Posts tagged iOS 5

After seeing Ben Brook’s tweet linking to David Spark’s post “Six Mostly Irrelevant iOS Changes that Make Me Smile”, I decided to share one of MY favourite minor changes in iOS 5.

When sending text messages in iOS 4, you’d often be faced with the half message/half keyboard screen.

This screen was useful when you were writing a message (obviously), but annoying when you wanted to read one. 

In iOS 4 you had to tap the “Messages” box in the top left corner of the screen to bring you back to your messages index page. Then, you’d tap back on the conversation you wanted to read to view the message in full screen.

With iOS 5, you can simply tap in the middle of the message area (when you’re in the half message/half keyboard screen), and slide down to reveal the full screen view.

Tapping here (excuse my horrendous pointer graphic) and sliding downwards:

reveals the full message view:

Subtle, but an awesome tweak for people that send a lot of text messages (people will be using this app even more now with the launch of iMessage).

I wanted to post a quick update to the post I wrote the other day after one of my co-workers brought something to my attention.

Thanks to Jason Medeiros, I now have basically no problems with the weather in Notification Center.

Jason pointed out to me that if you tap the weather area in Notification Center, you’re brought right to the Weather app.

But it gets even better.

New in iOS 5, you can tap and hold on a particular day and stretch it downwards to reveal the next 12 hours of weather on an hourly basis, along with any applicable P.O.P.

iOS 5 brings us a number of welcomed new features, including Notification Center.

Notification Center puts all of your alerts in one place (new email, texts, friend requests, calendar reminders, etc.). It also allows you to view stock information and the weather forecast. 

At first I enjoyed this new area – it even allowed me to stop using my weather app (WeatherEye). Soon, however, I realized that the weather in Notification Center didn’t provide me with enough of the information I was used to having.

When you slide down the Notification Center, you’re presented with the current weather:

A sideways swipe will then reveal the weather for today, as well as the next five days:

Now this is great, but there’s definitely tons of room for improvement. 

Here are a few things I’d like to see:

• slide again to see the following 5 days (for a total of a 10-day trend)
• slide one more time for hourly weather (this is important for planning things like a trip to the beach)
• a toggle to switch the location of weather displayed* 
• perhaps some other information like P.O.P., humidity, wind speed, etc. (this might be overkill though)

I know this widget is meant as something to quickly glance at for some basic information – it’s not a full iOS app. However, if enough weather information can be displayed here it’d save most people (on most occasions) from launching a separate weather app. Eliminating the need to launch a separate app saves the user time, ultimately enhancing the user experience.

*Tip: Currently the weather displayed in Notification Center will reflect the location you have “active” in the default Weather app that comes with iOS. If you launch the app and swipe left or right to a new location and close it, the weather in Notification Center will reflect your new selection.

Say you need to remember to pick up milk during your next grocery trip. Since Reminders can be location based, you’ll get an alert as soon as you pull into the supermarket parking lot. Reminders also works with iCal, Outlook, and iCloud, so changes you make update automatically on all your devices and calendars.

I finally used the Reminders app that will ship with iOS 5 yesterday. I set a location based reminder to publish the Shawn Blanc interview I did when I got home.

I was going to the gym on my way home from work, and then out for dinner – I didn’t know exactly when I’d be home.

In the past I’d just set a reminder for a time that I know I’d be home by, and have it alert me 5 minutes before that time, and 2 hours prior (in case I was home early). Sometimes it’d go off too early, or too late, and things would slip through the cracks. 

With Reminders I was prompted to publish the interview as soon as I walked in the door, and that I did.

I use Daylite Touch for all of my business appointments, meetings, etc., but I use iCal and Calendar for personal stuff.

I was just adding a doctor’s appointment in my calendar for late July that starts at 8:15 am. I want to be reminded of this appointment a couple days before, but NOT at 8:15 am!

The appointment is on a Tuesday, which would mean the alarm would sound at an ungodly time in the morning on a Saturday! I never get up early and I sure as hell don’t want to be awoken by a nasty beep-beep-beep 2 days before a doctor’s appointment when I’m trying to catch up on sleep.

It would be great if you could set your own reminder time in the Calendar app. My fingers are crossed for the final release of iOS 5 – I haven’t played with it yet so if it’s already there, touché.

In the meantime, however, why should we be limited to these default options?

Something like this (similar to what we have in Daylite Touch) would make a lot more sense:

I know you can do this with Reminders in iOS 5 but I don’t want to use a to-do app to schedule a calendar appointment.