This year, 1. Now there are 2. Apps have turned phones into everything from a bank to a motion-sensitive video game device. Indeed, a warehouse of nostalgia could be stuffed with the everyday items that smartphones replaced: Maps, flashlights, clocks, scanners, video cameras, calendars, calculators, computers, iPods and more.
On-demand work began with the first internet boom in the late s. Currently there are about four million on-demand workers in the U. Supermarket checkout lines — strategically stocked with magazines and candy — were for a long time a major point of sale for gum.
Consumers waiting on line to pay would look around and make impulse buys. Indeed, gum sales have declined 15 percent since , the year the iPhone came out, according to market research firm Euromonitor International. People spent more time consuming media last year than ever before thanks to smartphones.
Socializing, which used to be a non-media activity, now occurs on social media and over mobile connections. Time spent on the mobile web has also cut into other media activities, such as reading physical papers and watching TV. Advertising dollars go to where the eyeballs are. Not only is the internet supplanting traditional advertising platforms like TV for the most ad spending worldwide, but internet advertising itself is in transition. Mobile advertising spending is expected to surpass desktop this year.
Apple removed that step by displaying the list on the left and the content on the right, no "back" button required for most apps. Apple also made it so that you could still see your content in a full-screen simply by turning the iPad into portrait-mode. The list was then hidden not behind a back button, but instead became a pop-over list. Apple added pop-over dialogs throughout the OS where previously the iPhone would require users to switch screens.
New app designs. Safari received a dedicated row for bookmarks, Apple added CoverFlow to the App Store, the Photos app organized pictures into stacks of images that could be pinched-out for a sneak-peek of the images within, Music got a simplified, iTunes-like interface with rows of album art, and the Settings app received the two-pane treatment mentioned above.
Essentially, native app sthat would have looked silly "blown up" to the iPad's x screen resolution received UI tweaks for the iPad's larger screen. Unfortunately, iOS 3. The Notepad app received a border of stitched leather to make it look like a real notebook, the Calendar and Contacts apps were both made to look like small books, complete with pages. While many simply found the new looks to be corny, the bigger issues was that in most cases, the realistic appearance did not have a direct correlation with the user interface.
So while the Address Book might look like a book, there were no pages to be turned, instead it simply had a book skin. This look has stayed around and in some cases has even made the transition to Mac OS X.
The very common knock against the iPad boiled down to this: it was just a big iPhone. That complaint was both true and false for a number of reasons. It was technically true that with iOS 3. However, that complaint turned out to not matter too much when it came to sales: Apple had already trained millions of users on how to use the iPhone and with the iPad essentially decided not to mess with a good thing. This version and two subesquent iOS 3.
Released in June of , iOS 4 was mainly about one thing: adding features for power users. Multitasking, app folders, Wi-Fi tethering, spell-check, customized Spotlight searching including web and Wikipedia , unified inbox, and support for multiple Exchange accounts all added up to an update that helped keep iOS competitive with Android, which was beginning to finally make inroads.
The headline improvement was, of course, multitasking. However, iOS 4 did not technically support "true" multitasking in that it didn't allow any app to simply run in the background.
Instead, iOS 4 offered developers several different multitasking services that they could run in the background:. The major question at the time was whether Apple's unique implementation of multitasking was a distinction without a difference. For most users, that turned out to be the case. Apple's implementation of multitasking meant that the iPhone would be less likely to suffer from rogue apps taking up too much memory in the background, which in turn led to a system with most of the battery life and performance benefits of the old, "single-tasking" iOS with the multitasking features that Apple felt users needed.
There were and are plenty of cases where Apple's system didn't feel robust-enough, such as allowing apps to update themselves in the background, but by-and-large the compromise struck in iOS 4 and beyond has worked for most users. The multitasking menu was triggered by yet another Home button change: you brought up a list of recently running apps with a double-press.
Although Steve Jobs famously said that "If you see a task manager [ Apple also added a persistent set of music control widgets that could be accessed by swiping to the left of the menu. As with many iOS features over the years, Apple was certainly not the first to offer video chat. However, Apple's implementation both worked better and had a simpler interface than other solutions. FaceTime worked only between iPhones and and later, Macs and iPad 2s and though Apple had promised to make the video chat solution an open standard, it has yet to deliver on that promise.
With iOS 4, Apple "finally" introduced folders to the homescreen. Its solution was elegant in that users simply had to drag and drop icons on top of each other to form folders, a UI innovation that seems simple yet Android has just now caught up with Ice Cream Sandwich.
Along with folders, iPhone users could now also replace the background image on the home screen. Retina Display. Apple also added support for the iPhone 4's Retina Display and faster processor, giving developers even more ways to create high quality apps. Productivity features. Although iOS 4 still may not have appealed to hardcore BlackBerry users, Apple did at least beef up its email offering by adding support for multiple Exchange accounts and, critically, a unified inbox and threaded email messages.
System-wide spell check also made its first appearance, offering red underlines and quick text-replacement for misspelled words. The Calendar app now allowed users the individually hide specific calendars, the Contacts app gained the ability to link duplicate contacts, and the Messaging app received search capabilities.
Unfortunately for Apple, iOS 4 was also embroiled in the Antennagate scandal just as much as the iPhone 4 was. In this version of iOS as well as earlier versions , Apple claimed the phone didn't properly display signal strength information. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don't know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars.
Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place. On the camera front, iOS 4. Lastly, this update introduced AirPrint for those who still bother with that sort of thing. That purpose actually brought with it an added benefit: full support for Wi-Fi-based mobile hotspots. Apple followed up with iOS 4. Also like iOS 3, iOS 5 introduced so many new features that it's difficult to keep them all straight.
So many, in fact, you might say that in the current smartphone battle, Apple's hardware is the anvil and iOS 5 is the hammer the company is using to forge a permanent and sizeable marketshare.
Available only on the iPhone 4S, Siri replaces Voice Control with a "virtual assistant" that is able to do more than just connect calls. Siri allows you to ask it questions and give comments in natural language with hooks all over the OS and the web. Siri communicates with everything from your calendar to WolframAlpha.
Apple launched Siri as a Beta, which is unique for the company. Often, Siri deserves the tag: it sometimes is unable to connect to the web to perform either voice recognition or transcription, other times it returns strange results.
Still, as a natural user interface, it's one of the more promising things we've seen come along in some time. Notification Center. With iOS 5, Apple did something to make sense of the barrage of notifications coming in to the typical iPhone with Notification Center.
Similar to the way Android works, there is a persistent pull-down drawer that lists all of your recent notifications along with the ability to clear them out by tapping a tiny "x" for each app. Notification Center is also Apple's first, tiny foray into the world of ambient information, with weather and stock widgets built-in.
There is also a large and depending on how many apps you have installed, somewhat daunting section within settings for managing which apps can notify you and how.
Within these settings you can also decide which notifications appear on the lock screen. One final notification feature is the option to have notifications appear as transient banners at the top of the screen rather than as interruptive, modal pop-ups. The jury is still out on whether or not Apple can improve on Notification Center, but at the very least we now have an entirely new area within iOS beyond the homescreen, lockscreen, and individual apps.
With iOS 5, Apple has begun encroaching on some carrier revenues and also the hardcore BlackBerry Messenger fanbase with its own system for sending short messages. Like BBM, it is capable of showing deliver receipts and sending multimedia messages. Unlike SMS, it's entirely free. It's tied to either an Apple ID or a phone number and in both cases it can automatically detect whether your recipient is capable of receiving iMessages.
When they are, iOS automatically converts your text message into an iMessage, which is sent to all iOS devices that user has registered and active. This system is convenient and invisible for most iPhone users, but that convenience is possibly offset by potential confusion for people who switch phones on a regular basis.
So far, iMessage hasn't quite captured the popular imagination in the same way BBM did, but it's still early days for the system and we'll have to see how much pickup it gets going forward. No PC required. Perhaps most importantly, Apple removed the requirement that iOS devices be physically tethered to a computer via USB in order to be activated. Theoretically, an iPad or iPhone could now become somebody's sole computing device. That's a significant change and while it could portend bigger things for the iOS platform in the future, for now it's more of a necessary condition for a mobile computing revolution than a sufficient one.
It says something that a feature like Wi-Fi sync is so far down on the list of features for iOS 5. The syncing here works quite well and is set by default to only operate when the device is charging. You might be tired of reading this by now, but once again Apple waited until it got the feature right rather than launching before it was ready. Over-the-air updates. Apps purchased on one device automatically appear on all other iOS devices. There's also a new music component that stores all of your music on Apple's servers for easy downloading.
Fitting with the "PC-Free" feature, you are also able to back up and restore iOS devices directly instead of with a computer. While iTunes W-Fi sync means you don't have to tether your iOS device to a computer as often, the promise of iCloud is that you won't have to tether your iOS device to a computer at all. Other new features in iOS 5 include Twitter integration, the ability to use the volume button as a shutter button in the camera, a Reminder app, and an app called "Newstand" for magazine subscriptions.
Mobile Safari gained "Reader" functionality, which both saves and reformats web pages for easier reading a la Instapaper. Apple added a split-keyboard option in landscape mode on the iPad, which makes thumb-typing a bit easier when holding the tablet. The iPad also got proper tabs in the Safari web browser. Apple replaced the modal-pop up for lists introduced way back in iOS 3.
AirPlay also saw an update, allowing the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S to directly mirror the entire screen instead of requiring each app to build in support. The biggest complaint about iOS 5. Apple has released on bugfix update, iOS 5. Arguably, all of the most important features in iOS 5 are more about the future of iOS than about this particular software release. Siri is still in Beta, the promise of iCloud and a PC-free existence is tempting but, for most users, not likely to be fully realized today.
Yet the pieces are all here to make the case that iOS is on its way to being able to replace the computer for a very large number of users. The new version revealed even mix of surprises and expected changes, but none sent greater shockwaves through the industry than the revamping of one of the most important apps in the platform: Maps.
Google Maps has long been considered the benchmark in online mapping, a service that Apple had licensed since the original iPhone's introduction in In iOS 6, that effort comes to fruition with a thoroughly revamped Maps app that features turn-by-turn navigation for the first time, a 3D "Flyover" mode, and Siri integration.
The underlying mapping data is seemingly provided by a variety of sources, but Dutch navigation company TomTom is prominently noted in the new app's credits. Siri enhancements. Speaking of Siri, Apple's versatile voice-powered assistant got a big upgrade after being introduced as a beta in iOS 5.
Version 6 now lets you ask for sports scores, schedules, and player data, restaurant reviews from Yelp, and reservations from OpenTable. You can also launch apps directly from Siri by speaking their names and post status updates directly to Facebook and Twitter.
Indeed, the dream of a completely hands-free smartphone is starting to seem within reach, and that seems to be part of Apple's long-term picture: the company announced a partnership with a number of automotive manufacturers to integrate Siri control in their cars. With laws against handheld phone use cropping up around the world, it's a shrewd move. Still, Apple made a couple key changes here, most notably a Do Not Disturb mode that silences notifications and phone calls during hours of your choosing.
The pull-down tray also adds Twitter and Facebook buttons to quickly fire off status updates and tweets. Facebook integration.
Of course, with Facebook features in Siri and Notification Center, that can mean only one thing: Facebook integration has officially been added to iOS 6, joining Twitter which had been added the year prior. A dark horse in the iOS 6 announce, Passbook, might factor prominently in a future attack by Apple in the still-immature mobile payments market.
Shared Photo Streams. Just like iOS 5's original Photo Streams feature, shared Streams show up in real time on other devices, the only difference is that other users' devices can be added into the mix. Safari has been refreshed in iOS 6 to battle Google's popular Chrome Sync with a feature called iCloud Tabs that does pretty much what you'd imagine: it syncs your browser tabs across devices and PCs.
Reading List, meanwhile, now saves web page content in iOS 5, it just saved links , pitting it head to head against popular apps like Instapaper. FaceTime over cellular and better Apple ID integration. Imagine a customised newsfeed full of the services you use — presented at the right time. Think of how Google Now might evolve, for example. They will design a single experience that will stretch across any internet connected terminal. That brings us back to the concept of cards and how content presented in this way could work well for users on almost any type of screen and be meaningful.
So the future of the app may be no future at all as we move to an era of seamless connectivity and experience wherever we are and whatever device we use. The rise of the emoji for brand marketing Five things great brands will do differently on social media in
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