iOS Lovers, Rest Assured, No More Annoying Notifications

Scott Forstall took the stage to discuss the improvements in iOS 5, of which there were many. The first is a major overhaul of notifications. No more annoying popups in apps. No more more interrupted Angry Birds marathons. This is accomplished with a "Notification Center", which is reached with a swipe down from the status bar in a method identical to Android's. Nothing is different in the implementation of notifications, really. And Apple just sued Samsung for "copying" their software with Touchwiz. At least Touchwiz works differently in implementation than iOS, but this here is just blatant and unabashed theft of an idea. iOS fanboys, guess who had it first.

The next feature is a newsstand application for housing any and all of your electronic magazine and newspaper subscriptions, and reading them. Not a huge feature, but an useful one nonetheless. It also provides an area where you can purchase all of these subscriptions, whereas previously they were separate apps for each newspaper.

Camera wise, there will be a link to the camera on the lockscreen. Android had this first as well. Think HTC Sense.

One of the only original ideas included in iOS 5 is iCloud. It is a free wireless service that syncs everything on your device into the cloud and stores it there for backup. And if you lose your device, it seems all you will have to do is get a new device and sync back all of your lost apps, contacts, or whatever else you had on your idevice. And thank goodness, you now don't have to connect to your computer to update your software. It will be all over the air.