Looking through Apple’s page on iOS5 and its new features, many of them are being covered by the tech press, especially the new notifications (sorely needed). There are a few that have received scant attention, and yet I know will personally benefit me or people I directly know a lot.
Calendar is expanding the available views so that the iPhone/iPod Touch version will now allow a week view. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve waited until I could open up iCal on my laptop in order to see the week at a glance.
Mail will now allow formatting, including bold, italics, and (most importantly for several people I know) indenting. My favorite new mail features are the ability to drag to arrange addresses, and the ability to manage folders.
Lastly, with an appleTV, the iPad2 can now be mirrored directly onto an HDTV over wifi.
There was not the classic “Steve” version of “One more thing”, but one new feature that has seen some mention in the press feels incomplete to me. There are also some things people were hoping for that were NOT announced.
There is a new messaging system built into iOS5 to supplement/coexist with MMS/SMS, but available to any iOS device even if not a cellular data plan – such as iPod Touches. I’m willing to be that like facetime, this is a feature that will be added to or made available to the Mac OS in Lion.
There have also been people talking about how movie streaming and a new AppleTV were not mentioned. My only reply is: All in good time. Apple is not positioning these things against Netflix, but once this infrastructure gets put in place, then movie streaming is such a no-brainer in terms of desirability that I’m sure we will see it.
One must remember – Apple no longer does annual announcements at MacWorld, etc. I suspect it’s because that lets them announce what features they want to, when they are good and ready to unleash something new.