When iOS 5 was released last October, it brought with it a sleuth of features big - iCloud, Siri, and iMessage most notably - and small, such as the ability to assign individual text tones to contacts, for one. And now that the months are flying by and we're beginning to approach the release date of first beta of the next major version of iOS - iOS 6 - now seems like the perfect time to pen a list of features that I hope Apple introduces to iOS.
The endless possibilities created when that Cydia icon first appears on the iOS home screen should never be underestimated, and it's thanks to the likes of Redsn0w - the popular jailbreak tool released by the iPhone-Dev Team - that users can truly test the resolve of their iPhone, iPad or iPod touch devices.
With new releases of smartphone devices regularly offering improved hardware performance beyond belief (see the Samsung Galaxy S III, for example), the standard of gaming is improving at an incredible rate, and although hardcore gamers are renowned for sitting on their couches playing Xbox or PlayStation, more and more are now getting their fix on-the-fly.
Dropbox, being one of the first established cloud-based services on the map, has a large army of users. With Apple, Microsoft and Google all recently joining the party, competition is as fierce as its ever been, and the functionality of the mobile apps will undoubtedly play a key role in the success of each.
Since the introduction of iOS 5 in October 2011 to the public, Notification Center has been a staple part of the iDevice diet for users and has brought about an efficient and easily accessible method of accessing any device notifications. Even though Notification Center is used daily by iPhone owners and has been extremely well received, there are obviously a few things that users would like to change.
The App Store contains over 600,000 apps in total, and while there are plenty to choose from in a variety of categories, the improvement of the iPhone's camera has seen a meteoric rise in the number of camera and image manipulation-based apps.
Apple products are renowned for being in sync with each other in a harmonious, seamless fashion. The Cupertino company places much emphasis on getting things done with less and less wires, buttons, and optical drives, and designer Ishac Bertran has created a wonderful concept in keeping with that motif.
Since its unveiling some two days ago, the Samsung Galaxy S III has become a huge divider of opinion, and while it's inarguably a powerhouse in terms of hardware, one view seems to be shared universally - it's not particularly nice to look at.
Ever since the Kinect was released, people immediately began to see that the technology's potential extended far beyond gaming. A pretty extensive homebrew community surrounding the Kinect developed, eventually gaining support even from Microsoft. That's not surprising, however, given the plethora of cool stuff developed. And, speaking of cool stuff developed to bring the Kinect to new heights, a research team at the Human Media Lab of Canada's Queen's University led by professor Roel Vertegaal developed an insane 360-degree display called the Telepod. Basically, the primary function of the Telepod is to create a 3D hologram that slightly livens up videoconferencing.
The Apple iPhone 4S has been with us for about seven months now, which means that we have also had the fabulous Siri personal assistant organizing our digital lives for the same amount of time. For those non iPhone 4S owners the lack of official Siri support has been very frustrating, especially considering numerous developers have proved that Apple's assistant performs perfectly fine on older generation devices.
