The things I love about iOS5 – the first 24 hours of playing

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iOS5 was released at 6pm GMT yesterday (12th October 2011) – if you haven’t already upgraded your iPhone and iPad, then you should.

If you’re having issues because you’re getting “resource not found” when trying to upgrade to iOS5 or something similar-sounding, then fear not – it’s just apple’s servers being under a bit of strain, you can download the offline copy straight from the web site and then within iTunes simply do a backup and then shift-click “Restore” to browse to the offline file (remember to upgrade iTunes first though).

If you’re in charge of a fleet of iPhones I’d always recommend downloading the package first and then using it again and again on all devices to save time and internet bandwidth. You can either download it once in iTunes and then get it from:

C:\Users\smd\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes\iPad Software Updates
C:\Users\smd\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes\iPhone Software Updates

(or the equivalent place on your own system), or you can find out the URL from somewhere else such as this helpful article on osXdaily.

So here’s a brief list of the things that I’ve discovered in the last 24 hours which I’m particularly excited about:

  1. The photo stream, which as we all know syncs pictures between devices, syncs to my Apple TV (update available), meaning I can screen-saver my most recent pictures automatically when I’m listening to music or whatever.
  2. The addition of “find my friends”. When Google latitude was released, as an iPhone user, I was disheartened. But no more! This does exactly the same thing (only, of course, nicer): allows you to see your friends’ locations on a map in relation to your position, awesome!
  3. For the iPad, Airplay mirroring: you can now airplay your iPad home screen (and any running app therefore) to an airplay receiving unit (like the apple TV)
  4. LED flash for alerts – a little bit of a personal preference here, but you can make the iPhone 4 flash LED blink when you get texts and other notifications
  5. Keyboard shortcuts. Go into Settings -> General -> Keyboard and you’ll see the default “omw” to “on my way!” translation. Add away for frequently used phrases that you want to be auto-corrected as you type them.

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