On June 6^th Apple announced the introduction of its latest operating system for its massively popular iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. This operating system is said to have over 200 new features. These features will include new native applications, improvements to functionality, and provide great new connectivity between iOSdevices.  Below are some highlights of what to expect in iOS 5.

Alerts, notifications, and more

In iOS 5 there is finally a new system for managing notifications. All users of the iPhone have been playing a game only to be interrupted by a text message. Apple has designed a new notification center (surprisingly similar to android’s) that is accessible everywhere, and doesn’t interrupt what you are doing. iOS developers will now be able to create notifications from apps that are far less intrusive during important day to day tasks, like playing Angry Birds.

iMessage

This is a feature that can best be described as blackberry messenger for iOS devices. iMessage is a way for people to communicate from one iOS 5 device to another. This now gives iPhone users the ability to know when someone has received a message, and if they have read it, something blackberry users have had for a long time. This also means iPhone users will now have the ability to message other iOS user when they only have wifi service.

Twitter

In this day and age everybody is writing, and reading, news on Twitter. An exciting new feature of iOS 5 is a twitter application that is native to iOS devices. This means that iOS development teams can now integrate twitter within their apps. This will allow iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch users to tweet what they are doing directly from iOS applications. This integration of twitter makes it easier for people to share pictures, locations, and much more directly from applications.

iCloud

iCloud is something that all users of iOS devices will find useful, if apple executes it correctly. The idea behind iCloud is that users of the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch will be able to store their content in one place. Apple is giving every user 5gb of free cloud storage where they can keep their music, photos, and videos.  iCloudwill then sync these files with all registered iOS devices. Apple says that items purchase from their app store will not take up any of the users free 5gb of storage.

The iCloud system will also provide syncing services for email, calendar, and other data to iOS users. iCloud will also offer people the ability share their apps among their iOS devices.

Perhaps the most interesting feature of iCloud is something called iTunes Match. This is a service that, for $24.99 a year, will allow iOS users to scan music in their library and have it matched to music in the iTunes Store. This will allow users to download their existing songs from the iTunes library, without taking up any of their free 5gb of storage.

iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch developers have already seen the beta versions of iOS 5, and the public version is expected to be released sometime in September. So get ready for some big changes and improvements in your iOS experience.

For Help integrating these or any other new iOS 5 features into you existing iOS applications, or creating a ground up iOS 5 ready application, visit our website, and brows the large number of mobile application development services we offer.

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