12 Mar 2012
What you need to know about iOS 5.1
Apple has added new features to its major productivity apps, including iWork and iLife apps GarageBand and iMovie, as part of the new iOS 5.1 update for iPhone and iPad.
To get iOS 5.1, you'll need to head to Settings, General, then select Software Update, and click "Install" to download and update your iOS device to the new operating system.
iOS 5.1 has a number of updates, including Japanese support for Siri, and bug fixes for battery life problems. You will now be able to delete photos from the Photo Stream, too.
There are a number of camera-related changes. The camera shortcut will now be visible on the lock screen at all times for those with iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch devices. Face detection now highlights all detected faces, rather than one. The iPad Camera app has had a full redesign.
For iTunes, anyone with iTunes Match will now be able to sync their Genius Mixes and playlists. For iPad owners, the podcast controls will now include playback speed and 30-second rewind, and TV and Movies will sound clearer and louder.
Once you have iOS 5.1 installed, you can update or purchase the new iOS 5.1-enabled apps.
So some of the new features listed below.
iPhoto
iPhoto (price $6.49) is now available for iPad and iPhone.
While it has a number of features designed specifically for the new iPad, it has an amazing array of features overall. The most interesting features are:
* You can beam photos direct between two devices.
* Albums of photos are shown on shelves, and you can tap any photo to edit it.
* Double-tapping a photo finds all pics that look similar to the photo you've selected.
* It supports up to 19-megapixel photos (most cameras currently produce images up to 16MP).
* You can select and flag photos for sharing through sharing services such as Flickr, Twitter and email.
* Tools include auto-enhance, crop, localised colour adjustments for small areas within photos, red eye correction, and colour saturation controls.
* A range of effects are available such as tilt-shift and watercolour.
* Easy share immediately exports images to iCloud, a slideshow or iTunes.
iWork
Most of the new changes to iWork take advantage of the Retina display of the new iPad, such as Numbers ($13.99) new 3D charts.
For those with older iOS devices, you can now create landscape oriented designs in Pages ($13.99) on the iPhone and iPod Touch.
Keynote ($13.99) gets a few new slide transitions too, but we suspect most people won't upgrade just for those.
GarageBand
Garageband (price $6.49) now has Smart Strings, a feature that lets you play an entire string orchestra with one finger. There's also a new Note Editor so that you can adjust recordings rather than having to start again from scratch, which should be a timesaver for regular users.
Want to get a band together? The new Jam Session feature lets up to four iOS devices connect wirelessly, so that you can each lay down tracks simultaneously to a group recording. Jam session synchronises the tempo, key and chords of your touch Instruments to help everything sound sweet.
Everyone can then take their own copy of the collected tracks of the recording to mix and edit.
iMovie
iMovie ($6.49) now has storyboards and you can create Hollywood-style trailers using one of nine templates in a range of genres. The trailers also feature soundtrack music. We don't think it's worth an immediate upgrade, but once you've installed iOS 5.1, you may as well grab the new version if you already own it.
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