Is iOS 6 underwhelming?

Posted by SamW10 on July 4, 2012 10:00 am 47

I believe that iOS 6 is underwhelming.

Over the past few weeks, I have been running the developer beta of iOS 6 both on my iPhone 4 and my iPad 2. Following the keynote, I was excited to try out the new maps feature; but the highlight of the WWDC keynote was Mountain Lion - and I don't even have a Mac. Let me go through the main upgrades of iOS 6 in comparison to iOS 5.

I'm not really sure what happened with the formatting of this table. The HTML is all fine o_O

iOS 6 iOS 5
The key feature of iOS 6 - Maps:
The new maps app for iOS 6 was definitely the most impressive new feature. Sure there were Google Maps in previous iterations of the software, but no-one had previously been able to look at cities in 3D, and when I showed this to a few people, they were impressed to. Turn-by-turn navigation is a handy feature, however long overdue. To add insult, on both of my iDevices there is no read out of the directions, and even if there was it is all in feet (I am in Australia, therefore I use metres, however in later versions I suspect they will fix this). Ultimately, maps is not something people use on a day to day basis, and I'm sure you will agree.		 The key feature of iOS 5 - iCloud:
iCloud was the biggest feature of iOS 5, even if it wasn't really it's own feature. iCloud was baked into many apps, and is something I use on a day to day basis. I love being able to add a calendar event on my phone and then being able to pull it up on my iPad later. It's awesome how I can take a photo and have peace of mind that it has been put in the cloud, available for access via my iPad or PC. It's great being able to restore a backup from iCloud without ever having to connect to my PC (and using the crapware they called 'iTunes' :P)

More Siri functionality:
Obviously I don't speak for everyone, but an enhancement of Siri affects me in 2-4+2 ways (0 for the mathematically challenged). But to be fair, I'm sure sport score and movie time lookup will be useful (hopefully it will work with Australian sports), although I fail to see how this is a killer feature - it's second on Apple's features list. It is proven that Siri's functionality comes from the cloud, so why does our device software need to be updated to take advantage of these enhancements? Oh, and Siri can now open apps. That, is ground breaking.

iMessage:
Also second on Apple's features list for iOS 5 (to be fair), iMessage was the most exciting thing about iOS 5 for me. Pretty much everyone I know has an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch which makes it so easy (and cost-effective) to talk to any of these people. Touches such as the image when someone is writing a message, read receipts (off by default :( ) and group-messaging make it so much better than regular SMS.
Do Not Disturb:
The most significant feature of iOS 6 for me is Do Not Disturb. Being a very minor feature on the iOS 6 page, DND certainly makes a big impact. I have it set from 10pm until 4pm (sleep then school) which means no longer will I get the fright of my life (and woken up from half-sleep) when a vibration occurs because of an email from Exchange telling me my inbox is nearly full.

Notification Center:
Listed first on Apple's iOS 5 features list, Notification Center is not something I open very often. While the banners at the top when I receive notifications are great, I rarely open Notification Center, and I'm sure others are the same. Notification Center was pretty much catch up on Apple's behalf, and while it looks nice and works well, it is nothing special.

Safari Cloud Sync:
While currently very cool and useful feature between my iPad and iPhone, Safari cloud sync will be even better when it works with Windows. While I can use a third party app (like Google Chrome - which is my desktop browser of choice), I don't tend to as I am familiar with Safari (for iOS), it is faster and it is the default app for web links. I'm looking forward to reading something on the computer, getting into bed and continue reading from where I was.

 Reminders:
I'm not sure about everyone else, but I use reminders as my go-to to-do (:p) list. I don't use location based reminders (a huge battery hog), but I do use time based reminders frequently, as well as a list for times when I am not sure what I need to do. It also syncs with iCloud, meaning I can pickup from where I left off on my iPad from my iPhone and vice versa.

App store improvements:
Finally, I can download an app and continue browsing through the app store. Finally, Apple has delivered one of the most requested features in iOS of all time. Another convenient thing is how I no longer need to enter my password when updating apps (which makes sense really). Next I'd like to see the removal of the need to enter your password when downloading free apps...but these improvements don't constitute a whole new software revision.

Newsstand:

Ahh...what a waste of space on my home screen. Does anyone use it...or see why it is any better than just having apps for each news source?

As you can now clearly see, I much prefer the improvement of iOS 5 over iOS 6, and you can see why I feel iOS 6 was quite underwhelming (given what was delivered in iOS 5). While I'll take the improvements of iOS 6 any day of the week (over nothing), a year has passed and the largest update has been Siri (which I can't even use on my devices).

But what do you think? Were you happy with what the keynote at WWDC delivered in the way of iOS, or were you expecting more?