iOS 5 update: Jumping into the bandwagon

Last week was a daunting as it was delighting week for the Apple as a corporate organization. For one, the demise of one of the greatest CEO of all time, Steve Jobs. Secondly, the launch of the iPhone 4S and consequently the new mobile operating system, iOS 5.

I am no Steve Jobs fanboy, but I admire him for being a marketing genius and a technology trailblazer. There might be technology-enabled services that he didn't pioneer, but at least he was the one to do it right. As of current counting, almost all my mobile concierge is built by Jobs, so does my brother's, and so does my Mom's.

And speaking of the mobile concierge, I upgraded my iPhone into iOS 5 to as a readiness platform for the Siri. Yes, mine is just an iPhone 4 and Apple blatantly trumpeted that Siri only supports A5 chips which is absurd because some of my friends are already using Siri(back in the time when it wasn't yet bought by Apple) on their iPhone 3GS phones. It may come out that announcing that would make an iPhone 4S less-than-stellar product because hardware-wise, there isn't much of the improvement.

So fearing that people will not patronize the iPhone 4S might have compelled them to discard the A4 chip as a processing bed for the Siri. It doesn't even require stringent computing muscles as most of the Siri-integrated services computation is done online, on the server side.

Although I doubt that Siri will not be optimized for non-US-based countries as it uses US based location services like Places, Yelp, WolframAlpha, etc. I am afraid it will not tell me accurately if I ask which is the nearest mall, 7-11, French restaurant, or a Mercury Drug.

Nonetheless, the upgrade brought some rafts of outstanding features:

**Real-time notifications(lock screen and pulldown) is such a lovely sight. Although the lock screen one has been adapted by WinMo 6.0 days and the pulldown by the Android, implementing it in an iOS 5 is "better-late-than-never." However I am hoping that it keeps a cache of the notification displays much like the Android does.

**iMessage is a service akin to the BBM(Blackberry Messanging) but once again, better-late-than-never.

**iCloud services is a computing phenomenon of an on-demand services that stock a repository of data in the storage cloud. It comes along with 5GB of free storage but if that isn't enough for you, you can subscribe a 10GB additional for $20, 20GB for $40, and 50GB for $100 per year. This service can also be done(back and restore) through OTA(Over The Air) method.

**The new weekly view on a Calendar is also implemented.

**Fantastic Mail app features that includes Bold, Italic, Underline, Quote options, and extended Search, mass Marking as Read/Unread, Flag setting, and addition/deletion of mailbox folders.

**Enahnced camera app to include viewfinder grid and a hardware-based button for pressing the shutter. You may use UP button of the volume rocker actually.

**Wifi synchronization with iTunes and the OTA(Over The Air) method of updating the software, which is also a longtime Android technology.

**Twitter is also fully integrated, but I was hoping Facebook as well. The only reason I think why Apple didn't include Facebook is that they may offer same snippet of service as Google's G+.

**Newsstand app which serves as a hub of all your magazine subscriptions.

**Videoplayer is not seated in an all-in-one player(iPod button on previous iOS) but a separate icon already from the music files.

I might ran out of real-estate space if I enumerate the 200 features of the iOS 5 and the what's missing/not-included, so I guess for those who are using iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and iPod Touch 3G and 4G, you may want to try this out. Back up your files and applications first because this upgrade will wipe them all out.