New iOS 5 features and some current free alternatives..

Yesterday seen Apple announce the forthcoming iOS for iPhone / iPad / iPod....there are some good new features to the OS but personally I would have liked to have seen some cosmetic changes too, like the ability to change themes and lock screens etc.

With so many App's in the App Store...currently 425,000...I am sure there may be better suggestions for alternatives to some of the new features than I am going to post here...
(The new iOS 5 will not be available to download until Autumn - unless you are an Apple developer, in which case you can get it now.)

To begin, here are some new features presented in an official Apple video..

These are some current alternatives to those new features currently available...some are very good in comparison I think, while, in fairness, some are not going to be as good as the Apple iOS updates..




The new notification system is a welcome change to how it is at the moment...I don't think any third-party App will handle this any better...but an App that does have a stab at handling notifications is Boxcar - Boxcar, within its own App, can handle notifications for Facebook, Twitter, E-Mail etc
Again...I don't think is as good a solution as Apple has developed, but an alternative nonetheless.

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Next offering on this list is Offline Reader - an alternative to 'Reader'...it saves webpages in to a more readable format and lets you access them offline..

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Although there is no App that lets you use the camera on your iPhone like iOS will, it is interesting to note that the app Camera+ was rejected from the App Store last year when it tried to offer the feature of using the 'up' volume button as a shutter button...a feature that Apple has now introduced !!
The new OS features editing from within the Photo Viewer, Cropping / Red-Eye Reduction Etc....but an alternative at the moment is the free App PhotoPad, a very worthwhile addition to any iOS toolbox.

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Tabbed browsing in Safari was another feature announced yesterday, and although it is reported on some blogs at the moment that tabs may only appear in the iPad version of Safari, there is a good, stable and free tabbed browser available in the App Store (one of many it has to be said), namely Atomic Lite

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Newsstand is a new feature that is essentially an App Store within an App.
You can subscribe to various magazines and newspapers which will then be downloaded and available for reading within the App....very similar to what the App Zinio currently does...although it will be interesting to see which magazine and newspaper publishers will make themselves available to the Apple App only.

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Reminders is a new feature that does what it says on the tin, but what makes it very hard to beat is the ability to notify you when you leave a certain area...i.e. - when you drive away from your house you may get a reminder to not forget an item you may need. Having a location-based element to 'Reminders' makes it difficult to find an alternative, but one App that does have a similar feature is Remember The Milk, a very worthwhile reminder App, and a step up from the calender reminders that iOS 4 and lower may offer..

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iMessage, which allows you to send 'free' messages and photos, to other iOS users, can be easily opposed I think.
PingChat is a free App that works faultlessly and offers all the above, including the ability to share photos and videos.

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Some of the very welcome new features to this new iOS will be the ability to take a photo from the phones lock screen without waking the phone up....the upgrade to text editing in the Mail App....the ability to quickly send a twitter link from within an App....a big one for me this, as I am NOT an iTunes fan - the ability to upgrade the firmware without have to go through iTunes, all updates to the device can now be done thought the device itself....and for those that DO like iTunes, the ability to sync wirelessly.

And finally iCloud...Apples new 'Cloud' storage service....(more on iCloud here)
An alternative to this, and free, which I have been using for playing my music through a cloud service, is TunesAccess which not only offers free unlimited storage for your music, but also unlimited bandwidth, and I have found it to work faultlessly. The iPhone App player is very similar to the iPod player and is very easy to use.

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The updates to the current iOS are very welcome and none of the features it offered can be knocked, the above are just alternatives to some of  the features, or a way of getting some similar features, until it does come along in the Autumn.

So, thats my tuppence worth on the announcement of the new iOS.

Doug out :)


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