Infinite Loop / The Apple Ecosystem


The long-awaited public release of iOS 5 for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch is …

Lock screen

You can display any sort of notifications on the lock screen, and they don't necessarily have to be the same ones that you choose to see in the Notifications Center. If I'm using my phone (and therefore Notifications Center), I don't need to see new direct messages from Twitter, because I've likely already seen them. I might not have seen them yet if my phone's screen is locked, though, so I could have those alerts show up on the lock screen.

Acknowledging notifications from the lock screen involves swiping across them from left to right, as you would to simply unlock your device. When you do this for a specific notification, it will take you as directly as it can to that item in its respective app. But unlike the Notifications Center, the lock screen won't hold onto all your notifications until you acknowledge or dismiss them all—once you unlock either a specific notification or the phone in general, the lock screen gets cleared out completely. We're fine with this behavior, as the lock screen is meant to let you know the most important things that happened while you weren't paying attention to your phone. If you want certain notifications to appear more than once, you can always add them to your Notifications Center as well—or turn on badges for those apps.

I try not to be the kind of person who depends on thousands of notifications for every little thing—no judgement if you are, but I can't live my life like that anymore—so I was apprehensive about how the changes might affect my device-using life. Fortunately, Apple provides enough controls so that I can adjust each app's notifications for my personal needs. You can be as over-notified or as under-notified as you choose, and that's the way I like it.

Time to live in the cloud

When Apple first launched the iPhone and subsequently the iPad, the company based the overall experience around the computer. Users were instructed to plug the devices into their Macs or PCs in order to activate and sync them. As it turns out, however, a huge portion of users never sync their iPhones or iPads with their computers after the first time. Ask any mom, dad, random person at the coffee shop, or even some geek types how often they sync their iDevices with a computer and you'll often get back the (to me) shocking answer that they simply don't. (How these people manage to receive software updates for their devices is beyond me, but I suspect the answer to this question is also that they don't.)

That's one of the reasons Apple decided to revamp its MobileMe service (formerly called .Mac, and before that, iTools) to create the new iCloud. iCloud is Apple's service for syncing all your stuff—music, photos, videos, apps, app data, calendar items, browser bookmarks, notes, documents, etc.—through the Internet. If you're not the computer syncing type, you never have to become one. And if you already are, you soon might quit.

Wireless syncing with the cloud is a smartphone feature that many Android users have enjoyed for quite some time. Android users can push their MP3s to the cloud via Google Music and sync contacts and calendar items with Google's services. The lack of a tethered syncing requirement is considered a huge advantage by many Android users, and iOS users can now enjoy it, too.

For the purposes of this review, iCloud can be split into two parts: 1) iTunes and apps, and 2) your personal data.

iTunes and apps—but in the cloud

"iTunes in the Cloud" provides media syncing between devices. Songs that you buy from the iTunes service, either from your computer or iOS device, can now be downloaded (and re-downloaded) onto other devices directly from within iTunes or the App Store.

It works like this: when you go into the iTunes app on your iOS device (for this section we're going to use the iPhone, since that's the gadget I use most for listening to music), tap on "More" to access your past "Purchased" items. iTunes makes it possible for you to re-download both music and TV shows that you've purchased—whether you made those purchases on the computer, on another iOS device, or even on the current iOS device (and have since been deleted).

You can see all of your past purchases, or just the ones that are not currently on the device you're using. The list is generally laid out in alphabetical order by artist, but you can also look at a list of all songs or recent purchases, or simply use the search box to find the specific song or artist you're looking for.

When located, tap the cloud icon, enter your password, and the media file will begin downloading.

The part that won't be immediately clear to some users is where the song goes once downloaded. The answer is that it shows up in the auto-generated "Purchased" playlist within your Music app, so you'll have to switch apps in order to continue interacting with the song. (You can also find a song just by searching for it within the Music app, which I often end up doing because it's quicker.)

iTunes in the Cloud worked as expected and we didn't run into any problems trying to re-download any of our previously purchased content. It would be nice if Apple would take you directly to your newly re-downloaded song or TV show within the Music or Videos app, as people are impulsive creatures, and the urge to listen to your new/old song right away can be irresistible.

With iCloud, Apple also makes it possible to automatically download your music and app purchases to all of your devices. So, if you purchase an app on your iPad that can also work on your iPhone, it will theoretically show up on your iPhone, too. The same goes for other iTunes purchases, such as music.

When you flip the proper settings on (located in Settings > Store), newly-purchased music and apps from any device will show up on all the others linked to your account. (If they don't, you can always pop into the iTunes or App Store to re-download them as described above. So far, we haven't needed to do that yet.)

Once you let go and allow iCloud to do the syncing, the whole act of plugging your phone into the computer seems excessive, so long as you can accept the fact that your data is in the hands of Apple's data center—perhaps a somewhat scary thought for former .Mac and MobileMe users.

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