Last week on Twitter I mentioned I’d sent my parents a quick how-to on the newest Apple update. My reasoning was simple, I knew they’d have questions, this update was mind boggling but not as intuitive and I knew if they didn’t figure it out they’d be really annoyed they spent so much time updating all their various phones and devices. Quite a few people asked me to share my wisdom (gleaned from trial & error, a few message boards and articles and chatting with other people using iOS 5) which is by no means complete, technical or perfect. But anyway…….
- iCloud: iCloud is the new Mobile Me, so if you had Mobile Me before, you might already have a pretty good understanding of how it works. iCloud is the program that is responsible for backing your phone up, allowing seamless transfer of items between your devices and lets you geo-locate your missing phone. When you first install iOS 5 you will be given the opportunity to activate iCloud- if you opted out, you can go back and turn it on from your settings menu. The biggest issue I had with mine was some confusion with my Apple ID and my old Mobile Me id, and from what I can tell, I’m not the only one. I logged onto Apple.com, updated my Apple ID email address, re-synced my phone (took 5 minutes) and then it accepted my Apple ID and I was good to go.
- By entering your Apple ID into all your various devices (your computer iTunes, your iPhone, your iPad, your iPod, what have it) and activating iCloud, when you buy an item on iTunes on one device, it will download the item on all your devices (when they are on a wifi network), which is really nice when you want to listen to that new song that you bought on your iPad but now you are the gym with your iPhone.
- If you select the “back up to iCloud” option when you install it (as opposed to “back up to computer”) your phone or iPad will back up to the cloud (think of it as an invisible force) and if you have to go back to factory settings, you will have your data/contacts/etc stores on the cloud. Tip: your iCloud will back up every time you charge your battery to 100%.
- Finding your lost item: if you are using iCloud (and you turned your GPS device on on your phone…) you can install an app on your phone called “find my iPhone” – this isn’t a new feature for Mobile Me users, but the app makes it cinchy to search for your missing iPad from your iPhone- handy when you can’t get to a computer to log into your Apple account. The geolocating is pretty accurate, and you can also wipe the data from your device, lock your device and create a message that pops up on the home screen. For me it would tell the “finder” to call my husband’s phone number for a reward for getting my device back – but you can also send choice words to someone you think stole your device, if you are so inclined. Anyway, download “Find my iPhone” (good for iPods & iPads as well) for ease of the finding feature. Edited to add: you can use the “find” feature to make your device play a sound, which is helpful when the geolocator is telling you it is in your living room but you don’t know if it is under a couch cushion or hidden in a toy box.
- If you choose to sync your photos then your photo roll will look something like this when you click on it:
The “photo stream” is what is being sent to your other devices (when they are on an active wifi network). Don’t like it? Turn off the photo stream in your iCloud settings.
- Notifications: One of the coolest new features of iOS 5 is the notification center. To use it properly, you’ll want to go into your notification settings – anything you have notifications turned “on” for is going to show up in your new notification center:
- You can turn notifications off for things too. To turn notifications off (that you don’t want in your notification center) tap the “edit” button in the upper right hand corner (see? look at the image above) and then select the widget you want to turn off…it will then look like this:
Just slide the button to “off” and it will disappear from your notification center. You can also use that “edit” button to add things to your notification center, should you want to do that. Just tap “edit” and then scroll down to your list of notification-enabled widgets and apps, click on the widget, and slide the button to “on” and it will appear in your notification center.
- The coolest thing about notifications, is for things that used to “pop up” in front of what you were doing (and require you to manually get rid of them) they now unobtrusively slide by and let you continue reading/dialing/doing what you are doing. There are two styles to your notifications now, i.e. where you want your alerts to appear on your screen:
- Either up near the top (my choice) (called banner) or front and center (select “alerts”). How you choose is up to you. Now here is what is nice about notifications: at any given time you can go to your home screen and swipe “down” and pull your notification center down. There, on one screen, you will see your weather, your stock quotes, your outstanding voicemails, your missed calls and recent texts, any @ reply tweets (if you have it set up to notify you of @ replies) and anything else – all in one spot. So nice. Just go to your home screen and swipe “down” to see your notification center. Here is the Apple image of the notification center on an iPad and iPhone, as well as the unobtrusive alert on the left-hand iPhone screen (see how it didn’t interrupt the game of Cut the Rope…just a tiny little pop up at the top of the screen):
Image via Apple.- Photos: your camera got some upgrades as well! If your phone is in your purse or pocket and you see something you need a photo of right away, instead of opening these slider bar to unlock your phone & open your camera, just double tap on your “home” button (the center button) and voila: you can choose between the slider OR opening your camera up instantly:
- Just tap the camera image to open your camera up instantly. Also new? You can use the “up” volume button to snap a photo, no more awkwardly trying to tap the screen while you take a self portrait or what not.
- Zoom: the zoom feature does not work like it used to- it is now “pinch to zoom” which means you need to reach out and “pinch” the screen and your zoom function will appear- it no longer a “tap to zoom” swipe command.
- There are also some new basic photo editing applications in your photo stream. To edit a recently snapped image, open up a photo in your photo stream (you can’t do this from the camera view) and tap the “edit” button in the upper right corner. Your options will appear:
You can rotate, auto boost, take away red eye and crop the photo. “Auto boost” is what I call the magic wand, basically it will color correct a tiny bit, which can lead to a nicer overall iPhone photo (keyword: iPhone photo, you still won’t be Ansel Adams).- iMessage: Anyone who has ever used a BlackBerry knows that BBM, or BlackBerry Messenger has a cult following. Apple wanted to get in on it, so now, when you text with anyone who also has iOS 5, you might notice it looks more like this:
- Blue! Blue indicates you are using iMessage instead of texting, which is still in green. (PS you can turn iMessage on & off in the “message” section of your settings widget) And if you read the convo I had with my Dad (seeing if iMessage worked) you can use iMessage on your iPad (and iPod Touch)- which is a nice feature, considering you can’t text on the iPad. You set it up with your email address on your iPad or iPod. iMessage doesn’t use any of your texting plan either, which is nice if you don’t have unlimited texting. (I….have unlimited texting and data and AT&T has me for forever and ever and ever because I will never, ever give my unlimited data up, hahahahahaha GRANDFATHERED IN, BITCHES.) In iMessage you can see when the other person is typing (ala GChat) (indicated by ellipses on their “side” of the screen) iMessage is also FAST – nice if you are having a conversation on the other side of the globe or at a crowded concert as you try to find someone. You can also turn “read receipt” on with iMessage so you know if someone read your message or not- like on email. Kind of nice!
Whew. This is just a personal run-down of some of the “best” and brightest features, although many more exist, as do better, more streamlined and professional reviews and how-tos of the new operating systems. These features make me feel a little better about not having Siri yet, but one day I’ll get a new phone and I too can have a personal assistant. In the meantime, Shit That Siri Says has me laughing…..Questions? Comments? Concerns? Just leave a comment…..and if you are interested in another cool new thing in technology, check out my sponsored post regarding Kodak’s Free Print week, if you want some hard copies of all your iPhone or Facebook photos.
You’re wicked smaaahhht.
how does something become an imessage instead of just a text? I upgraded and everything seems to be working great but my iphone’s message system still seems the same…only I’m only getting half of the messages people are sending. Two people have tried to send me messages and I have’t been able to receive them.
What am I doing wrong?
It could be a simple as turning iMessage on or off- go into your “settings” widget, scroll down to “messages” and make sure you have iMessage turned on. You should also check “Send as SMS” so it will divert back to texting when iMessage is unavailable. Also double check what email address you have associated with it (if someone is using an iPad or iTouch to iMessage you…). Go into the same “messages” section and tap “receive at” and see what you have associated with it- I have mine set up for my phone number AND for my default email address – if this is an email you don’t use often, try putting in your default email and see if that fixes the problem.
I *think* I fixed it. I had turned on imessage before…but it kept not accepting my apple ID, which is ridiculous…so weird. I think it’s working now. I am forcing my coworker to text me from her phone. and it showed up as an imessage, so I’m thinking it’s working?
Most likely. I had trouble with my Apple ID as well, but after I updated it on Apple.com and then resynced my phone, it fixed it. Not sure why….but oh well.
I so love the Notification Center, iCloud, and the double home click camera access.
Good job here, lady!
Thank you thank you! I am sending this to my boss to read up on. I’m trying to figure out how to sync all his apps to one library – he’s been buying them through 2 different email/iTunes accounts. So I have to log into the two email accounts when syncing & all that good stuff. If anyone has suggestions for fixing this problem, I’d love to hear them. LOL
You could try turning on “home share” in iTunes to see if that fixes it……. but I’m not sure.
I’m a little turned on by all this geeky explanation.
Once I’m out of law school and can afford more than my awesome flip phone, ha, I’m going to come back to this for a crash course. #flipphonesarethefuture
ha. Can’t wait to get rid of that thing.
Thanks so much for sharing. I figured out a lot of things on my own, but I particularly wasn’t understanding the notification center stuff. I had NO idea to swipe down to bring up the center, for example. Thanks again!
Very, very good. You should come to work with me. : )
Love this!! Thanks for taking the time to write this. I can’t wait to get my notification center all set up! I’m such a dork! ha