ios

There's a new iOS in town and and it comes bearing gifts. iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch owners are kicking their old OS to the curb and embracing this handsome stranger.… Read more

New apps like iMessage, Newsstand, and Reminders are taking the spotlight in iOS 5, so it's easy to miss the little things, like Mail. Apple's well-respected mail client got a minor refresh, introducing several features iPhone users have been begging for.

If you browse through your Mail app in iOS 5, it's seemingly unchanged. But look again to find three key differences: text formatting, flagging, and mailbox management.

Yes, this means you can finally bold, italicize, and underline text (seriously, what took so long?), flag e-mails as important, mark e-mails as unread, and create or delete mailboxes. … Read more

How useful you'll find Photo Stream depends a lot on what you need or expect. If you just want a completely automated way to mirror all the photos you shoot on with your iPhone and iPad to your other computers and devices, then congratulations, this app's for you. If your needs stray beyond that to selective syncing/backup, the ability to manage what's in your Photo Stream cache, integration with other applications, and so on, then you're out of luck.

On each supported platform Photo Stream monitors a a pair of folders, one for uploads and … Read more

That pesky Newsstand icon is sure to drive those who have OCD about placement of app icons on their iOS device crazy.

Technically the Newsstand icon isn't an app icon, it is actually a folder, and as we already knew, iOS doesn't allow users to nest folders. Thanks to TUAW blogger Dave Caolo, there is a workaround that allows you to place the Newsstand icon in a folder. … Read more

My iOS 5 upgrade went pretty smoothly, though it took the better part of two hours and left me scratching my head about a lot of things. (One of them is iCloud, but thankfully Apple now has a brief guide to iCloud setup and operation.)

Indeed, while I'm overjoyed with Reminders and loving Safari's new Reading List, I'm really perturbed by some of the new operating system's quirks and limitations. Here's my list of the five most annoying things about iOS 5.

1. Photos can't be deleted from Photo Stream

On the … Read more

I've been reading magazines on my iPad for months. I didn't need iOS 5 to do it. I keep these apps--The New Yorker, Wired--in a separate folder on my iPad, called Reading. With iOS 5, that's no longer the case. A new baked-in app (or, rather, a type of smart folder) called Newsstand has now absorbed these apps into an iBooks-like wooden bookshelf.

Newsstand was one of the iOS 5 features that I'd been long awaiting, because I dreamed it would be a way of integrating books, periodicals, and all reading material into one destination. Alas, that's not the case here. Instead of being slotted into iBooks, Newsstand is a separate app. This means two icons to manage instead of one.

Also, I hoped that Newsstand would become a digital way of discovering not just magazines, newspapers, and journals, but a means of browsing covers and headlines from current issues. I browse real newsstands on the corner of 28th and Park, or at a bookstore, and based on what I see, I actually might buy an issue. A football preview came out this month? A cover story on a dinosaur discovery? Sure, I'll bite.

Newsstand on the iPad does none of this.… Read more

Newsstand, one of the new features of iOS 5, might not be much more than a filter for the App Store and a permanent folder that groups magazine and newspaper apps, but it's still a welcome addition, particularly for the iPad. Not only does Newsstand group your magazines and newspaper apps in one attractively designed folder, but it also promises automatic downloads of new issues for your subscriptions.

I love the iPad as a magazine reader, maybe even more than I love Super Stickman Golf. I've synced my magazine subscriptions to The New Yorker and Sports Illustrated and enjoy reading issues on the iPad for the digital extras and for the fact that it saves me from having to hunt around my house for the current issues. Newsstand is still a work in progress, but here's a quick overview on how it works. … Read more

When the folks at Apple showed off iOS 4.2 for iPad last year, they kept hammering on the idea that the software update was like having a whole new iPad.

They introduced multitasking, AirPrint, Folders, AirPlay, Game Center, and e-mail threading, but in all honesty, it didn't change the way I used the iPad in any significant way.

With iOS 5, Apple cut back on the hyperbole (a little) and just delivered a great new OS that genuinely opens up new ways to use the iPad and reinforces the ties between complementary Apple devices, including the iPhone, iPod … Read more

Following today's release of iOS 5, Apple has also updated several of its own apps to include support for iOS 5. Apps include Pages, Keynote, and Numbers for iOS, iMovie, Find My iPhone, and Remote.

Pages, Keynote, and Numbers for iOS now include enhancements for use with Apple's iCloud syncing service. Now, users can automatically keep their documents and presentations synced between all their devices using iCloud. Users can also download their iOS documents to their Mac or PC via the iWork section of iCloud.

iMovie, now at version 1.2.2, not only provides support for the … Read more