays basically untouched. It’s on the iPad side where things have really changed. 

For starters, the iPad 2 now gets the ability to play 1080p video, but the real differences are in Music. The iPad gets a completely redesigned music player. While the previous iPod app looked like a lite-version of the desktop iTunes client, the new one looks nothing like it. You get a very low profile control/information bar at the top with playback controls and details on the song playing, plus a bottom bar to chose between playlist, song, artist, album, etc, along with a search field. The entire rest of the screen is dedicated to listing as many songs as possible. A few pixels on the right and left side have been devoted to thin, wood coloured borders. I legitimately have no idea why, since the colour they picked has nothing to do with the rest of the accent colours used in the OS (or any other version of iOS). It’s not a bad look, and it’s actually nice to have such a minimal interface for music. 

 
Getting to the Now Playing screen isn’t the most intuitive in the world - you have to press the miniature album artwork at the top next to the playback controls to get to it, and press the back arrow at the bottom to get back. The gestures to change song are a nice touch, but they’re not particularly useful in everyday situations because you rarely ever spend time viewing the Now Playing screen. 
 

Mail

The Mail app gets some pretty minor updates here. Apple is making a big deal about the addition of text formatting, with the traditional bold, italic, and underline supported here. It’s nice to finally get, but not something I ever really missed before. The implementation is relatively clunky, just because of the number of button taps involved in the process. Highlight the text you want formatted, hit the right arrow on the context menu, select the B/I/U option, and pick your chosen method of formatting from there. There’s no quick shortcut here in the vein of the time-honored ctrl+b/i/u command, and no way to preselect a formatting option for text that hasn’t been inputted yet. The functionality is there, but especially on the iPad it's hard to fathom why a more traditional formatting bar wasn't used.
 
Other revisions include the ability to flag emails (it’s the same as starring in Gmail - starred messages will be flagged and vice versa as you switch between email clients), being able to search through the text of emails instead of just subject lines, adding indent support within emails, more administrative controls over creating and deleting various email folders, and a few new swipe gestures to navigate through the inbox and messages. But overall, Mail remains very similar to its previous incarnation. 
iPad Multitouch and Keyboard Updates Safari Changes and Benchmarks
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  • myxiplx - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link

    Just a note, my 3GS is far more responsive since installing IOS 5 than it's been for years. It's not just application launch times, popups, and notifications are a lot snappier, there's a definite reduction in the lag that's been creeping up over the last year.

  • lurker22 - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link

    Wow, I have found it lags a bit more than ios4

  • kmmatney - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link

    I'm still running iOS 4.0 (can't upgrade easily due to jailbreak for tethering) and its not all that bad once you disable Spotlight search. I'm hoping they have an untethered Jailbreak for iOS 5 soon, though.

  • lurker22 - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link

    Anand,

    Surprised you missed this large flaw. iPads will not receive iMessages sent to your cellular number, just iMessages sent to the email addresses setup in the iMessage account.

    This is a huge flaw. What has already happened to me is people using their iPads have missed messages for many hours since they were addressed to the cell number and this then isn't devlivered to the iPads.

    Why would apple miss this huge functionality gap? It means now I have to remember to send iMessages to email addresses to be sure the person will see it in a timely fashion.

  • Aikouka - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link

    That explains why I never saw any of the "iMessages" that a friend sent me the other day. I was wondering why they didn't show up when I poked around the Messaging app on my iPad. I assumed all you had to do was sign into the same iMessage account to share everything.

  • Brian Klug - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link

    That's all you have to do for things to work, however there's a catch that I mention - both devices have to be configured to have the same iMessage "Caller ID." This is why the default Caller ID is set to the iMessage "Apple ID" email account, and also the other catch is that your sender has to then be talking with that contact.

    -Brian

  • windywoo - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link

    If Apple is just now implementing features that have been around on other phones why do their products always get such high scores in reviews? Why is it acceptable for Apple to trail in features while Android handsets will be marked down if there happens to be a flicker in the animations? Don't tell me it's because Apple does it so much better because that's subjective at best, and to my mind dishonest.
    All the features implemented here fix major usability flaws in iOS that really contradict the general view that Apple's products are the easiest to use, but for some reason Apple has got a pass from reviewers like some favoured, hobbit haired child.
    I would like to see fewer double standards. We are talking about a capitalist, profit driven corporation, I think they can stand to be handled a little less gently.

  • lurker22 - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link

    Here's why

    http://dinnerwithandroid.tumblr.com/post/115710967...

  • windywoo - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link

    That article is a prime example of what I'm talking about. Subjectives passed off as objectives. Until recently the android browser was ahead in any benchmarks yet he claims it's slow. And in any case, Android gives a choice of browser if there are any rendering errors. Safari is not without its own flaws, and when it does go wrong you're stuck, because Apple doesn't allow other browsers.

    He finds Widgets useless, but doesn't appreciate that other people might not and Android allows them the freedom to spend battery juice on trinkets like live wallpaper if they so choose. Why is it that Apple users always consider it an advantage to have Apple make decisions for them and will pay over the odds to be nannied?

    The market argument is almost entirely irrelevant. Let's leave aside the fact that he can't have looked very closely if he thinks there is no software on the Android market, the same argument used to be addressed at Macs. Apple fans would claim then that the quantity didn't matter so long as the major functions were there. Apps are a con anyway. If consumers weren't so gullible, many of them could be written as web apps, making platform irrelevant. But consumers are dumb. They like being fed nuggets of code like junk food.

    He lists the good things at the end so why does he consider them less important than what he sees as faults? The answer is of course, fawning subservience to the mighty Apple.

  • Phynaz - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link

    Who told you Apple doesn't allow other browsers. I've tried at least three alternatives, and my current browser is Atomic.
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