You might have heard the news- I finally caved.  A couple of weeks ago, I took the plunge and bought myself an iPad.

Why did I do that?  I have a lot of reading to do right now for my literature review.  Considering I travel a lot (read: every day), it’s better for viewing documents whilst I’m on the train each day- the retina display is fantastic. Not only that but if I’m travelling further afield, it’s lighter and easier to carry around than my laptop.  I’m not going to sit here and write a full on review of it but in short, I think it’s great.

Does anyone have any recommendations for apps that would be useful for keeping track of research papers/PhD stuff etc?  So far I’ve got Goodreader and Mendeley.  I’m guessing there’s other apps I should have?  Thanks in advance.

iOS 5 was released to the public on the 12th of October, following the announcement at the Apple event in the previous week. Such was the demand for iOS 5 that Apple’s servers struggled to cope and many users received the dreaded 3200 error.

I myself had been eagerly anticipating the new software. Now that I’ve had time to play around with it, I thought I’d give my views on it from the perspective of an iPhone 3GS user.

Speed
First things first, iOS 5 is definitely faster than iOS 4. If you recall, there were issues when iOS 4.3 was released. When I ran it, my phone seemed to lag and the graphics weren’t as smooth. At the time, iPhone 4 users were also affected and soon after, Apple released an update to rectify the issue.

Notification Centre
People are saying that the notification centre has been ripped off from Android. I haven’t used an Android phone so I can’t really make a fair comparison. Whatever the case, I think the notification centre in iOS 5 is a useful feature. It’s handy to have one central place to view new messages, emails and events. The new badges/alerts system is nice too- better than the standard popup which was used for everything.

Siri
This is not a feature which is enabled on the 3GS so its not something I’ve used yet. From what I’ve read, I have mixed feelings about Siri.

Sure Siri is a great feature- its practically a personal assistant. Who needs to type a message when you can dictate it to Siri? All joking aside, it does seem to be useful for finding out information. Since it uses voice recognition, I’m also thinking it would be a great tool for disabled users.

The downsides? First off a security flaw has been identified where the phone can be accessed by Siri when locked (Tech Radar article).

Secondly, Siri appears to have a problem with Scottish accents, as reported by the media (zdnet article). Now I can understand this to a degree. I’m a Scot and even I have trouble with some Scottish accents, after all, some of them are really strong.

This isn’t the first time voice recognition has caused problems in the past few years. Hands up if you’ve ever played the Brain Training games on the Nintendo DS. Did anyone encounter any issues (well, apart from being told that you had a brain age well above your actual age)? The games seemed to have a problem with my accent too so it’s not just an Apple issue. Think about the way Scots generally pronounce “seven”. It comes out as “sivin” doesn’t it?

Anyway, my first thought when Siri was announced: ” jeez, this is going to encourage more people to talk to themselves on trains”.

Location-based Reminders
This is a feature I was looking forward to using the most in iOS 5. Beside a shop? Pick up milk. Approaching your destination on the train? Send an alarm to make sure you haven’t fallen asleep. Sounds great, doesn’t it?

Well it’s not so great if you’re the owner of an iPhone 3GS because the location part of reminders has been removed. Why? The iPhone 3GS is more than capable of running this feature since it has GPS. It’s worth noting that the feature was enabled in beta versions of iOS 5. Honestly, why have Apple done this? Your guess is as good as mine (read: making people upgrade to a new phone equals money).

On a 3GS, I’m not sure that reminders adds anything more to the OS. I find myself continuing to use the calendar app. Perhaps the reminders feature is for small tasks like picking up items from the shop and the calendar should be reserved for appointments?

iCloud
Another great feature of iOS 5. Users are able to back-up and restore their devices wirelessly using iCloud. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get iCloud back-ups to work yet as my computer seems to be confused about its identity.

iTunes in the Cloud is also quite a neat idea. Recently, I purchased a track on iTunes (Teardrop by José González if you really wanted to know- it was used in the House season 4 finale) and I quite happily listened to it on my laptop. I wanted it on my iPhone too. Did I have to connect my iPhone to my laptop and transfer it? Nope. If you go into iTunes on your phone, select “purchased” then select “not on this iPhone”, you will be shown a list of all the songs you’ve previously purchased and you can then download them directly to your device. Great for when you’re away from your laptop.

iMessages
iMessage allows you to send messages between iOS 5 devices for free and is basically an IM service. The joke has been made that it’s just like Blackberry Messenger except it actually works (referring to the recent BBM outage). I love the fact that it allows you to send text-like messages to non-phone devices like the iPod Touch. Add Skype into the mix too and provided you have a wi-fi connection, your iPod essentially becomes a phone.

Overall Thoughts
iOS 5 has made vast improvements to the iPhone 3GS. The phone appears to be faster and the notification centre is a nice, unobtrusive way of viewing various alerts and messages. iMessages makes it easier to stay in touch with others and iCloud negates the need for the the iPhone to be connected to the computer. All fantastic new features.

That said, I’m still a bit disappointed with it. I was hoping that iOS 5 might feature NFC support. Android announced support for NFC when Gingerbread was released at the end of 2010. Since then, Google has created a Wallet system to take advantage of the feature. In May, RIM announced a BlackBerry device supporting NFC and just a few weeks ago, Nokia announced some NFC-enabled games. In this capacity, Apple are seriously lagging behind.

Last night, I was sitting in front of the computer reading a few articles on web development. I got a bit caught up in what I was reading and lost track of time. It turns out it was after 1am. Just before I nodded off, I decided to check Twitter one more time. That’s where I read the words: “RIP Steve Jobs”.

Surely it couldn’t be true? After all, Twitter is usually crawling with death hoaxes. Still, my timeline was full of tweets related to Steve so I checked the BBC News site where they confirmed it: the Apple co-founder was dead.

Despite it being such a sad day, there have been some brilliant tributes to the man and I’m not sure if there’s much more I can add.

All I can say is that Steve Jobs was a visionary who changed the world. Thanks to him Apple devices have become ubiquitous. Look around you, how many Apple devices do you see people using on a daily basis? How many Apple products do you own? I was using my MacBook when I heard he’d died and this blog post was typed up on my iPhone whilst I was on the move. Think about how he’s changed the way we interact with the world.

What else can I say? RIP Steve Jobs. The world is a poorer place without you.

In April 2011, it was announced that security researchers Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden had developed an application which exploited the consolidated.db file held on iOS devices, allowing users to visualise the information it contained to display/track their movements.

Following this, Apple released a statement explaining that the company wasn’t tracking users via this data. In a Q&A on Location Data, featured on their website they explained that the consolidated.db file was maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location, some of which may be located more than one hundred miles away from your iPhone, to help your iPhone rapidly and accurately calculate its location when requested.

Since then, Apple has released an updated version of iOS (4.3.3) which has quashed this tracking bug.

I’m a little curious about what the iPhone Tracker app has uncovered on my phone.

Several points on the map indicate that I have been in both the Middlesbrough and London areas since I purchased my phone in January 2010. On closer inspection, it says I was in Middlesbrough on the 8th July 2010 and that I was in London on the 26th August 2010. In reality, those days were spent in an office in Dundee. Perhaps this is a flaw in the way Apple captured the data?

The iPhone Tracker made me think about where I’d been though. I came to the conclusion that the map shouldn’t show any points outwith Scotland. I got my phone at the beginning of 2010 and haven’t actually been out of Scotland since June 2009. Of course, a portion of the North East coast was littered with markings as I travel along it frequently. I noticed quite a few points for Glasgow (Michael Bublé and Bryan Adams concerts) and Edinburgh (visits to the Fringe festival).

My iPhone Tracking Map

I myself haven’t updated to iOS 4.3.3. Why not? In a few weeks, I’m off to NYC and when I return home, it’ll be interesting to see the additional points which have been plotted on the map. It’s a pity I didn’t have an iPhone when I did my USA/Canada trip in 2009. I think we covered 1500 miles on the bus over there- that would have produced some interesting data!

It looks like Apple has been paying attention and have released an update for iOS 4.3!  It should sort out a few graphics issues.

In the end, I had to wipe my 3GS, then restore it from a back-up, which seemed to make it run a little bit better.  Still, it was frustrating that I had to do that in the first place.  Let’s see what iOS 4.3.1 brings.