iOS, News/Rumors June 11, 2012

WWDC 2012: iOS 6 – Facebook Integration, FaceTime, PassBook & Lost Mode

The first day of the expected WWDC is over and it come with a lot of devices and features that would surely make Apple chuckle over success. Apple has finally announced the new operating system for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Apple TV. It will be available for iPhone 3GS and later, the 2nd- and 3rd-generation iPad, and the 4th-generation iPod touch this fall and it’s stated that not all the features presented at WWDC will be available on all products. Developers can get their hands on the Beta version starting from today, 11 June.

Features unveiled:

Siri- Siri gets update for iPad and restaurant selecting made by rating: you can use OpenTable from Siri’s interface to book a tablet in a blink of an eye. The virtual assistant has now the power to launch apps, so just utter the name of the app and it will open in seconds. Also, Siri got support for quite an impressive number of languages, including Chinese and Korean.

Facebook Integration

Facebook is the second popular social network that gets official iOS integration. Twitter was integrated in iOS 5 and now Facebook is also “on loose”. You have the advantage of getting “tap to post” form Notification Center so now there is no need for firstly going into the app for writing a new status. You’ll never miss a birthday again thanks to friends’ birthdays automatically integrated into your calendar.

Do Not Disturb feature

Apple introduce the Do Not Disturb Feature that practically tells your phone not to disturb you.

“I can see many of you are like me and you’ve been awakened in the middle of the night — this tells your phone not to bother you. The messages will still come to your phone; it just won’t light up the screen or make a sound.”

“You also get fine grain control over which phone calls you can receive.” This is nice — you can also do groups. “You can also set up repeated calls — if someone calls a second time in 3 mins, it will come through.”

Passbook

iOS comes with a brand new app called Passbook, being described as “the simplest way to get all your passes in one place.” Deal with boarding passes, rewards cards and movie tickets, practically with everything that has a bar code.

Google Maps: Turn-to-turn navigation and Flyover

The new maps in iOS 6, namely Google maps are said to come along with traffic services and turn-to-turn navigation.

Lost Mode

Apple has introduced an advanced version of Find my iPhone, the lost mode that practically allows the owner to send a number to the phone and the person that finds it merely has to tap a message for calling the owner back. I wonder if all those that find devices would return them.