Posts Tagged ‘iPod Touch’

iOS 5: What You Need to Know

Tuesday, June 14th, 2011

I’ve already brought you the happenings from Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference and introduced you to some of the new features of Mac OS X Lion.  Here’s a run-down of the new features of iOS 5 (the operating system for Apple’s mobile devices) demonstrated in the keynote presentation.

The Basics

  • Available: Fall
  • How to get it: downloadable on your device
  • Cost: free

New Features

  1. Notification center: all of your notifications from your apps are now all in one location, easy to access from any screen including the lock screen and less distracting than the current push notifications
  2. Newsstand: a folder to manage all of your newspaper and magazine subscriptions delivered to your device and automatically updates in the background
  3. Twitter integration: you will now be able to sign-in to Twitter just once in ‘Settings’ and instantly send tweets from your camera, Safari, and other apps
  4. Safari: the internet browser now has a reader feature to read articles in an RSS-like view and save things to a reading list for later (also, the iPad will feature tabbed browsing)
  5. Reminders: store multiple to-do lists complete with due dates and locations and automatically syncs with other devices and apps
  6. Camera: in addition to better features to help you compose a picture and sync photos to other devices, you will be able to use shortcuts to access the camera app from the lock screen and take a picture by simply pressing the volume-up button
  7. Mail: you’ll be able to add rich-text formatting (bold, underline, etc.) to emails, search the contents of messages, and flag important messages
  8. PC-free: you no longer need a computer to activate, update, and back-up your devices
  9. Game center: enhanced with profile pictures, game recommendations, and friend recommendations
  10. iMessage: a messaging service for all iOS 5 users with group messaging, delivery receipts, typing indications and more, and conversations are pushed to all of your devices

Watch out for the last article in the series, which will be about the iCloud service.

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Attention eBook Worms! Is the iBook 1.3 Update Generating a Loud Shout with its new Read Aloud Feature–or No Sound At All?

Thursday, June 9th, 2011

Apple has advanced eBook reading with the new iBook 1.3 update, presenting a read aloud feature in select books with automatic page turning, highlighting words, automatically playing audio & video content in the books, and improvement on downloading large books.  Or has it?  Users have experienced a few glitches with the update—encountering silent narrators that make us wonder whether we should have went with Amazon Kindle or Google eBookstore instead.

The iBook iOS app update is free, requiring iOS 3.2 or higher, and is compatible with the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.  It has Apple’s usual appealing, sleek characteristics with some modernistic features.

The iBook 1.3 contains read aloud for select children’s books.  The app is also capable of highlighting words as they’re being read, helping children learn to read.  There is a picture of a speaker at the top of the app, and the user simply taps the speaker to enable sounds.  There is also an option of turning the pages manually or automatically in this menu.

Books including multimedia content, such as audio or video, will automatically play on iBook 1.3, as well.

The update also acts more efficiently with larger books than before.  There used to be incidents of the app displaying the same page twice, but this new update has corrected that issue.

However, there are definitely glitches with this update.  It is said to have difficulty functioning on the iPad and iPhone 4 on the latest iOS.  When the read aloud is selected, the pages will turn properly, but there is no sound.  Apple is aware of this glitch, and I’m sure they will have it perfected shortly, as they always do.

Some critiques with iBook also include that it is not supported by any other devices, while its competitors most certainly are.  Kindle can be read on iPad, iPhone, Kindle and PC’s, and Google eBooks is supported by iPad, iPhone, Android devices, and any JavaScript-capable web browser.

Electronic book worms everywhere are stocking up their virtual shelves, and Apple needs to fix these glitches before they slither over to Amazon or Google!

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