News From WWDC – iCloud and iOS5 Improvements On The Way.

IOS 5 will be bringing a minimum of 200 new features to the amazing iPad and it look rather exciting. There is the **Notification Centre, iMessage NewsStand, Twitter and tabbed browsing in Safari and the experience is all part of a complete experience as Apple sees it glued together with a big helping of iCloud.

Notification Centre

It will be handy to have all the notifications in one place on the amazing iPad. Swiping down from the top of the screen to get to the Notification Centre. From there we can choose which we want to have a look at. Any breaking news from your online social life will be visible.

iMessage

I wonder if this is an update on iChat which I have never really got into as it didn’t include any of the messaging services that I used. This could be interesting but I will have to see how it is in actual use. Supposed to be able to push out unlimited text messages either over wifi of over 3G. Not just text either as photos, location information, contacts and even video can be be put in the messages.

Newsstand

The moving of magazines and newspapers to digital. It is already heading in that direction with magazines like Wired and The Daily. This puts it in a separate application, taking it out of the iBooks App. Similar look about it but with magazines and newspapers. Apple are getting more in the act with being a news paper seller. Personally I get enough to read and to look at online and I doubt if I will be getting any subscriptions.

Reminders

This is a To-Do application and there are plenty of those around already. This does work with iCal and iCloud so I wonder if that will make it more useful to work for us as users.

Integrated Twitter

A systemwide integration of tweeting for your iOS device will allow us to send out tweets from all sorts of applications. No problem if we want to add a location to the tweet. It will be handy to have Twitter names of friends in Contacts and it is as easy as pie to tweet a photo. Will I want to tell people exactly where I am from the Maps application – It is possible I suppose.

Safari Enhancements Coming too

Reading list looks interesting, with saving pages to be read later. It brings in the text without the adverts and other bits and pieces on the page. With iCloud it will all be updated on my other devices too.

The Amazing iPad Untethered

Up until iOS 5 it has been necessary to have another computer to get the best form your iPad. Not anymore! Setting up of the iPad can be done over wifi, including iOS updates. Backing up and restoration of the amazing iPad can be done using iCloud.

Other improvements Coming with iOS 5

Mail and the Calendar applications are getting the benefit of the iCloud. Good job too – Mail and iCal were both in dire need of some updating. There will be more multitasking gestures to allow shortcuts and navigation, such a giving a pinch to get back to the home screen. That should save the wear and tear on the home button.

iCloud is the glue that binds it all together

This will be dealt with in a separate blog post – It is 5GB of storage for free. I still have to find out what else is still going to be available from the old Mobile Me service in iCloud. It is not going to be available until Autumn. It does look interesting though. You do get a free email account and contacts and calendar will work in the way that I found very handy when I had a mobile me account. I am tempted to try out the beta that will be available to developers.