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At its keynote in Cupertino, Apple has confirmed the next major version of iOS, iOS 5, will be available on October 12th for all customers.
iOS 5 is the next major release of Apple’s mobile operating system for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, bringing new features like PC-Free setup, iCloud, Notification Center and direct Twitter integration to iOS devices.
Update: Alongside iOS 5, Apple’s new suite of cloud services, iCloud, will be available for free on October 12th.
[image via]
Earlier this week, it was reported the final version of iOS 5 for the next-generation iPhone would include a new functionality called “Assistant”. Based on the acquisition of Siri in 2010 and allegedly using some of Nuance’s voice recognition technologies, Assistant is said to be the next iPhone’s biggest new software feature, which will allow users to “speak” to their device to complete a variety of tasks such as sending text messages, creating calendar events and reminders, or get information on a specific topic only with their voice. Assistant will apparently put the next iPhone’s A5 CPU and 1 GB of RAM to use, providing an effortless experience to execute voice commands with a natural language.
Based on this week’s report and details from “sources with knowledge of the feature”, MacRumors has mocked up Assistant’s activation screen and asked Jan-Michael Cart (author of several iOS 5 and OS X concept videos) to create a quick demo showing what Assistant should look like.
After a long press on the home button, the screen fades and slides up, just like with the multitasking interface. Revealed is a silver icon with an animated orbiting purple flare which indicates a ready state. From what we’ve been told, this image is a close representation of the actual Assistant interface.
From there, the user may be taken to a conversation view that somewhat mimics Siri’s original interface, but in Apple’s own styling.
You may remember MacRumors also commissioned a mockup of the iPhone 5 design in what has become an unofficial representation of the rumored “completely redesigned” device. The Assistant mockup posted today shows an equal attention to detail, and undoubtedly resembles something Apple could do with the multitasking tray, linen background, and styled buttons. Obviously, Apple’s official design will be different, but you can get the basic idea of this feature by looking at the video below.
Voice commands aren’t new to smartphones, but looking at the video and trying to imagine what would Apple do with reliable voice recognition tech, I assume Assistant could still feel “revolutionary” in some way, especially if Apple has really managed to build a “conversation view” that would let you give detailed instructions to your phone. Imagine being able to create quick reminders when you don’t have time to type (for example, while you’re driving) or dictate long emails and text messages directly to your iPhone, which would transcribe everything for you. Assistant is still a rumor, but an exciting one to think about.
Apple will hold a press conference in Cupertino on Tuesday, October 4th, where it’s widely expected to unveil the new iPhone.
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In a new article published this morning, 9to5mac claims to have the details surrounding Assistant, a new software service that has been built on top of Apple’s acquisition of Siri last year, and which should be enabled on the next generation iPhone. According to the website, Assistant will run on next-gen hardware as it’ll require the iPhone 5’s purported A5 processor and 1 GB of RAM. These hardware upgrades have been rumored before, and it wouldn’t come as a surprise if Apple decided to bump the specs of the iPhone 4 to accomodate more RAM, which would allow for more tasks running in the background. Such tasks would include Assistant, which is described as a brand new way to have “an infinite amount of information” available at the sound of your voice.
9to5mac reports Assistant will work with your voice, and it’ll be activated similarly to how Voice Control can be opened on older versions of iOS. Unlike Voice Control, Assistant should take up a smaller section of the screen – like the multitasking tray – and it’ll be associated to the Home button. Assistant-related code has been found in the iOS 5 SDK before, and 9to5mac confirms the new service will be integrated with contacts, messages, Maps, email and pretty much any other feature that supports systemwide frameworks on iOS – like Calendar and the message sheet.
Some of the features mentioned in the article:
More details are available in the original article – such as Wolfram Alpha integration and the user interface design of Assistant.
Back in March, it was reported Siri would be “a big part” of Apple’s announcements at WWDC, but the company didn’t showcase any voice-related functionalities at its developer conference. That move would make sense if Assistant has been made exclusive to the new iPhone, which obviously didn’t get an announcement at WWDC either, and is currently rumored to be unveiled at Apple’s headquarters on October 4th. The voice recognition features of Siri were based on Nuance’s technology, which is also rumored to be in an agreement with Apple for the upcoming iOS 5. Previous iOS 5 betas revealed hidden functionalities (not enabled on existing hardware) related to “dictation”, a feature that, supposedly, would let users “speak text” they want to write on screen.
Two new rumors posted earlier today seem to suggest Apple is getting ready to release the last seeds of iOS 5 to developers, targeting an early October launch for the new OS, alongside the next-generation iPhone.
According to BGR, “a trusted source” claims Apple will release the eighth beta of iOS 5 this week, on Friday, with the Golden Master build to follow on or around September 23rd. Yesterday, a report claimed Apple will send a final version of iOS 5 to assemblers between September 23rd - 30th so that the iPhone 5 will come pre-loaded with iOS 5. It is believed iPhone assemblers in China are waiting for a final version of iOS 5 to install on the devices – as with new Macs released this summer with Lion pre-installed, Apple might want to release a new iPhone already running iOS 5 out of the box. BGR has a solid track record when it comes to pinpointing iOS beta releases, and the website also suggests Apple will requests “technical acceptance” of iOS 5 GM to carriers by October 5th. It is well-known carriers get exclusive versions of Apple’s iOS before the final release in order to test features like voice calling, texting, Internet browsing and perhaps even FaceTime on their networks.
Meanwhile, France Telecom CEO Stéphane Richard [Mac4Ever via MacRumors] has suggested that, based on what they heard, the iPhone 5 should launch on October 15th. October 15th is a Saturday – that would be unusual for iPhone releases, which usually happen on Thursdays or Fridays. Furthermore, previous speculation hinted at an iPhone 5 launch on October 7th - 14th – it is not clear whether Richard is referring to general date for the widely believed mid-October timeframe, or if he’s really heard something about an October 15th European launch.
It’s also worth mentioning that, if the iPhone 5 comes with iOS 5 pre-installed, the new OS would need to come out days ahead of new hardware alongside iTunes 10.5, currently in beta and required to sync iOS 5 devices with a Mac or PC. In the past, Apple released new versions of iTunes and iOS ahead of new hardware to get customers ready for the upgrade, and allow journalists/reviewers to restore the OS on a review unit if needed.
Hypothetically, based on this recent speculation, Apple could follow this timeline:
- iOS 5 beta 8: Friday, September 16th
- iOS 5 GM: Friday, September 23rd
- iPhone 5 pre-orders: Friday, September 30th [link]
- iOS 5 launch: October 5th - October 7th
- iPhone 5 U.S. release: October 7th - October 14th [link]
For a timeline of iPhone 5 news and speculation, check out our rumor roundup and retrospective.
Update: AppleInsider is now reporting iOS 5 could come out on Monday, October 10th, based on information received from a source at AppleCare division.
Apple has reportedly informed its AppleCare division to expect an influx of iOS-related inquiries from customers beginning Monday, Oct. 10, perhaps signaling when the company plans to release iOS 5 to existing device owners.
For instance, one person familiar with the matter said his local AppleCare call center has been told to expect an eightfold increase in customer calls on that day, and that staff are being advised ahead of time for the increased traffic.
Assuming the October 10th date is correct, the iPhone 5 wouldn’t come out on October 7th, as some speculated. However, it wouldn’t be the first time Apple published a major iOS update on a Monday. Alongside iOS 5, Apple is also expected to publicly release iCloud, and OS X 10.7.2.
Adobe has today announced that publishers who use the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite will be able to create newspaper and magazine files that appear in Apple’s new Newsstand feature. Announced at WWDC and arriving in iOS 5 this Fall, Newsstand will allow new editions of Newspapers and Magazines to be automatically downloaded (in the background) as soon as they are made available - and storing them all in a pseudo-folder on a user’s home screen.
Today’s announcement by Adobe reveals that their Digital Publishing Suite will be able to create files that are compatible with Newsstand, allowing publishers to create and deliver new editions directly to users with little fuss. Todd Teresi, from Adobe’s Media Solutions department said the “support for Newsstand will provide Adobe’s publishing customers the ability to deliver engaging content directly to the digital doorstep of subscribers on their iPads”.
Applications built with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite and enabled for Newsstand will allow publishers to better merchandise their content with support for Newsstand push notifications and icon covers displayed on the Newsstand shelf, reflecting the latest issue of the magazine or newspaper.
This move by Adobe is quite a significant motion of support for Apple’s Newsstand feature because their Digital Publishing Suite is already used to create more than 600 titles, including high profile publishers such as Conde Naste and Reader’s Digest. With little effort, all these publishers can now add support for Newsstand.
[Via MacRumors]
Apple has just pushed iOS 5 beta 7 to developers, releasing the new build through Software Update on iOS devices. At the moment of writing this, the iOS Dev Center still reports beta 6 as the latest version available. iOS 5 beta 6 was seeded on August 19, bringing several bug fixes and performances improvements to the next major version of iOS that’s expected to become publicly available this Fall.
iOS 5 comes with new features such as direct Twitter integration, PC-Free setup, iCloud support, and a new notification system. We will update this post with more information on the latest beta as it becomes available.
Update: iOS 5 beta 7 is now available on the Dev Center alongside a new Xcode Developer Preview, iTunes 10.5 beta, and Apple TV Software.
As discovered by a 9to5 Mac reader, iOS 5 contains a new ‘Quake Alert’ notification option to warn Japanese users of an expected earthquake. This new notification option simply hooks into the Japanese earthquake warning system and does a similar job to what some apps on the App Store already do, just on a simpler level that doesn’t require a third party app.
As this year’s devastating earthquake and ensuing tsunami in Japan tragically showed, such early warning systems are extremely important in getting just a little bit of time to prepare. Since the earthquake this year, Time has published an article that detailed the Japanese earthquake warning system:
Japan has the most advanced earthquake early-warning system in the world. A nationwide online system launched in 2007, it detects tremors, calculates an earthquake’s epicenter and sends out brief warnings from its 1,000-plus seismographs scattered throughout the country, one of the most earthquake-prone nations on the planet.
As MacRumors points out, this early warning system notification for the iPhone won’t be the first time the system has been integrated into a Japanese smartphone, with quite a number already featuring the system. Japanese users will be able to turn the ‘Quake Alert’ notification on and off from the Notification Center settings pane - although there is a warning that receiving quake alerts may impact on battery life (due to the connection to the early warning system.
A subtle change noted by TechCrunch in the developer documentation for iOS 5 details how Apple, sometimes in the future and not necessarily starting with iOS 5.0, will start assigning unique device identifiers, or UDIDs, to apps rather than the device itself. TechCrunch reports that according to the documentation, “uniqueIdentifier” has been deprecated in iOS 5, suggesting developers to start using identifiers assigned to each app. For those not familiar with the concept of UDID, it is a alphanumeric string unique to each device (such as iPhone or iPad) that is widely used by advertisers to target ads at users without knowing personal information (just the UDID of a device, and some data associated with it), or by developers to test betas with a specific pool of users, making sure the beta doesn’t get installed on other devices (thus the UDID requirement).
In the past months, however, UDID usage has caused a number of privacy and security concerns because of certain advertisers and developers collecting more information associated to the UDID (such as email addresses or list of names) than they were allowed to, leading to a discussion as to whether UDIDs were really necessary. Basing on TechCrunch’s report, it’s unclear if Apple is going to remove UDIDs as we know them from the first version of iOS 5:
I guarantee Apple will not stop using UDID,” predicts one mobile industry CEO. If Apple does continue to use UDID for itself but denies it to developers that would be an “extremely lopsided change.” It would give Game Center and iAds yet one more advantage over competing third-party services.
Furthermore, when Apple announces that they’re “deprecating” a technology, it doesn’t mean it’s going away in a few weeks or months. Usually, a “deprecated” API or specific technology in, say, OS X is more of a warning to developers, a way to inform them that, going forward, there will be changes. This seems to be what Apple’s doing now with app-specific identifiers, with several iOS and Mac developers already wondering on Twitter how could Apple make the transition from device-based to app-specific UDIDs as seamless as possible for the developers themselves, and users.
Apple has just released iOS 5 beta 6 in the Dev Center, with build number 9A5302b. Additionally, Apple has also released a new iTunes beta, Xcode 4.2 Developer Preview, Apple TV software and the second beta of iWork for iOS with iCloud functionalities. The release comes two weeks after iOS 5 beta 5, seeded to developers on a Saturday. iOS 5 is expected to be the operating system the next-generation iPhone will ship with out of the box, with recent rumors suggesting an early October release for the device.
iOS 5 beta 6 can also be installed over-the-air on devices running iOS 5 beta 4 or later – beta 6 for the GSM iPhone 4 is a 144 MB download as pictured below. Apple recommends a backup either through iTunes or iCloud prior to installing iOS 5 beta 6.
iOS 5 is the next major release of Apple’s mobile operating system for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, bringing new features like direct Twitter integration, PC-Free setup, iCloud, and completely revamped notifications to iOS devices this Fall. We will update this post with more information on the latest beta as it becomes available.
Update: Apple also seeded a new beta of the iCloud desktop control panel for Lion, Safari 5.1.1 for developers, as well as a new version of OS X 10.7.2. OS X 10.7.1 was released earlier this week, and 10.7.2 is being provided to developers to test iCloud integration on the Mac.
