iOS 5 tips, tricks, and warnings

GWC Community GWC Hive Mind
#1

Hi guys! With the release of iOS 5, I thought it might be useful to share tips, help people avoid problems, and give out app compatibility warnings of note.

I’ll get us started:
First, the State of the Jailbreak is that you can JB most devices, but they’re all tethered (eg, you must use a computer to kick it back online if you reboot the phone) and consequently appealing to a limited crowd. There’s rumors afloat that an untethered jailbreak is nigh, but the dev teams are holding their cards in close lest they burn their current exploit on a build of the OS that’s quickly replaced to deal with in-field issues.

Second, the wicked new Siri component is currently iPhone 4S only. iPad 1/2 and iPhone 4 and earlier users don’t have access to it, but folks are researching the likelihood of unlocking it on earlier devices. If you haven’t seen the Siri demos, it’s pretty great. Definitely not to be confused with the Android speech stuff, it’s definitely a next step. There’s no non-fanboyish way of saying this, so go check out the Youtube videos.

App compatibility:
Stanza users, beware! Stanza no longer functions as of iOS 5, and since Amazon bought it (presumably to kill it) and the developer who wrote it is no longer attached to them, prospects of getting an OS compatibility update are slim. There may still be hope from some unknown source, but be ready to potentially switch eBook readers if you make the upgrade!

Tips:

  • I’ve heard that if you upgrade your device and, upon restore, all your apps are messed up and out of order, you should just re-run the restore portion again and it may fix it. Anyone who has done this, report back if you can provide confirmation.
  • Shortcuts! The text shortcuts feature looks pretty sweet, you can assign short words to type out things of your choosing that you use a lot. This also creates fun prank possibilities for other peoples’ unsecured iPhones, so be vigilant! :slight_smile:
  • The new notification system looks sharp, very Android-like. Being able to review notifications and get the date/weather/etc summary at a swipe will be a big improvement for folks who haven’t already jailbroken and used things like Intelliscreen to do this.
  • Wireless sync requires that you be plugged into a charger, FYI.

There’s some basic stuff I’ve gleaned from online and digging, let’s hear some more!

#2

Don’t mean to sound all Debbie downer and negative, but it turns out that iOS 5 has no features at all that are of any use to me.

Mind you, I don’t have an iPhone. I have an iPad 1. The Multitasking Gestures for iPad doesn’t support iPad 1.
The Apple web page didn’t say that – until they corrected that today.

I prefer not to have Twitter integration cuz other people (kids) etc in my household borrow my iPad and I’d rather not share my Twitter with anyone of them thank you very much.

I was briefly excited by the idea of maybe buying Apple TV cuz I could then play or display stuff wireless from my iPad to the TV which is cool…but I’m thinking again that iPad version 2 is required.

So, then all that it left for me to be excited about regarding iOS 5 is iCloud. Seems pretty neat.
So just a moment ago I go to download the iClould Control Panel for Windows …and, surprise surprise.
It requires Windows 7 or Windows Vista. Oh well. :frowning:

Typical Apple. You gotta drink the Apple cool-aid the whole way or you can’t play. :frowning:

#3

Tip from John Gruber:

Interesting tip: in the new iOS iWork apps, you can move the insertion point one character at a time by swiping left/right. This isn’t a system-wide shortcut, though — it only works in Numbers, Pages, and Keynote.
UPDATE: You can swipe with two fingers to move forward/back a word at a time, and three for the entire line — but I find these gestures hard to use, especially on the iPhone. If they’re not perfectly horizontal they scroll the view.

#4

The new notification center:

#5

Is there something I need to do to enable the notification center? I have an iPhone 4.

#6

I posted this on the iPhone Geek thread earlier…

#7

I think by default you drag down from the very top of the screen. Can you confirm?

#8

Confirmed.

Baltar

#9

Yes, it worked! Love it.

#10

In fairness, XP (which I assume you have) is now over a decade old and has some pretty serious security issues even when fully patched. If your hardware and budget supports it you really should upgrade.

#11

Seconded, I’ve actually seen performance increases on some older XP systems I migrated to Windows 7. If you crank the UI down to equivalent levels, it seems to manage some resources better. First MS OS since XP that I’m genuinely happy with.

iOS 5 tip:
Was playing with a 4S today and Siri wasn’t having any luck with anything. “I can’t do this” “I can’t do that” failure after failure. I then noticed that even though I could open pages in Safari, the Visual Voicemail was ‘unavailable’ as well so I gave it the standard ol’ “Have you tried turning it off and then back on again” IT test and everything worked fine afterwards.

So don’t forget rebooting as a troubleshooting method. :slight_smile:

#12

I own a 3GS, downloaded new iTunes 10.1 and ios 5. My issue is this, I sync podcasts to my phone, listen to them at work and when I resync with my laptop (with windows vista), the podcasts I have listened to, are not marked as played. Anyone else have this issue?

#13

Is there any way to avoid erasing all your apps and music/videos when updating to iOS 5? It did it on my iPad (version 1), which was not a big deal but I have a lot more Apps and stuff on my iPhone 3GS. It looks like the app data is still there if you re-download the app, but not the app it self.