iOS 5: Exploring 7 Hidden New Features

iPhone 4S owners are poised to become members of an elite class. Their new phones boast an improved camera, dual antennae and an unpaid personal intern named Siri — all relevant talking points in “Who’s got the real iPhone?” one-upsmanship battles.

Luckily, though, even 4S have-nots can enjoy the benefits of iOS 5, one of the new phone’s best features. Released Wednesday, Apple’s new mobile OS is a no-brainer download (we gave it an enthusiastic 8 verdict). It’s also entirely free, and compatible with iPhone 3GS, 4 and 4S, the 3rd- and 4th-gen iPod touch media players, and iPad and iPad 2.

Downloaded the new OS? Good. The blogosphere is teeming with iOS 5 feature guides, but aside from exposing Easter eggs hidden in Siri voice recognition, many sites are glossing over some of the OS’s most hidden or novel new features. Here we explore some of the more notable or quirky additions to grace our iPhone and iPad interfaces.

User-Defined Keyboard Shortcuts

At first glance, iOS 5 does nothing to address the pain and embarrassment of auto-correction mistakes. But go to your Settings menu, and navigate to General>Keyboard. Scroll to the bottom, and you’ll find a prompt to add a new shortcut. Just type in the word or phrase that deserves a shortcut, and then plug in the shortcut itself.

Now, for example, when you type in “fwiw,” iOS will provide an auto-correct prompt for “for what it’s worth.” It may not be a Twitter-friendly tool that’s compatible with character count requirements, but it can help ease the pain of constantly miss-typing (or miss-tapping, rather) long or vexing words.

And the fun doesn’t end there. I see great potential for mischief too: Grab your pal’s iOS 5 device, and begin entering shortcuts for common words like “hi” or “siri,” as in the screenshot above. Hilarity abounds as your friend suspects his or her iDevice is suffering demonic possession.

Create Custom Vibrations for Stealth Alerts

You’re in a high-powered business meeting. Your phone volume is mute because you don’t want to offend the client. But you really need to receive that critical phone call from your pilates instructor scheduling a rain check. By assigning a unique vibration sequence to any contact, you can leave your iPhone on the table and listen for the sweet euphony of a customized “zizip, zizip” as your device resonates against the table top.

Interested? Go to Contacts, choose a contact and tap Edit. Navigate to Vibration>Create New Vibration. You’ll be greeted by the screen above. Simply tap out a new vibration rhythm, save it, and prepare for near-stealth notifications of when special people are trying to reach you.

Create LED Flashes for Visual Alerts

We all have different preferences when it comes to how we receive iOS notifications. Some people like audible alerts, some like vibrating alerts, some like no alerts at all. But the more flamboyant among us may prefer a new visual alert buried in the Accessibility menu in General settings. Toggling on “LED Flash For Alerts” will prompt your iPhone to trigger your camera’s LED whenever you receive a message or email when the phone is set to silent mode.

This feature offers great utility to anyone who can’t hear, but we also see great potential for multiplayer gamers who like to create a chilly-spooky vibe in darkened rooms. Huzzah! says the flash. Your pizza has arrived!

Instant Definitions

Much has been made about iOS 5’s new text formatting options. You can select a word or text string, and then make it bold, italic or underline. That’s well publicized. But check out all the other options that become available when you hold down a selection of a word.

The Suggest function provides a list of other words you may have preferred to type. Quote Level either increases or decreases the number of vertical lines that appear before text — helpful when you’re annotating a threaded conversation. But one of the niftiest options is Define, shown here, which provides a tight (but surprisingly robust) dictionary entry for the selection, complete with a definition, usage examples, and often information on word derivatives and origin.

Cover Your Digital Tracks

The new iOS includes a number of key features that foster more private, secure use. In Safari’s settings menu (shown above), you can toggle on Private Browsing. Once enabled, Safari will refrain from building a history of your browser activity (hey, we all have something to hide).

Over in the new Message app, which provides for seamless transitions between traditional carrier-hosted text messaging and Apple-hosted iMessages, you can define whether to allow Read Receipts, which notify your friends when you’ve read their messages. So, if you want to continue the charade of, “Oh, did you send me a message? Never saw it,” then head to Settings>Messages, and turn Send Read Receipts to off.

Finally, you can put an end to those awkward conversations that occur when you leave your iPhone on the table, and someone reads the first few sentences of one of your text messages or emails on the lock screen. Go to Settings>Notifications and turn off Show Preview for both Messages and Mail.

Check App Usage, Dispatch Offenders

If you fear your iDevice is approaching the limits of its storage capacity, head on over to Settings>General>Usage, and start surveying your worst offenders. Clicking on an app name will provide a bit more detail — specifically, the footprint of the document and data files associated with the app. You’ll also see a button to delete the app entirely.

Alternate Routes in Maps

Views of alternate routes have always been available in the desktop version of Google Maps, and now they’re finally available on iOS devices too. After defining where you are and where you want to be, just tap Route 1, Route 2, etc., to toggle between Google’s recommended directions.

iPad now 97% of tablet traffic, eclipses iPhone, iOS remains mobile leader

A new market research report notes that mobile devices now amount to almost 7 percent of all US web traffic, with Apple’s iOS representing a 58.5 percent slice of all mobile traffic and the iPad now accounting for more traffic than iPhones.

 

The growth of mobile devices has claimed a 6.8 percent chunk of US web traffic from conventional PCs, according to a new report by comScore.

Of that segment, about two thirds of the traffic is from mobile phones and a remaining third is being generated by tablet users. The group notes that Apple’s iPad now accounts for 97.2 percent of all tablet-originating web traffic, driving home the reality that competitors have not yet released a significant tablet competitor.

Among iOS users, iPad now accounts for 46.8 percent of all traffic generated, making it now a more prolific tool than the iPhone for mobile web use, which represents 42.6 percent of iOS traffic.

An increasingly important market segment

The firm also outlined why the growth of tablet traffic is significant, noting that almost half of tablet owners have completed purchases using their tablet.

“Tablet owners exhibited significant use of their devices throughout the entire online shopping process,” comScore reported, “from doing the initial planning, conducting product and store research, making price comparisons, to finally transacting. In the past month, more than half of tablet owners looked up product or price information for a specific store (56 percent) and read customer ratings and reviews while on a tablet (54 percent).”

The group added, “the incremental reach through mobile and connected devices should not be underestimated,” pointing out that, “in August 2011, the additional mobile and connected device audience for Pandora accounted for more than half of their total cross-platform audience.”

Who rules the mobile world? Girls! No iOS

“Although the Android platform accounts for the highest share of the smartphone market (43.7 percent in August),” comScore stated, “its total audience among mobile and connected devices in current use is eclipsed by the Apple iOS audience.

“The iOS platform had the highest share of connected devices and smartphones in use at 43.1 percent, fueled by the iPad’s dominance in the tablet market, while Android accounted for 34.1 percent of the total mobile and connected device universe.”

While Apple has a minor lead over Android with iOS as a mobile platform in terms of its installed base (unique users), it has a major lead in the mobile traffic those users engage in.

“When measuring market share of Internet traffic by platform,” comScore explained, “iOS accounted for more than half (58.5 percent) of the share of total non-computer traffic in the U.S. Android OS ranked second, delivering 31.9 percent of overall non-computer traffic in August. With iOS having a significantly higher share of traffic (58.5 percent) compared to its share of devices (43.1 percent), it suggests that iOS users are heavier-than-average consumers of Internet content.”

It has been speculated that the huge divergence between Android’s popularity (sales of Android-based phones have outnumbered iPhone sales most of this year) and its minority presence in web analytics is due to the fact that the majority of low end devices now use Android, including basic models that work like feature phones. That results in impressive sales figures for Android as a platform, but does not translate into a comparably important software platform for apps, nor an equally important market demographic.

That reality has helps make it clear why the supposed “avalanche” of new Android tablets failed to materialize as a real challenger to the iPad over the past year, just as Steve Jobs had predicted last October.

Unlike mobile phones, which existed as a major market long before the iPhone, tablets have never taken off prior to the release of iPad, making the new device a market unto itself much like the iPod had been. Apple’s music player has not been significantly challenged in sales by any competitor over the past decade.

If Apple can maintain a similar competitive lead with the iPad over the next decade, it will not only maintain dominance over mobile devices and the App Store software that runs on them, but also continue to eat up the market currently held by conventional computers on one end while its own conventional computers vie for market share within that market itself.

 

Google’s new mobile ambitions

A slew of new product announcements will put Apple under more pressure than ever.

Mobile phone manufacturers claim their handsets are designed to last four years – but consumers will be asked to change their phones faster than ever over the next few months as a host of new devices is released onto the market.

Last week, just days before the announcement of Steve Jobs’ death, Apple announced the iPhone 4S, an upgrade rather than a revolution for its world-leading model; two days later HTC announced its new device, focusing on audio performance. Google is soon to unveil its new flagship model, likely to be called the Nexus Prime, and major announcements are expected from the newly resurgent Motorola. The pace of change is dizzying.

One theme, however, emerges clearly: both Google and Microsoft want to respectively maintain and establish their positions alongside Apple as major smartphone powers. Google has numbers on its side, with more than half of all new phones sold now running the company’s Android operating system. But its problem now is to establish the operating system as a real rival to the ease of use the Apple iOS has pioneered.

Google’s next major mobile announcement will see it launch a new version of the Android operating system, codenamed “Ice Cream Sandwich”. This will be the first that, like Apple’s iOS, provides a unified experience across both tablet devices and mobile phones. The effect, the company hopes, will be to galvanise the app developers who make an OS feel vibrant. Thus far, it’s been Apple that has hogged their attention because iPhone and iPad users remain much more likely to download paid-for apps rather than free ones.

Steve Jobs biography to be released on 24 October

Publisher brings forward official biography of Apple co-founder, who told author: “I want my kids to know me”

The official Steve Jobs biography will be released on 24 October after being rushed forward because of the Apple co-founder’s death.

The authorised biography Steve Jobs is written by Walter Isaacson, the former managing editor of Time magazine. Customer pre-purchases have already made it the number one bestseller at Amazon. Publishing house Simon & Schuster had originally planned to release it on 21 November.

Isaacson has told how Jobs, in pain and too weak to climb stairs a few weeks before his death, wanted his children to understand why he wasn’t always there for them. “I wanted my kids to know me,” Isaacson quoted Jobs as saying in their final interview at Jobs’ home in Palo Alto, California. “I wasn’t always there for them and I wanted them to know why and to understand what I did.”

Isaacson said he visited Jobs for the last time a few weeks ago and found him curled up in some pain in a downstairs bedroom. Jobs had moved there because he was too weak to go up and down stairs “but his mind was still sharp and his humour vibrant”, Isaacson writes in an essay that will be published in Time magazine’s 17 October edition.

Jobs died on Wednesday at the age of 56 after suffering a rare form of pancreatic cancer.

Simon & Schuster’s synopsis says the book is based on more than 40 interviews with Jobs conducted over two years – as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues. “Although Jobs co-operated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against.

“Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple’s hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership and values.”

Another publisher, Bluewater Productions, has said it is rushing out a special edition e-book of its forthcoming comic book on Jobs.

The 32-page comic titled Steve Jobs: Founder of Apple is initially being sold on the NOOK and Kindle readers. The print edition is due for release at the end of October, with a portion of the profits from both issues going to the American Cancer Society.

Goodbye, Steve!

Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple and mind behind the company’s visionary products, passed away at the age of 56.

Steve Jobs was famous for creating a “reality distortion field” in which his charisma, words, personality and vision succeeded in making him the most persuasive evangelist in the technology world.

The following is a collection of his quotes on technology and life:

“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the ones who think differently. While some may see crazy, we see genius.”

“That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

“The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it into a nationwide communications network.

We’re just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people – as remarkable as the telephone.”

“Picasso had a saying, ‘Good artists copy, great artists steal.’ We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas. … I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, artists, zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.”

“You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. … Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”

“I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet. The condor used the least energy to move a kilometre. Humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing about a third of the way down the list. … That didn’t look so good, but then someone at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle and a man on a bicycle blew the condor away. That’s what a computer is to me: The computer is the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with. It’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.”

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful, … that’s what matters to me.”

“We do no market research. We don’t hire consultants. … We just want to make great products.”

“When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”