The iOS 5 (and iPhone 4S) thread

[DBMandrake]

Rather than continuing to hijack other threads I thought I'd open a new thread dedicated both to what's new in iOS 5 for all phones, as well as what's new on the iPhone 4S.

So post your thoughts, likes, dislikes, tips and tricks and experiences of iOS 5 and/or the iPhone 4S.

I'll kick off with a link to some tips and tricks for iOS 5 that I found quite useful:

http://www.macstories.net/tutorials/ios-5-tips-tricks-hidden-features/

One in particular made me smile - although its tucked into the accessibility features, its something that all of us could use - fully custom vibrate sequences for different callers :D

Apple went one step further than just letting you choose from a short list of predefined sequences though, you can create a custom vibrate pattern by tapping your finger on the screen to the sequence that you want. Nifty :)

So what do you like and dislike about iOS 5 ?

For me the killer feature is definitely Notification centre. Can't ever imagine not having it now.

Second most favourite change - being able to sync not only wirelessly, but without the phone being locked and unusable during the sync.

[Ben]

Well, I just set up my iPhone 4S without iTunes, restoring an iPhone 4 backup from iCloud. That's pretty damn cool.

I don't know what to make of Siri, I think we need to get more properly acquainted...

It's all just so different. Having just upgraded everything to Lion as well, I honestly don't know whether I'm coming or going with it all at the moment!

[Wilt]

I can't get wifi sync to work no matter what I do. I thought it had randomly started working then as the iPod seemed to recognise my laptop was online, however as soon as I hit 'sync now' it disappeared.

iCloud also seems to randomly ask me to verify my password which is a bit annoying.

[Ben]

I think the iCloud password thing is just server load, they should peter out.

My WiFi sync seems to be working, happens whenever I plug my iPhone into the mains. I can also see it connected in iTunes as if it's hooked up by a cable :)

There doesn't seem to be any way to delete photos from photo stream?

[miffed]

I like location based reminders , at work I am always being told to check stuff at home , and people ring me throughout the day with a crapload of stuff that I need to discuss with someone when I get to work - I can see this coming in really handy for me personally

I am loving the stories on the Web about Siri's personality too !

[Ben]

Ok I don't like how restoring from an iCloud backup gets broken if any one of your apps isn't available in the store. All apps just sit there, unable to download. I started some of the downloads from the store, which works, but then the data from each app is lost.

So, I've decided to start over - iCloud again but I won't touch any apps until I've gone home and sync'd to iTunes, at which point I hope my data will be preserved. Otherwise I'll have to restore this mornings iTunes backup from before I switched over to iCloud backups.

[Hands0n]

I don't have the 4S but have iOS 5 and for me the big hit is Notifications (now matching what I've come to like very much on Android). I also like the Keyboard Shortcuts (Settings, General, Keyboard). I have "eml" that expands to my email address and "phn" that expands to my phone number. Type these shortcuts in any field or form and the iPhone expands them for you. Dead handy to put repeated bits of text in there to reduce your typing.

Given that there are 200+ enhancements to iOS I reckon we'll be finding out about them for some time to come :)

[Ben]

Just a note to say that my plan of restoring worked! Leaving the apps in their 'dormant' semi-restored state and then syncing with iTunes got them up-and-running without losing my data. Phew.

It's so very cool having the iCloud stuff. For iPhone owners who weren't using MobileMe I feel like this will be a massive change; finally the iPhone will feel much, much more integrated for them. It was absolutely the right call by Apple and mitigates one of the attractions of the Google ecosystem IMHO, and then some.

Notifications are revolutionary, aren't they? In iOS terms, I mean. Late, as with so many iOS features, but so, so refined as a result.

[blush]

At the moment I have the iCloud turned off, the thought of my data being held with the potential of someone able to hack into it scares me. I have loads of notes on my phone with passport numbers, insurance policies etc. Just how secure can all this massive cloud of information be? I love the concept of being able to restore a phone without having to connect my computer and Wifi sync is great. As usual though installing ios5 on my wife's 3GS resulted in her losing most of her apps, that's what happens when you have two phones with different users on the same account!

[Ben]

Yes, if there's one thing Apple still hasn't dealt with it's the handling of multiple iOS device users sharing a single logon/account on a Mac. I'd imagine there are rights issues, but it definitely needs tackling.

You could turn Notes sync off and have the rest on? It's quite customisable. I just have Photo stream off.

[miffed]

Everything in my household is a big old mess ! I can't even begin to explain it - and I think ripping it all up and starting afresh may be the way forward ?

Really don't know where to start now , and just to make things confusing Apple just made us set up YET ANOTHER email account each (for iMessage on our iPads)

one of the biggest problems is that we started off with an iTunes account each , but when we saw iTunes was virtually insisting on us "sharing" our apps with each other , I now have a houseful of iOS devices sharing two accounts worth of Apps ! I tried to delete all apps relating to one of the accounts , but this is not effective unless you wipe ALL traces from all devices in the house at the same time , otherwise a couple of syncs later , the "deleted" apps will have spread like chicken pox all over all your devices again Grrrr !

Really don't know where to start ? I could set up new accounts - but if we all sync on the same machine (same iTunes) we'll all end up with everything mixed up again ? ( I realise we could manually go into Apps and deselect the "non account" stuff manually , but lets be honest , the wife and kids are never going to get that ? )
Separate user accounts perhaps ?

Sorry , the whole thing just gives me a massive headache !

[DBMandrake]

iCloud is a big no-go for me at the moment.

Only 1 of our 3 iPhone's (my 3GS) can run iOS 5, the other two are 3G's stuck on 4.2.1, which still support MobileMe but will not receive any iCloud support. My iPod touch is also limited to 3.1.3.

As soon as I migrate my MobileMe account to iCloud all our iDevices except for the 3GS will no longer be able to access it, which means no email from my me.com account, no syncing of bookmarks, no Find My iPhone etc.

Also I sync MobileMe with a Windows PC running Windows XP - again, iCloud has no support for anything less than Windows 7, so I would lose the ability to sync there as well.

For these reasons I'm going to have to stick with MobileMe for as long as I can, and hopefully by mid next year I will have been able to replace the old devices that can't be upgraded, as well as updated my PC to Windows 7.

What annoys me is that I have three Apple accounts - a MobileMe account that I use for (some) email and contact/bookmark syncing, as well as two iTunes store accounts (one NZ, one UK) which are not email accounts, and only used for app/music purchases, and it's not at all clear to me what would happen if I tried to use one of the iTunes store accounts for an iCloud login.

Eg - is it possible to have both a MobileMe account and and iCloud account active on the same iPhone at once ? Would that cause problems if I'm already syncing contacts/calendars/bookmarks via MobileMe, and iCloud attempted to do the same ?

If I choose my UK iTunes store login for iCloud, could I change to using my NZ one later ? Could I migrate my MobileMe account to iCloud next year and then have two iCloud accounts active on the same device ? Is it even possible to convert an iTunes store only account to an iCloud account ?

So many unanswered questions, and it really is a mess for those of us with multiple accounts, let alone accounts from different countries! :(

[miffed]

Yeah , I had every iOS device syncing with Mobileme solely for "find my iPhone" usage , really helpful and has come in handy a couple of times

Now , I have had no choice but to continue syncing them all to my iCloud / iTunes account , but with Everything turned off on the wife , daughter & sons devices EXCEPT "find my iPhone" ! which means I can use all the iCloud stuff , but no one else can , if they set up their own iCloud accounts , then we'd lose the convenience of Find my iPhone all in once account , although I suppose it just means we just won't be able to see them from the one account ?
The silliest thing is iMessage , we have seemingly had to make up two email addresses solely for iMessage on the iPads (otherwise we'd have get messages duplicated on both devices ? maybe thats not such a bad thing ? I don't know !!

[blush]

I sync my phone weekly with iTunes but my wife is dead against syncing hers cos every time I did sync she ended up with apps she didn't want or stuff went missing. When it came to ios5 we looked at the previous backup of her phone which was September 2010. My iPad 2 and iPhone 4 restored exactly as they should but the wife's freshly backed up 3GS had most of the apps missing. I really don't understand why when iTunes backed it up successfully.

If I enabled the cloud on all my devices I imagine I would get in a big mess like @miffed.

I visited Westfield Stratford City today and the Apple store had a big sign in the the front window saying they had no stock left. I had a play with a white iphone 4s which was lovely. I have a black iphone 4 and the white version looks superb, Im a bit fed up of my black phone now. Unlike most Apple stores the Stratford version was actually cool temperature wise. I usually feel the need for very short stops at Apple stores because it is so hot, not only in the UK but in America. It felt wrong feeling comfortable and being able to breath! My last visit to the Bluewater shopping centre Apple store was not pleasant as the very warm shop smelt like a football changing room, dirty sweaty smell.

The only place I saw a queue today at Stratford was at the O2 store, there must have been about twenty to thirty people waiting to get an iPhone 4S. The queue was there when I first arrived at the centre at about ten and was still just as long at 2pm. None of the other mobile shops looked that busy really, there is a nice Everything Everywhere store which looks rather impressive.

[DBMandrake]

Can anyone confirm that the 3G enable/disable switch is missing on the iPhone 4S as reported here?

http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/15/iphone-4s-lacks-enable-3g-switch/

Seems like a very odd thing for Apple to do. The carrier settings bundle from a specific carrier has always been able to do this (for example Three do this) but it appears this might be a global change that would prevent 3G being turned off on all carriers.

[Ben]

Yeah seems to have gone; you now get an option instead to restrict all data to WiFi. That may actually be better... I find that data on 2G is a battery killer... but some people are going to need data on 2G so perhaps not. Bet it screws with iMessage, i.e. I can't imagine Apple would route texts as actual texts just because someone has no data access available :-/

Re: various Apple IDs. I just have my iTunes/iCloud (ex MobileMe) email address for everything. It's set up on my iPhone and iPad, plus used for home sharing and iCloud on my various Macs. In iOS you can choose which Apple ID is used for various things. For example, on the iPhone, iMessage is set up to use just my phone number. On the iPad, it is set up to use just my @me.com. So, people can choose between texting my phone and my iPad by texting either my phone number or my email. Simples :D

Now, I'd like to be able to sync someone else's iPhone to my iTunes library, but I don't want them having to use my account for purchases or having access to any of the rest of my stuff. AFAIK I can't do that, but I have no idea!

Ideally you'd be able to authorise not only computers in iTunes, but also other Apple IDs. Oh I don't know, it's all very, very confusing.

[miffed]

Also loving the split keyboard on the iPad , at first I thought it was awful -but once you are used to it it's brilliant and makes the device far more useable in "sofa" mode !!

[paulbds]

I have a dilema here.
I have the ipad 2 - Jailbroken
Now, the features in IOS5 sound very good and I am very tempted to unjailbreak and take advantage of the new features,

I actually only use the "free" programmes, and now the novelty of the jailbreak has worn off, just wondered what other members of the forum have done?

[Ben]

Probably not worth having it jailbroken? I only jailbroke when I needed an unlock before O2 issued them officially. If you can get everything you need from the app store and don't need it jailbroken to provide certain functionality or customisations then there's no way it's worth it IMHO.

[DBMandrake]

With each major update Apple adds features that I used to rely on Jailbreaks for - for example Multitasking.

iOS 4 killed most of the reasons why I used to jailbreak, with the introduction of Apple's implementation of multitasking, so I haven't jail-broken my main 3GS since iOS 4.

iOS 5 goes even further in the same direction - one of the few jailbreak tweaks that were worthwhile were the lock screen info tweaks. Now with the new lock screen notifications and notification centre that reason is gone.

In addition we now have over the air incremental (delta) updates which will make updating quick and easy, and those are inherently going to be incompatible with jailbreaking.

I got tired of the whole "wait for new version to be jailbroken" then doing a full restore and backup to update to it. I was always 1 or 2 minor versions behind because it was too much hassle.

I don't think I'll ever jailbreak my main iPhone again, although my spare 3G is still jailbroken for tinkering...

[Wilt]

I can't get wifi sync to work no matter what I do. I thought it had randomly started working then as the iPod seemed to recognise my laptop was online, however as soon as I hit 'sync now' it disappeared.

iCloud also seems to randomly ask me to verify my password which is a bit annoying.

Just a quick update on this, after trying for days to get it working then eventually giving up, it decided to start working without me doing anything this morning.

It was obviously just trolling me.

[Ben]

Funny :p

Glad it's working! iCloud and the password prompts must have been due to overwhelming demand... 20m+ iCloud accounts created since iOS 5 launched! :o

Mine has stopped throwing up the prompts now, it seems to have settled down.

I'm loving how iMessage resends your message as a regular text if the recipient goes 'offline'. Superb. Means we can't have a BIS style blackout if iCloud has a wobble :D

[Wilt]

Yeah the iCloud password prompts have gone for me now too. Although I have turned all but 'find my ipod' and backups off since I only have one Apple device and Google handles my contacts and calendars etc.

Not really used iMessage much since I only have an iPod touch, it isn't anywhere near as useful when it isn't automatically changing your text messages to them, they need to add some sort of indicator to contacts to highlight those who have iMessage.

[Ben]

Yes that's true, it'd be nice to be able to tell just from looking in Contacts who is available for iMessage. I'm sure that'll materialise.

I was using my iPad to chat with someone's iPhone at the weekend. Rather cool!

[DBMandrake]

As always, Anandtech have come out with the definitive in depth review of iOS 5, which goes into a great deal of technical detail about how key features such as iMessage actually work:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4956/apple-ios-5-review

Well worth a read to see what's new both on the surface and under the hood of iOS 5.

[hecatae]

Siri is Japanese for arse, ass, bottom, rump

[DBMandrake]

It's also the name of a programming language:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/siri

Like a lot of words, it has a lot of different meanings in different languages. It's likely that when its eventually released in Japanese it goes under a different name though :p

[Hands0n]

I am quite liking the experience on the iPhone and iPad, iOS 5 is working really well on those. My lad had battery problems after the update, but with a bit of Googling around we found that resetting the network settings did the trick. He has had a full working day on the overnight charge.

I'm not ready for iCloud until I've at least updated my Mac Mini to OS X Lion, a prerequisite to use iCloud. Ho hum.

[miffed]

Had a small problem with the wife's 3GS , she went to show some photos to a friend , and noticed that a lot of her pictures were missing - simply showing empty albums , or placeholders with "no picture or videos available" where they should be. I thought this might have been something to do with iTunes not having finished the initial sync properly - so I disabled Wireless syncing and plugged it into iTunes ,

Firstly it all appeared to be working , but it stalled on "waiting for sync to start" , and gave an error message (something like unable to start sync)

Rebooted phone , it started the OK - stalled on "Waiting for changes to be applied" for ages , then stopped - without changing anything ! I actually totally deselected "Sync Photos" , to try and force it into doing something , but it just stayed the same , tried this 7-8 times !

Each time , the bar chart at the bottom of the screen , on initiating the sync would show the "new" breakdown of what I wanted , but as soon as the sync was done it would revert to how it looked before the sync.

OK , so two options , Restore , restore from back up & re-sync .... or if that didn't work set up as new phone ! - Fortunately the former worked , and I woke up this morning to a fully working 3GS , and I have to say the whole phone is running faster than it was previously , so worth considering for 3GS users if you have a slow device .

Don't get me wrong , it wasn't a huge deal , and niggles like that are part and parcel of smartphone tinkering - but having been on board the iPhone train since 1.0 I can't help thinking that the "just works" intervention free ownership (which arguably the iPhone is built on ) is slipping further and further away as more functionality is added.

[DBMandrake]

OK , so two options , Restore , restore from back up & re-sync .... or if that didn't work set up as new phone ! - Fortunately the former worked , and I woke up this morning to a fully working 3GS , and I have to say the whole phone is running faster than it was previously , so worth considering for 3GS users if you have a slow device .

Although I didn't have any problems with missing photos on my 3GS, I certainly had problems with heavy battery drain while idle, with as much as 80% of the battery gone after 8 hours idle. Doing a backup and restore fixed it.

This seems to be the case with nearly every major OS version update, at least for me. (I had it from 2.x to 3.0 and 3.x to 4.0 too) When upgrading from say 4.x to 5.0 the system configuration files for various system preferences and background services are migrated from the old format to the new format, and frequently something goes wrong.

Doing a backup and full restore seems to fix the issue, even though you're restoring from the backup you just made. I can only conclude that the upgrade process/scripts themselves have long standing bugs and sometimes leave the device in a state where some background service is churning away using 100% cpu in the background. (The phone will sometimes get warm while its supposed to be idle...) If my phone was jailbroken I could probably figure out which background service causes it, but unfortunately it's not.

Every time a major release comes out the internet forums are full of "update x.x has killed my battery life", and although certain specific features are sometimes to blame, (location services, exchange syncing etc) if you've got most things turned off and your battery still can't last a day, its always worth trying a full backup and restore, it usually does the trick.

One word of warning with iCloud though - if you have your phone set to backup to iCloud, pressing sync in iTunes will not backup to iTunes - but you can still manually backup to iTunes before initiating a restore - just right click on the phone in the left side bar and choose Backup. After that you can do a restore through iTunes even if iCloud is your normal backup method. (To save having to do a restore slowly over the internet...)

[DBMandrake]

I am quite liking the experience on the iPhone and iPad, iOS 5 is working really well on those. My lad had battery problems after the update, but with a bit of Googling around we found that resetting the network settings did the trick. He has had a full working day on the overnight charge.

Resetting network settings sometimes does the trick when there is rapid battery drain, but I think not because there is something wrong with the network settings per se, but simply because it initiates a rebuild of many of the system configuration files.

Sometimes a backup and restore is necessary as in my previous post - something for people to keep in mind if they're faced with rapidly draining battery they can't fix.


I'm not ready for iCloud until I've at least updated my Mac Mini to OS X Lion, a prerequisite to use iCloud. Ho hum.

Yes, ho hum indeed. I'm very unimpressed with the high system requirements of iCloud - would it have really killed them to release a 10.6.9 update for snow leopard to support it ?

Snow Leopard, the OS which was their latest OS until last July ? So basically they're saying that anyone running an OS that was current just 4 months ago has to update to a major new OS release which has serious compatibility issues. (no Rosetta, no support for Core Solo, Core Duo cpus etc) A lot of Macs that could run Snow Leopard perfectly well can't update to Lion.

On the PC side MobileMe sync supported Windows XP but iCloud does not. Ok so Windows XP is now 10 years old, I'll give you that, but some of us run XP for compatibility with old hardware and software. I have some specialist Audio measurement software that doesn't run properly in Windows 7 for example. The percentage of XP use is still very high.

Then on iOS devices 5.0 is required. Fair enough I suppose, except that all those with older devices like the 3G are left out in the cold. So what ? At the moment the 3G is still supported for MobileMe, but with the demise of MobileMe next summer all those devices that were getting me.com email and syncing services will cease to function. Technically Mobileme is a service, but it still seems like a feature that the devices were sold with is being pulled, under the guise of replacing it with a new service which does largely the same thing but is called something else, and doesn't work on old devices.

For anyone with a Mac that can't update to Lion, a PC that can't update to Windows 7, or an iOS device that can't update to 5.0, iCloud is a big fat zero, and as of next year that functionality will go away with the demise of MobileMe.

I know Apple are renowned for cutting off legacy support fairly quickly, but in the case of iCould I think they've gone a step too far, especially when MobileMe is being phased out so quickly, making all the old previously functioning PC's, Mac's, and iOS devices that can't be upgraded into paper weights as far as sync services go.

[DBMandrake]

I'm not ready for iCloud until I've at least updated my Mac Mini to OS X Lion, a prerequisite to use iCloud. Ho hum.

I'm in much the same situation as in my previous semi-rant post, but I have experimented with iCloud on my 3GS as a backup mechanism with success.

As I've mentioned before I can't migrate my MobileMe account to iCloud yet as my older devices and PCs are unsupported by iCloud, however it looks like you can partially enable iCloud features in parallel with MobileMe :)

What I did is rather than migrating my MobileMe account to iCloud, I simply entered my iTunes store account into the iCloud login screen on the phone and voila, a new iCloud account, independent of the MobileMe one.

If you use an iTunes store account in this way, which is not associated with an Apple email address, you end up with an iCloud account that has no active email address attached to it. You do have the opportunity to create one, but I chose not to. I then turned off iCloud contact and calendar sync, as I'm still syncing those with MobileMe. Apparently you can enable it on both accounts at once, but I think that is likely to be a very bad idea... ;)

I have everything turned off except Documents & Data and Backups. Find My iPhone can't be turned on for both MobileMe and iCloud at the same time, so I left the MobileMe one active.

I then enabled iCloud for automatic device backups. The initial backup was 2.7GB (2.0GB compressed) and took around 10 hours, during which time it hammered the upstream channel of our ADSL pretty hard, making it difficult to browse the web so I let most of it happen over night, and by the next morning it was finished.

It's been a couple of days since then and it has automatically done small incremental backups at around 4am in the morning when plugged into power and locked. Excellent :) So even if you're not using any other iCloud features you can still use the automatic device backups. I quite like the idea of set-and-forget daily off site backups of everything on the phone.

Syncing with iTunes no longer automatically backs up to your PC, but if you right click the phone in the side bar and choose Backup you can initiate a manual backup to iTunes in addition to the automated iClould backups.

[Ben]

I agree that the requirements for iCloud are a little harsh, but as someone who has been able to update all of the devices that they *need* to have in sync, I'm happy. The way I see it, not supporting legacy devices and OSs with iCloud has probably resulted in a far more stable, predictable experience than, say, what happened with MobileMe. iCloud seems to work 'differently' in that it doesn't utilise the Sync service (No devices syncing, mine tells me) and everything seems to be, well, push... so I presume that's exactly what's happening. Could Snow Leopard be updated to support this? Of course, but it may be more work than we're acknowledging.

It's a shame I can't update my old Mac Mini to Lion, but it's so old now I honestly thing ending support for it is the right thing for Apple to do. Snow Leopard is going to have a couple of years use in it at least yet before apps drop it.

As for the rapid killing of MobileMe. I think Steve had numbered its days ever since the town hall meeting where he exploded at its developers for the launch problems. It was clearly important to him, but the brand became tarnished. Personally, I think iCloud is more than a bit genius, and basically the cloud service MobileMe should have been, so it's all gain. Not allowing MobileMe to run for at least a couple more years, though, does seem a little bitter - especially when Snow Leopard and iOS 4 users need it.

I wish iOS 5 could back up automatically to both iCloud and iTunes. I must remember to still take manual iTunes backups every now and then... while I've proved to myself that iCloud restore works I'd still like to maintain my own local copy...

A little iOS thing - I've noticed when you start a message to a contact and it prompts which of their numbers/emails you want to message that the iMessage ones are now indicated with a little blue speech bubble. :)

[DBMandrake]

I wish iOS 5 could back up automatically to both iCloud and iTunes. I must remember to still take manual iTunes backups every now and then... while I've proved to myself that iCloud restore works I'd still like to maintain my own local copy...

I agree, it does seem odd that it's one or the other. If you can manually back up to both, why not automatically ? Off-site and on-site backup. You can never have too many backups... :)

[gorilla]

Ok, can someone spell out to me why I need iCloud? I have it, I've signed up for it and I think I'm using it, but none of the data that it's syncing seems at all necessary.
It was going to backup movies that I had loaded through iTunes that I will delete after watching, so why back that up?
Is this only necessary for people using Apple's mail, calendar and bookmarks?

[Wilt]

Ok, can someone spell out to me why I need iCloud? I have it, I've signed up for it and I think I'm using it, but none of the data that it's syncing seems at all necessary.
It was going to backup movies that I had loaded through iTunes that I will delete after watching, so why back that up?
Is this only necessary for people using Apple's mail, calendar and bookmarks?

It depends how many Apple devices you have I suppose - if you've only got one there isn't much point to it...if you have a few then I imagine it would be quite useful.

[DBMandrake]

iCloud doesn't back up music or movies from the device to the cloud, as far as I'm aware.

The "iCloud backup" option in the iCloud settings enables backups of the same things that backing up to iTunes does - all phone configuration settings, call history, sms history, notes, reminders, calendar, camera roll, 3rd party application data, etc. Music and video is not included.

If your music and video was originally synced from iTunes you'd have to resync that from iTunes after doing an iCloud restore.

Any music that you have bought from the iTunes store can be restored from iCloud to the phone during a restore, but it doesn't upload the music from the phone to do so - the iTunes store just keeps a purchase history and offers to re-download those songs, thus any songs side loaded onto the device or purchased elsewhere aren't included. Same goes for video purchased from the iTunes store. (Once purchased audio and video from the iTunes store are indefinitely available for re-downloading)

The mail, contacts, calendars, reminders, bookmarks, and notes in iCloud settings is just for synchronising to other devices - and replaces the same features in MobileMe. (Aside from mail, this stuff is also saved in the backup in a form that can only be accessed by doing a restore, same as an iTunes backup)

The confusing thing about iCloud is it's not really just one service, its a collection of different services all brought together under the same banner, including new versions of a lot of the features from MobileMe, as well as things like access to re-download apps/music/video previously purchased.

[Ben]

What he said.

At its most basic, it's allowing you to sync, back up 'to the cloud', and restore all your purchases, so you could get a new/replacement iOS device, enter your user details and, boom, you're up and running.

Add in multiple devices and Macs and you've also got a very elegant syncing service - though, unlike MobileMe, there seems to be more of an emphasis on 'pushing' out new data to all the clients rather than syncing.

Been having some fun with iCal invites, that seems to work very nicely now. I keep getting alerts in iCal that other iCloud users have invited me to certain events, and I can then check if I'm free, accept/maybe/decline etc.

Then you've got email, I assume it's free for anyone to get @me.com push email now for their iOS device? I've always found it really good.

The fact that you can hardly even notice iCloud is pure testament to how effective and seamless it is.

[DBMandrake]

It depends how many Apple devices you have I suppose - if you've only got one there isn't much point to it...if you have a few then I imagine it would be quite useful.
You don't need more than one Apple device to make it useful.

iCloud will let you sync contacts, calendars and bookmarks to a Windows PC as well. Windows 7 only though, unlike MobileMe which also supported Vista and XP.

Naturally syncing to a Mac is supported, albeit only Lion, once again, unlike MobileMe which also supported Snow Leopard.

Then there is Find My iPhone - now that it's free with iCloud instead of a paid feature as it originally was with MobileMe, I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't want to make use of Find My iPhone. I've certainly used it enough times when the phone is lost around the house with the ringer set to silent :D (Find my iPhone overrides the silent ringer setting...)

[miffed]

Another couple of features I think are new (unless I never noticed them before ? )

Swipe the keyboard down at any time to get rid of it
Double tap spacebar for a full stop

[Wilt]

You don't need more than one Apple device to make it useful.

iCloud will let you sync contacts, calendars and bookmarks to a Windows PC as well. Windows 7 only though, unlike MobileMe which also supported Vista and XP.

Naturally syncing to a Mac is supported, albeit only Lion, once again, unlike MobileMe which also supported Snow Leopard.

Then there is Find My iPhone - now that it's free with iCloud instead of a paid feature as it originally was with MobileMe, I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't want to make use of Find My iPhone. I've certainly used it enough times when the phone is lost around the house with the ringer set to silent :D (Find my iPhone overrides the silent ringer setting...)

After sampling he delights of itunes and quicktime on Windows I'm not really in any hurry to install any more Apple windows software.

But in terms of actually using it on Windows if I was going to, requiring Outlook for contacts, mail and calendar is odd, I don't know anybody other than those forced to do so by work who uses this.

I'm not saying it is all useless for those who aren't completely immersed in Apple hardware, find my iphone is obviously very useful to everybody, but if you've only got one device then most of the stuff is surplus to requirements.

[gorilla]

I have CineXplayer installed which has 2.3GB of movies in it and iCloud would want to back that up. Are you saying that it won't actually transfer that 2.3 gig of data to the cloud? When I first launched iCloud it was telling me that I was already at my 5GB limit and I should upgrade the storage. When I looked around I saw all these apps that had lots of data within them that were set to sync to iCloud. I turned them off and I was able to free up space.
I think I'll just stick to plugging the iPad into iTunes and backing up that way. As cumbersome as it is it seems less confusing!
Thanks for the suggestions/help though.

[DBMandrake]

3rd party application data is backed up as I mentioned - so any files contained within CineXplayer's sandbox would by default be backed up to iCloud, unless you deselect it in the iCloud backup list.

I have the same issue with a podcatcher I use called Downcast - by default iCloud would try to back up all my downloaded podcasts within that app - which is a lot of files (typically around 1GB) that are not important to back-up, and more importantly which change frequently as I delete them and download new episodes. (Thus leading to unnecessarily long backup times every time I downloaded new podcasts...) So I deselected that one app for backups.

When I said music, videos, and podcasts aren't backed up from the device to iCloud, I'm referring to those contained within the built in Music/Video apps, which were synced across from iTunes or downloaded through the built in iTunes app.

It's always been the case that iTunes backups don't contain the media files that you sync across from iTunes on a PC - just everything else on the phone. (Configuration settings, 3rd party app data etc)

If you do a full restore from an iTunes backup everything except the media files within the Music/Video apps are restored from the backup files, then the media files are synced across separately.

If you have any music/video in the built in music/video apps that was not purchased from the iTunes store, an iCloud backup is not going to hold those for you - you still need a copy of them on a PC to sync back in the event of losing everything on the device. (Or losing the device...)

(Realistically who would want to upload or re-download 32GB of music over the internet if iCloud backups did back up the media files directly ? Maybe one day, but not today)

[miffed]

On a less positive note , has anyone else using an iPad 2 noticed the home button has become less responsive ?

I first noticed this during the betas , and was really worried it was a hardware problem - but when I flashed back to 4.3.5 the problem totally disappeared ! I had hoped that this would have been ironed out in the final release , but this doesn't seem to be the case.

Fortunately , the new gestures eliminate the need to use the home button if you do fancy - but this isn't really the point , and I have this nightmare scenario of needing to put the iPad into DFU and not being able to .

A google around shows that this is not an issue unique to me - anyone else here getting it ?

[Ben]

Can't say I've had any issues with the home button on iPad 2 under iOS 5 :S You actually press it and nothing happens? :o

[miffed]

Yes , sometimes you press it and nothing happens - then you press it again and nothing happens , then you press it a 3rd time and it works ! Very intermittent and at the start you think you are imagining it or just not pressing hard enough . Interesting that you aren't having the probs ? If it is software then surely everyone would have the issue ? But then if it was hardware flashing back to 4.X wouldn't solve it ?
.....very strange ? I'd do a restore , but each time I've flashed iOS 5 ( two betas ,the GM and now the official build ) I have set up as new . So I am not convinced it would make a difference.

[miffed]

LOL , just tried 50 button presses and it worked every time ! Funny because I'd have guessed at it failing about 1-8 ? Maybe it is just system lag ?

[Ben]

Maybe, haven't had so much as a stutter :( Hmm, odd! Hope it gets resolved for you, that'd be so annoying!

[miffed]

Noticing some strange things going on with iMessage too , Texting the wife (also using iMessage) - some messages seem to get stuck and then all turn up together , Plus I also had message come up flagged "Failed" - then as I was about to resend it , the wife answered it , so it obviously had gone through !
Can't say I am surprised TBH , I had previously tried to use things like Ping or IM+ to replace text messaging and very similar things happened , have to say the one saving grace is that I haven't totally lost any messages yet , if that happens I'll have to rethink using it !

[Ben]

Heavy demand is probably having an effect. Plus the UK mobile networks shoddy data is being exposed. But generally it works very well.

[miffed]

OK So I have restored and set up as a new iPad to see if it helps the home button thing - Setting everything up , tried to put my the email address I set up for iMessage and get an error saying it is unable to use that address as it is "already in use"
I really can't be bothered setting up YET ANOTHER email address for Apple , (alongside the one I set up for iMessage already , the one I set up for FaceTime on my iPad, the one I set up for FaceTime on my iPhone , the one I set up for FaceTime on my iMac , the one I set up for FaceTime on my macbook , the one I set up for iMessage on the wife's iPad ..... ) - To be honest I am getting pretty fed up with setting up email accounts I am never going to use just to keep Apple happy !

iMessage OFF , there , thats better !

[Ben]

You're really having fun now ;) Maybe the email address will be released once iCloud realises it's no longer online.

[DBMandrake]

Since updating my 3GS to 5.0 I've occasionally noticed that when the phone is asleep if I press the sleep button at the top to wake it there will be a delay then the screen will flash on then off again quickly, requiring a second press to wake it properly.

I also noticed the same problem when first upgrading to 4.0, but it was resolved somewhere in the early 4.0 releases. Not a big deal, but it does show some lack of responsiveness to the hardware buttons.

My suspicion is it happens when the phone is experiencing a low memory situation, and that freeing up memory by exiting background tasks takes long enough for the initial button press to be misinterpreted as two presses. It only seems to happen when I know there are a few memory hungry apps sitting in the background.

[DBMandrake]

So, we got a chance to visit the Apple store yesterday to have a look at the 4S, and of course Siri was top of my list to test.

Unfortunately the store was as jam packed as ever and rather noisy, not the least of which were alarms going off in various parts of the store every few minutes, (wtf ?) so that didn't bode well for speech recognition testing.

In another thread I posted a humorous video of the voice operated elevator that didn't understand Scottish accents, and unfortunately, although rather predictably, Siri had the same problem with my girlfriends Scottish accent ;)

Although short phrases were sometimes correctly recognised, in general it made a complete mockery of everything she said. It didn't just get a word wrong here or there, it was almost as if it was inventing new words that don't exist, and throwing them in randomly.

Some were so bizarre yet humorous that it had us both in stitches. I wish I had thought to take a few photos of the on-screen display of what it thought was said...

So much for Siri's recognition of "regional" accents in the "English, UK" mode. :p I suspect if you have an accent from South East England you'll be ok, but for anyone else, forget it, especially Welsh, Scottish, or Irish. (I wonder if Apple knows the difference between England and the UK ? Perhaps the setting should be labelled, English, England...)

Next up was my New Zealand accent. I've never had much luck with speech recognition systems either, which seldom if ever have a NZ setting, and I wasn't sure whether to set it to UK, Australian, or US, as there are probably some aspects of each in my accent and pronunciation. (Hard to avoid when you grow up bombarded with US, UK, and Australian accents on television programs!)

On the default UK setting I was initially quite surprised - most of the short phrases you use for setting calendar alerts, asking for weather etc worked successfully, but when I tried long form dictation via the microphone icon in the pop up keyboard I realised that the accuracy rate was probably only around 80%.

It looked about the same as what I get with Dragon dictation - you can largely understand what it has captured but there are silly and humorous wrong words, and certain words it never gets right no matter how I try to pronounce them.

I then tried the Australian and US settings and to be honest I didn't notice a big change, both were worse but not by a lot. For me the UK setting works the best but I have to speak with a "news presenter" pronunciation if I want it to be as accurate as possible ;)

So for me it looks like long form dictation (dictating text messages and emails etc) has enough errors with my accent to not make it worth while, and I'm a fairly fast typist anyway, however it works well enough that if I speak carefully I can use the features like setting alarms and reminders, wolfram alpha/google search etc...

For my girlfriend it's a complete write off though. It won't dictate anything that looks like coherent English, nor will it get anything other than the most basic "what is the weather" command right, most of the time it just says it doesn't understand.

How are those of you who have a 4S finding Siri's speech recognition both for commands and dictation ? And what accent do you have ? ;)

One thing that puzzled me is I was unable to get the "raise to speak" feature of Siri working. The preferences setting was enabled, and as I understand it you simply raise the phone to your head and speak at any time when you're not in a phone call and it will activate Siri ?

Didn't work on the 4 different phones I tried, despite the preference setting being enabled. Presumably in that mode it would activate the noise cancelling microphone to provide additional accuracy in a noisy environment, but I was unable to get it to activate to find out.

Other than Siri I liked the 4S a lot - the camera was quite stunning, and reason enough alone to upgrade from a 3GS or 3G. Speed wise it felt snappy, but it didn't feel any faster to me than an iPhone 4, without having one beside it to directly compare.

I like what they've done with the antenna design changes, but strangely, none of the 4S in the store had a SIM card inserted, so I was unable to attempt "death grips" to see how the new antenna fared, which was disappointing.

[Ben]

I used Siri a bit today, but it only works well for me for things like making calls, reading texts - simple stuff. I did send a text with it, though gave up sending a text to someone else because it was making a right mess of what I was saying. My accent is... well, pretty vanilla really, with the odd twang of brummie. Still, it was cold and I had my headphones on, so it was really nice being able to just talk to the phone. I did have to unlock to get my text dictated though, annoying :(

Raise to speed works fine for me, the phone just has to be awake.

I can't reproduce the death grip at all. Again last night in Canterbury I was consistently able to get more out of Vodafone's pitiful network than my friend's 4. If there's one thing I'm thrilled with it's that.

But there's not just one thing I'm thrilled with ;) The camera and performance of the phone in general is just excellent. Thoroughly recommended.

[DBMandrake]

Did anyone else receive a notification like this today ?

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7826218/Forum%20attachments/Photo%207-11-11%205%2014%2023%20PM.png

Do Three know something we don't about an impending iOS 5 OTA update ? (We know 5.0.1 is coming, but I was expecting another couple of weeks) Or are they just slow to announce the release of 5.0 weeks ago ? ;)

Interesting to note that if this message is right, OTA updates will download automatically without prompting over wifi. I assume that actually installing the update won't go ahead without prompting though ? Wouldn't be good for it to happen while you were expecting a call... ;)

[DBMandrake]

So how many of you did an over the air 5.0.1 update ? :)

When I saw the news that the update was out I attempted to install it, but was repeatedly told that there was no new update, however 15 minutes or so later it did detect an update. I'm guessing that either there is some caching involved (Apple uses Akamai CDN to distribute updates) or there is a gradual roll-out process involved based on Apple ID or country.

In any case it started downloading a 38.8MB update which took about 2 minutes, then spent another 5 minutes "processing download". During this time I was able to continue using the device. After that it alerted me to the fact that I either needed 50% or more battery or to plug into power to install the update, as my battery was sitting on 40%, so I plugged in.

Once the install was initiated it took around 10 minutes on my 3GS, most of that time sitting on the boot screen with the progress bar, and I notice there was a reboot and a second progress bar for a short period of time. Total update time 18 minutes. Not exactly speedy, but faster than downloading a full update via iTunes and doing it from a PC.

All in all very successful, and there was even a nice "whats new" information screen before installation to see what the update brought.

Things still unknown are - does it work over 3G ? A few reports I've seen say no, although the betas allowed system updates over 3G the full version apparently doesn't. I didn't think to try it, and I suspect that it may be a setting that can be enabled or disabled on a per - carrier basis in the carrier settings bundle, as I've had both a text and an email from Three warning me that software updates may use data from my 3G data allowance if Wifi is turned off. (Suggesting that Three have enabled 3G based updates, if they have the power to do so)

Also unknown is whether the phone will check once a day/week/whatever and alert a user to a new update even if they don't go looking for one. My guess is it will check at least once a week, as iTunes does.

[Ben]

Oh brilliant! I've been looking forward to checking out the OTA update process! Tell you what, I'll leave mine to find the update for itself so we can see how long it takes to come through.

Glad it went without a hitch. Hopefully the 4S will process the patch considerably quicker... otherwise I'm going to start seriously wondering exactly what the 4S brings to the table! ;)

[miffed]

OTA updates are cool ! from about beta 5 (IIRC) they were enabled , so I had already had a go during the Beta process.

WRT the Three email , I got an email to that which was headed "We Want to Make sure you don't pay extra" (ironically from the only network that is likely to have given you enough data in the first place , LOL ! )
Nice touch I thought ? Yes , probably something that all Networks should do anyway , but nice that Three are spelling out to non savvy customers BEFORE they run up bills !

Just ran the 5.0.1 OTA on my iPad 2 , over my Wifi network (which manages a pathetic 3Mb most of the time )

Started at 8.31am , finished download at 8.36am , Powered up again 8.42am - That was nice and painless ! Although I can't help but wonder what it would be like under times of heavy load ?

[Hands0n]

Same here, I saw a tweet that said the update was released, went into Settings, General, Software Update, Check for Update and the rest was fully automatic. My ADSL runs at 6Mbps and the entire process for the iPhone 4 (not S) took less than 10 minutes, somewhat less for the iPad 2.

I didn't try over the 3G, the iPhone is on Vodafone and that is just way too expensive to even contemplate. I could have tried with the iPad 2/3G but went for the easy option, one less tap on the screen :D

[Ben]

Right, I'm waiting to see the iPhone 4S pick the update up for itself, but I've just started it off on the iPad 2 and so-far-so-good. At the office so 'real' 20mbps on tap, meaning the download itself took next to no time. It's faffing around at the moment.

You know, I couldn't go back to iOS 4 now. 5 is such a leap. It took quite a while to get used to all the changes (and even to notice some of the more subtle ones) but there's just no way I could do without it all.

Ok all done. Took about 11 minutes. Lets hope they're all that easy!

[blush]

Well I got my 4S in the end after cancelling several times. I really didn't think I would use Siri but I am using it more often than not! I have been dictating text messages and trying to think of the most ridiculous thinks to ask Siri. The overall speed boost was most noticeable when I restored the new phone, the restore was very rapid and I have since restored then used my iPhone 4 and it seems rather slow and lacking in life! The game Real Racing 2 seems far better on the iPhone 4s and more fluid.

The speed of browsing on 3G seems faster as does using wifi. I just attempted to order from just-eat on the way home from shopping as my wife was driving and o2's signal badly let me down and I still hadn't managed to place the order of arriving home so cheated and used the iPad on my home wifi.

I really was in two minds about the iPhone 4s but am glad I took the plunge. I was quite keen on the Nokia Lumia 800 for a while but when I think about the apps I have bought for ios I would be annoyed having to buy the apps again for another platform so am sticking with ios. I briefly tried Android with a HTC ChaCha but it seemed over complicated to me.

[Ben]

Reason: Malfunction!
LoL! This made me chuckle ;)

Glad you're liking the 4S! It really is a cracking package... but perhaps the phone the 4 always should have been. Oh well, we've got it now. Hurrah.

Someone was asking me about a song last night, they thought the name was right but couldn't remember what it went like. Without thinking I grabbed the 4S and said "Play We Found Love." Simple, and may even work on the 4 with its very basic speech commands, but it worked and worked fast.

I still don't think I'll use Siri much at all, but I'm surprised that I used it so readily. Apple have done well to put its presence into the consciousness of the customers... if it'd been a 'quiet' feature I'd not have thought to use it. So, bravo!