Update: the final version has been released. Impressions from her are added to the end of the news.
The time has come. Today we'll go through all the most significant innovations in iOS 6 and its new features. The new iPad was chosen as the testing platform. This article is best read using Reader in mobile Safari. There will be a lot of photos, comparisons and text. Make yourself comfortable.
Getting acquainted always begins with the welcome screen. In iOS 5, it became possible to perform the initial setup without the participation of a computer. The next version of the firmware changes virtually nothing in this procedure, except that it prompts you to choose in advance which of your mailboxes you want to receive iMessages and FaceTime calls.
We quickly get to the main screen and immediately notice four differences from the previous OS. Let's play a game - for now, find them yourself.
iOS 5.1.1
iOS 6
The first thing that catches your eye is the different order of the icons. We can fix this. The background image has also changed - it matches the background on the iOS 6 icon that was displayed in Moscone on one of the banners. The third difference is a fresh, more “detailed” redesign of the almost sacred Settings button. I deliberately laid out all the changes in reverse order of importance. The last but most significant improvement for all iPad users is the Clock.
Yes. We waited. It took Apple two years to bring the Watch to iPad. Looking at what happened in the end, you begin to forgive them a little for this. The iPhone version has a complete rest here. The international clock is shown at the top of the screen. By clicking on the watch face, we go into full-screen mode with a nice analog clock. Below is a world map divided into time zones. And then the next “discovery” comes. Apple has built Weather into the Watch.
The other three tabs - Alarm Clock, Stopwatch, Timer - have also undergone a total redesign. Pay attention to the alarm clock interface. The second half of the screen is reserved for the calendar image, where you will “stick” the morning bell. As I understand it, all your affairs recorded in the corresponding application will be displayed there.
The stopwatch and timer are almost like two peas in a pod. We exit the Watch and skip Messages and Facetime - because nothing has changed in them.
Let's dive into Photos , where a new “sharing” window has appeared, that is, for exchanging and publishing photos. Instead of faceless items with text symbols, Apple suggested pointing to large icons. It cannot be said that it has become an order of magnitude more convenient. Maybe it's prettier. Naturally, the publication on Facebook is right there.
Camera interface on the iPad has not undergone any changes at all. The arrangement of elements on the iPhone has changed slightly, screenshot above. Feel free to move on to one of the most discussed features of iOS 6 - new Maps.
New Maps are a whole mixture of third-party technologies and services. Apparently, the navigation component is supplied by TomTom. I was primarily interested in how well my “outback” was displayed on the new maps. Unfortunately, everything is bad. Let's compare how it was and how it became.
iOS 5
iOS 6
Where have all the houses gone? Apple suggests looking only at the sketchy roads and cute yellowish background. The rest of the orientation is up to you. Maps were not the most useful before, but what the guys from Cupertino offered us is no good. And if you think that it will be easier for Muscovites or St. Petersburg residents, nothing like that. Their map is just as much a daub. Perhaps Google has spoiled us, which in itself is already very strange. Owners of iPhone and iPad in Russia will urgently need Yandex.Navigator, 2GIS and, naturally, Google Maps from the App Store.
As you might have guessed, the 3D in maps looks great - and is not at all useful. The selectivity of the cities in which this feature is available is amazing. There is no London. And New York too. Are they really defending themselves from evil terrorists?
Where 3D does work, you can admire the fruits of the work of C3 Technologies, which was bought by Apple last year. The map loading speed on fast Wi-Fi is, to put it mildly, not impressive. The screen takes about 15 seconds to render, and this is on a new iPad. But the buildings themselves are quite nice, especially with a good zoom. This is sarcasm, yes. It's a pity that many of them look like ruins after a nuclear war. By masterfully moving the map, you can feel at least like Spiderman. That's all the real benefits of 3D. Was there anything else you expected?
They didn't invent bicycles with map navigation. You can plan a route for a car, walking or traveling via public transport. In the latter case, the new Maps shows you a fat bump and opens the “Routing Software” window in the App Store. In which, as you already guessed, there is nothing. Great job!
The navigation itself works more or less tolerably. The road is marked on the map with several blue lines, which you can switch between depending on the desired route. But, given how bad the new Maps are with displaying houses, I would not use such navigation for serious tasks. We leave in upset feelings.
iOS 5
iOS 6
YouTube app is unchanged, as are Contacts , Notes and the most useful PhotoBooth program. The calendar has undergone a slight redesign, an example of which we have shown in the screenshot above. Because it's a small thing.
iOS 5
iOS 6
If you use Reminders , you'll be glad that Apple had the epiphany that forced them to fit both a list of reminders and a calendar on one screen. The screenshots above do not need any comments. Let's skip the App Store and iTunes Store for now.
Game Center has undergone some minor design changes. Firstly, the title of the main page was translated into Russian. And secondly, there is a new “challenges” tab that stores all the co-op requests that have been sent to you from your friends in GC.
Safari browser is probably the most popular application on iOS. Apple has added several long-awaited features to it. The correct Reading List appears in the bookmarks window. By adding a web page there, you can guarantee yourself comfortable reading even without an Internet connection.
Nearby is a button for iCloud tabs, which will only be appreciated by Safari users on computers and owners of several iDevices at once. For others it is useless.
The redesigned information sharing menu has also appeared here. The only change is in the design and the appearance of three new items: Copy, Facebook and Message. Naturally, only the link is copied. You can evaluate the design yourself, it doesn’t seem to have gotten any worse.
Now you can upload photos to websites using Safari. The Upload button has become active. I tested the new functionality in our admin area directly from the iPad by uploading the photo above to this post. It works. Finally.
By the way, since we are about to leave, tabs in Safari are no longer limited to nine. At least on the new iPad.
What's new in Mail ? Four key changes: the appearance of checkboxes, insertion of photos and videos, VIP recipients, as well as the popular Pull-to-Refresh straight from friendly Twitter.
I think the concept of “flags” does not need to be explained. Let's look at VIP recipients in a little more detail.
This setting appears in each mailbox. An Address Book contact that is added as a VIP recipient is given its own settings, including the type of iOS notifications. For such important correspondence, you can set a different alert sound. But in general, this is the same “flag” system, only automatic. Like Google with its “important mail”.
Music and video in the iPad have not changed, but the player and dialer in the iPhone, judging by reader reviews, have undergone a major redesign. Send screenshots in the comments, and we will analyze it in more detail. Weather would also be helpful . And we’ll dive headfirst into Settings . I will deliberately skip points where nothing has changed.
Notice the appearance of separators in the list of items. IMHO, they weren’t needed there, but who at Apple cares about the user’s opinion? Some points are duplicated.
“Cellular Data” item: added setting for iCloud, iTunes and Facetime via 3G. Users of limited Internet tariffs should disable these settings first.
“Do not disturb”: the dream of all sleep lovers. It's funny, but the settings for this mode are included in the next paragraph.
“Notifications”: “Do not disturb” mode settings have appeared. You can set this mode to turn on automatically for a certain period of time, and also configure which calls will break through the Iron Curtain: all calls, no calls, calls from Favorites in Contacts or certain groups in them. Essentially, this is a blacklist for calls, only in reverse. Dreams Come True. In five years.
Speaking of the Notification Center. It now features a Twitter and Facebook widget. Very convenient: opened, tweeted, moved on. You don't even need to open the application.
“Basic” is worth examining in a little more detail, because there are a lot of settings there. Firstly, owners of the new iPad will be delighted by the appearance of Siri.
In Restrictions, a whole cart of prohibitions has appeared for the most secretive people on Earth - those who really believe that disabling a setting in a mobile gadget of one of the world's largest companies can save them from surveillance by someone else. You can disable location detection, integration with Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, and access to Photos, down to specific applications. It is high time.
Anticipating the obligatory questions - in the first Beta of iOS 6 there are only two new images on the desktop: new waves that replace the old ones from iOS 5, and a new wood texture.
iOS 5
iOS 6
Only at the same time, Apple was going to deprive us of the legendary wallpapers from the first generation iPad. The ones with mountains and shooting stars. Apple, what are you doing? Was there nothing else to delete? There are also several other wallpapers that have been piling up for the past two years.
The “Store” item has turned into “iTunes and App Store” - it doesn’t look very good. Otherwise, everything is the same, we just added an iTunes Match switch.
In "Music" there is a new Equalizer setting - "Late Night", which makes the sound very quiet. Why this was done is a mystery. This mode may turn on automatically in some situations related to Do Not Disturb mode. If I'm not mistaken, an item for the European Union has appeared in Volume Limitation.
The settings end with integration into Facebook - an almost complete copy of the Twitter analogue interface.
These words, spoken at yesterday's presentation of iOS 6, did not bode well. In the end, everything that Apple touches takes on a very decent appearance. Now the question is: does this look decent? And yes, everything is so black and gray.
App Store
iTunes Store
iBook Store
So, whatever your answer, the store redesign is the biggest problem in iOS 6, even worse than Maps. After all, the cards can be replaced, but you will have to live in the App Store in any case. The hand of the “innovators” touched absolutely all windows, menus and submenus of the Apple application store. Instead of a simple composite banner, we are greeted at the top of the screen with a horizontally scrolling “shelf” a la Cover Flow. Even higher are the App Store category tabs by type of application.
Apple already started preparing us all for horizontal interfaces earlier this year, but now it's taking it to a whole other level. The familiar application grid is simplified to a single line, which “scrolls” left and right page by page. Under the application icon, its name, genre and price are indicated. The rating is not visible until you click on the program.
This is what the application page looks like in the new App Store. The redesigners clearly took inspiration from the iTunes interface. At the top of the card flying out of the icon there is a name, rating, genre, a “Share” button and the obligatory “Buy/Install”. The huge empty space suggests that Apple still hasn't figured out how to use it effectively. In the middle of the card there are three tabs: information about the application, user reviews and a list of similar games or programs.
All important information about the application is hidden at the very bottom of this already small card. There is the version, size, compatibility, developer, update date... At the same time, huge pieces of free space on the sides of the screen are not used.
You can “jump” between applications without leaving the open card. All you have to do is swipe or tap on a piece of another program’s icon sticking out from the edge of the screen. It's cool - but completely illogical and inconvenient compared to the regular interface.
The TOP categories interface is the brightest side of the App Store redesign. It scrolls vertically and generally does not raise any navigation issues. Except for the same cards flying out, which, to be honest, are very annoying out of habit.
In the Purchases tab, the concentration of applications per centimeter of screen has sharply increased. More or less good. All the design bells and whistles of “special categories”, such as “Best Applications of 2011”, have not yet been adapted to the new interface. Instead, you'll be looking at dull horizontal shelves of icons. However, this is more of a question for the beta version. Genius doesn't work.
The new version of the App Store no longer closes to the desktop when purchasing, downloading or installing any application from the store. This is a big “Hurray”, famously flavored with sadness from five years of waiting for such a simple and obvious functionality. Moreover, the download and installation process can be monitored directly from the app purchase screen. And when it loads, we can click on Open and go straight into it. A very nice feature that was missing before.
Similar changes have befallen the iTunes Store and iBookstore, but given that only a few people use them, I will limit myself to screenshots from both stores. I will only note that the iTunes Store has become even a little more convenient, although the concentration of information on one screen has increased too much.
Pay attention to the button in the shape of the Play icon at the top: it remembers what exactly you viewed in the iTunes Store. Useful for those who first dig around for a long time, listen/watch previews and only then make a decision to buy.
The concentrated impression of new stores is closer to negative. Firstly, all these new “goodies” can be terribly slow. That is, about 30 seconds. With animation lags. Secondly, the comfort of using the iTunes “cards” system in the App Store is extremely questionable, at least in the current format. And thirdly, the number of necessary taps and scrolls to access the necessary information has increased - which in itself is a spit on the entire property of Jobs, who spent his whole life trying to get the opposite from designers.
Guys, there's nothing to see here. This is Siri, she says “hello”, “bye” and “I don’t understand you”.
facepalm.
As predicted earlier, the interface of the voice assistant in the iPad is adapted to the “tablet” realities. It covers only a small part of the screen and is called by long pressing Home. But otherwise, it's the same Siri as on the iPhone. She understands the same requests and repeats the same dull jokes.
The tablet's microphone does an excellent job, which is surprising, because I spoke in the opposite direction from it, and even with a fan blowing boldly directly towards the device. This didn't change the fact that Siri doesn't understand our Russian accents very well. And, naturally, she still does not know how to work with Russian establishments and the Russian card.
Clickable
iOS 6 of the first edition pleases with more or less stable operation - with rare crashes, the concentration of which falls on Music and Maps. Safari can also crash unexpectedly, so refrain from entering long texts into web fields or copy them regularly to the clipboard. The battery is clearly consumed faster, which, however, is quite common for beta versions from Apple. The system itself does not work any slower than iOS 5. Personally, I will not return to 5.1.1, because I need to get used to the new stores now.
Overall, the new iOS adds even fewer visible goodies than iOS 5, and that's bound to upset some people. Except for the 3GS owners - this is a real holiday for them. Apparently, the “six” feels very good on this device.
I spent the whole night tormenting the first beta version of the new iOS firmware and came to a slightly sad conclusion. Even in its sixth reincarnation, Apple's operating system does not seek to change much. Looking at the cult of “finishing” Android, you can exchange for the stability that the OS instills in the iPhone and iPad. Moreover, most of the changes in iOS 6 are cosmetic or completely invisible. But you can’t argue against progress.
So, it's done. The final version of iOS 6 has finally been released - to the delight of those suffering and to the hatred of beta testers, who were again prevented from updating via OTA. In five beta builds, Apple's new mobile OS has changed a little and got rid of the vast majority of problems.
YouTube is no more
Google refused to renew its contract with Apple to host its application on iOS. Or vice versa. One way or another, the response came immediately and initially made users very angry. In fact, everything turned out to be simpler. Today there is no YouTube in iOS 6, but it is alive and well at m.youtube.com, as well as in the App Store - but only in the iPhone version. As a result, we didn’t lose anything, and Google finally got the opportunity to show unskippable advertising before a good half of the videos. One can only wonder: wasn’t all this planned from the beginning?
Clock + Weather
A good addition to the iPad is the Clock. Honestly, their icon is the first thing you notice when you see the iOS desktop on an iPad.
Many have already classified the icon and interface of the “Clock” application as enchanting horror and bad taste. We agree that this criticism is not unfounded. The idea of combining weather and clocks in one application is also controversial.
The alarm clock on the iPad is certainly useful, although the designer could be beaten for distributing interface elements across the screen:
The stopwatch is a little better in this regard, but not much:
Well, the timer screen once again confirms the main idea: in 2010, Jobs said that Apple had not yet found a normal way to adapt some standard iOS applications for the Retina screen; in 2012, Tim Cook gave the command to adapt them at least somehow - and they were adapted. It is clear that the designers were unable to rationally fill the iPad screen space. As a result, we have a lot of unnecessary emptiness.
However, you can live with this. It's easy to get used to too.
Safari works stably. Almost
iOS 6 pleased us not only with the appearance of a lot of useful and long-awaited functions in the browser, but also upset us with its instability. Now everything is in order - at least, the probability of catching a “departure” is extremely small. All functions, their menus and buttons have been improved and now work without a hitch. Safari cache has been increased from 5 megabytes to 25 MB. The image compression limit in the browser was raised from two megapixels to five, listening to complaints from iPad 3 users. Now beautiful and high-quality photos on the Internet do not look like pixelated soap.
Apple Maps: Think Different
As beautiful and technically superior as Apple's new maps are, they still don't include outlines of houses. More precisely, there is, but only for some cities - and not always large ones. What prevents the guys from Cupertino from adding houses that already exist on TomTom maps is a mystery. Until it is resolved, using Maps in iOS 6 is much less convenient than Maps in iOS 5. Fortunately, to improve them in the future, we will not need to update the firmware. You can download Google Maps or Yandex.Maps from the App Store. I dare to recommend 2GIS to residents of large Russian cities.
Siri searches for places in Russia and gives directions
Suddenly, the voice assistant in iOS has learned to search for places on the map of Russia and even get directions. But users of previous firmware versions have already appreciated this. But the new feature of iOS 6 - turn-by-turn navigation with voice instructions - has recently begun to work in the vastness of our homeland, broadcasting instructions in real Russian. True, navigation without the outlines of houses is not very convenient. But this, we hope, is only a temporary problem.
New App Store: the brakes are defeated
Reviewing the first beta version of iOS 6, I rather emotionally cursed the new App Store. The problem was not only a banal rejection of the new, but also the wild, absolutely indecent brakes of the store. Now everything is almost perfect: visual effects do not slow down, and the store itself quickly responds to all commands. Some windows and menus have been redesigned in the last two months. The main store screen has become much prettier: rare application icons have been placed closer to each other and diluted with rectangular banners. Vertical lists remain only in the Top Applications menu, and in other places only scrolling to the right and left is used.
In general, the App Store now deserves a positive assessment. Special thanks to Apple for returning application rating stars to the TOP lists.
Oh yes, a small but useful feature has appeared in Settings: now applications can automatically download data over 3G if Wi-Fi is acting up.
There aren't a lot of changes to Mail, but they're welcome. First, pull-to-refresh on the message list. Another tweak from Cydia has lost its meaning
Secondly, the VIP box . The term VIP in this case has nothing to do with its Russian understanding. You can select those contacts who are especially important to you, and correspondence with them will go into this box:
We also note the possibility of marking messages with priority flags:
Another nice innovation is the insertion of media files through the context menu in the message creation window:
Of course, no one has canceled copy-paste, but it’s much more convenient.
At the same time, right in Mail (and a number of other applications) you can format text through the context menu (basic functions such as bold, italic and underline are available).
Apple no longer issues @me addresses
After the closure of the MobileMe service, Cupertino stopped openly supporting its “fruits” in new versions of iOS. Now, when registering a mailbox, you can receive names exclusively on @icloud.com domains. If you previously acquired an @me address, then not only will it not be closed, but it will even be duplicated on the @icloud domain and automatically linked to your Apple ID account. True, even in this situation, the system gives priority to the @icloud domain. Because of this, image lovers will have to manually select the @me mailbox in the settings of the sent letter each time.
You can follow other, even smaller changes in the relevant news: iOS 6 Beta 2, Beta 3 and Beta 4.
Why do a rollback at all? What about this old interface?
I understand people who want to downgrade for the sake of the interface. Details from real life integrated into the system interface do not complicate the experience of working with the device, but on the contrary, make use simpler and more enjoyable.
The images, textures, shapes of objects that we encounter day after day within the operating system may currently look a little wild when compared with the general idea of minimalism, but this does not mean that the design is bad, it just does not correspond to the rules and ideas , which the community of designers and marketers so corrosively imposed on us.
I recognize and understand that the industry needs a vector of development, movement, and it is normal that design trends have changed, but this does not make the appearance of old interfaces bad in terms of visual aesthetics. They are just different forms, to each their own.
For me and many others, this is a breath of fresh air against the backdrop of monotonous, similar interfaces. This factor, coupled with the stability of the system, gave me new pleasant impressions of the device, and now, for two weeks now, I have been using the iPad mini as my main device, at home and on the road.
Place.
This question should not be asked at all. iOS 6 is not only crammed with useful features, but also works no worse than 5.1.1, and also pleases with slightly increased battery life - at least according to beta testers. You should refrain from updating for only two reasons: either you are using a locked iPhone, or you are not ready to use iOS without jailbreak. In the first case, contact here, but in the second, we can only recommend being patient and waiting for a miracle from Western hackers.
For everyone else, head on over to iTunes.
( 3 votes, overall rating: 5.00 out of 5)
