The iOS 6 Review: Maps Thoroughly Investigated and More
by Brian Klug & Saumitra Bhagwat on September 19, 2012 2:21 PM ESTNew iCloud Features
Since iCloud made its debut last year alongside iOS 5 and OS X Lion, it has matured as a truly integrated service and has been at the center of Apple’s cloud strategy. With iCloud deeply integrated with iOS and OS X, it evident that Apple is using the service to keep users happy and stuck within Apple's own ecosystem. Good iCloud integration gives users a reason to buy tablets, notebooks and phones all from Apple, instead of picking and choosing from different vendors.
iCloud itself cannot be regarded as a new feature in iOS anymore as it its already been deeply embedded into the OS since iOS 5. There are however some new features that rely on the iCloud backend, such as iCloud tabs, offline reading list and Shared Photo Streams. Other features such as Facebook integration also leverage iCloud to keep contact lists and calendar events in sync. In conjunction with the iOS 6 release, Apple has also added new apps to iCloud.com, namely, Notes and Reminders. Other apps such a Mail, Calendar and Contacts have also been refreshed to blur the line between their iOS and OS X counterparts.
iCloud tabs lets you view your open tabs on your iOS 6 devices and Macs running Mountain Lion. The feature works as advertised, and the update speed across devices is quite impressive. This is a huge boon to the tablet usage model as it allows you to quickly switch between being productive on a notebook and relaxing content consumption on your tablet. Gone are the days when you need to email yourself links to your iPad to continue browsing what you had open on your Mac. This is also a big feature for keeping users using Safari on the Mac instead of migrating to alternate browsers like Chrome.
Safari on iOS also adds support for offline reading list, so you can cache pages for offline viewing later. These also get synced across devices almost in real time and at an impressive speed. If you’ve ever had to live through the nightmare that was MobileMe, you will truly appreciate the speed and reliability offered by apps and features that use iCloud.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
105 Comments
View All Comments
Leonick - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
The satellite images are interesting. You can zoom further in on my house in the middle of a forest in Sweden than you can Seoul, the image is in greyscale for some reason but you get fairly close and it's also fairly recent. (A shame the road that goes by the house doesn't have a name or can be found with search even though the road itself is on the map.)Another interesting thing that I noticed while looking around is that at least here in Sweden Apple seem to have a lot more current imagery than Google or even Eniro (local service) does (Eniro seem to mostly have the same as Google though). In Kalmar, a moderately sized city on the south eastern coast a bridge was constructed over the railroad about 2-3 years ago, in Google Maps there are just two piles of sand on both sides where the bridge will be, in Apples imagery the bridge is there.
Spoelie - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
Wouldn't it be swell for Google to now sue Apple over mundane features like dropping a pin in their maps app? Sweet vengeance over Apple suing OEMs over the bounce animation or showing a menu while tapping on numbers, ...Not that I agree with such practices, but at least it would balance things out ;)
yticolev - Saturday, September 22, 2012 - link
If I'm not mistaken, the push pin in the Maps app is Apple developed, not Google. The entire Maps app used an Apple interface with Google data.welltoldtales - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
"one of the new OSes have done a great job of dealing with the problem of displaying content from two applications at once"I know people will rip me for saying this, but the Blackberry Playbook actually does THE best job of multitasking. Having used on with my work I attempted to use a 3rd gen iPad and simply couldn't handle the lack of multitasking. Same with an ASUS Transformer.
steven75 - Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - link
Do you know about the multitouch gestures? Most iPad users do not, but they are indispensable for multitasking.faizoff - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
There seems to be many people unhappy with the native maps app. I read about it yesterday in many forums but today many news sites seem to be reporting it as well.Heck BusinessInsider has a step by step guide to get the website google maps on your home screen.
http://www.businessinsider.com/get-google-maps-bac...
Conficio - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
"and at present it [Google] literally is the 9000 pound gorilla for maps."That is only true if the Google maps can connect to the Google servers. If that connection is not there a 5 year old navigation device with no updates beats it hands down.
Flying Goat - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
Have you played with Google maps offline mode? I haven't, but it may be handy, assuming you plan in advance, of course.chinkgai - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
i'm not sure i like his writing style. he doesn't seem as concise as the other writers here.marioyohanes - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
Brian, you might wanna check Siri again in international location, I'm pretty sure Dubai will works just great now. From my experience in Jakarta Indonesia, last week I couldn't ask Siri for anything related to location based questions. However, yesterday, as iOS 6 officially launched, I can even ask Siri for nearest dentist and it even listing nearest food stall with delivery option. I'm very overwhelmed with how good Siri is righ now, for the first time, my investment in 4S paid off :)