Right and wrong features due in iOS 6
Following last week's Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), a number of developers are shining a bit of light on which iOS new features look good and which may need more work.
Most of the press reports on iOS 6 have focused on the dueling mapping technologies of Apple and Google. You might find interesting a post by iOS developer Ole Begemann on the importance of Google in the use and development of online maps and the championing of technologies such as Street View.
At Use Your Loaf, Keith Harrison posted that the new In-App Purchase API will help out developers.
One of the things that can make In-App Purchase (IAP) a pain to implement is the need to host the extra content on an external server. It always surprised me that Apple did not want to control the whole experience and host the extra content along with the App on their servers. Now with iOS 6 they will do exactly that, which should make IAP more attractive to many App developers.
In the same post, he wondered about the hardware requirements of iOS 6 and its performance:
We don’t yet know what new hardware might arrive to run iOS 6 but we did learn that iOS 6 will not be available on the original iPad. I was a little surprised to see that it will be available on the iPhone 3GS and fourth generation iPod Touch. I have to wonder how well it will work on those older devices with limited memory and processor power, but it seems odd that they would support the 3GS but not the first iPad?
As an owner of the first-generation iPad, I wondered this myself. A memory issue?
At Cocoanetics, Oliver Drobnik presented a list of tweeted best features. Drobnik says Passbook should be at the top of list.
Like Benjamin Stevens, I look forward to the Do Not Disturb feature, which has caught me flat-fingered at inopportune times. And the new Bluetooth interface is greatly improved.
“I like that Do Not Disturb feature. Often woken by friends playing Words with Friends in other time zones” – Benjamin Stevens
However, developer Clark Goble at Clark's Tech Blog looks at what he says are failings in iOS that haven't been fixed, including interapplication communication, multiple IDs and iBook support for OS X.
Keyboard support in iOS. It’s great that iOS supports external keyboards but it does so poorly. Standard Mac shortcuts don’t work. But it’s also difficult for developers to read the keyboard in the same way (key down, key up). Further Apple doesn’t make tabbing between fields easy. (This may be fixed in iOS6 – I’ve not run the betas, but I’ve not heard anything about this)
Multiple Apple IDs. A HUGE issue now that lots of people share things like iPads. At a minimum there needs to be a simple way to merge Apple IDs.
Goble also wonders why there isn't a GPS radio installed in OS X mobile computers.
GPS for OSX. If the solution for folks who find the iPad too restrictive is an [MacBook] Air then why not give the Air and MBP [MacBook Pro] the same GPS capabilities along with the same Maps program?