Robert Blake | APPS | 09.21.2012 @ 3:00 pm
iOS 6 is here! The iPhone 5 is here! Here are my favorite features from the new Apple operating system so far:
Maps
Over the weekend I tried out the new Maps on a two and half hour drive to Fayetteville, AR. The turn by turn voice navigation is as what you’d expect with a Magellan or TomTom GPS. The visual cues allow you easily identify upcoming turns and surrounding streets. While your phone is locked, you have a live view of your route. After I reached my destination my battery lost about 40% of its charge, so have a car charger handy.
Panorama
Possibly the most fun feature in iOS 6 is the panorama mode, which is found in the default camera app. Apple made it incredibly easy to create amazing panoramas. When in panorama mode, you’ll see on-screen instructions directing you to move from left to right and tell you if your moving too fast or need to move down or up to capture the photo. As Apple promised, this feature has incredible stitching software behind to create the perfect panorama photo. Check out this panorama I took at a football game:
Cloud Tabs
Cloud Tabs was first introduced in Mac OS X Mountain Lion but now the feature really comes alive in iOS 6. If you’re like me, you have a bunch of tabs open in Safari on your desktop, iPad and iPhone. If you were browsing a website on your iPad and wanted to pull it up on your desktop, you just click the cloud icon in the toolbar and it will show what tabs you have open on your devices. Cloud Tabs requires you to have an iCloud account, which is free.
Siri
When Siri first debuted on the iPhone 4S she performed a few commands, like sending text messages, checking the weather and setting up reminders. With iOS 6 Apple, has really beefed up Siri intelligence level. Now she can look at current and past sports scores and tell you what movies are playing nearby. In the past, she would ask if you wanted to do a web search for these types of requests — now you get the results right in the Siri interface. Siri can also update your Facebook status and send out a tweet. If you ever can’t find an app, you can ask Siri to launch it for you.
These are just a few of the over 200 new features that can be found in iOS 6. What new features are you excited about?