While it is impossible to completely uncover the new features, bugs and fun of iOS 6 until the iPhone 5 is available to everyone, here are some initial impressions.
Apple’s Maps app needs a few geography lessons
Arguably the most significant new feature of iOS 6 is the new Apple-developed Maps app, which replaces Google Maps, an iPhone mainstay since the 2007 original. While there are many new great features – most notably turn-by-turn navigation – all of that innovation is being crowded up by some glaring and embarrassing errors. As the BBC reports, the new Maps app is mixing up the names of towns, has some incorrect descriptions of entities as prominent as the Manchester United Football Club, and even places the location for a furniture museum somewhere inside a river!
Expect Apple to clean this bugs out quickly. It’s not uncommon for issues like this to happen once a new operating system or device makes its way out into the wild. If you’ve uploaded iOS 6 to your iPad or older model iPhone and wish to get Google Maps back, check out gadget guru Ben Patterson’s advice in his “here’s the thing” blog.
Facebook’s Integration showcases @Facebook.com addresses
At long last, Facebook is now fully integrated into iOS 6, making it easy to share pictures, status updates and other items without bouncing around to multiple apps. One not-so-sneeky component of the integration, as detailed by TechCrunch, is that users’ @Facebook.com email addresses are displayed as a default when first syncing contacts. This is obviously a boon for Facebook’s email platform. But is it worth the grief that Facebook (and its tens of millions of iDevice-owning users) will take when people’s email addresses are co-mingled with Facebook messages?
Best of the rest
For more details about some less obvious but still important new aspects of iOS 6 (including how the new Google-developed YouTube app works), check out this analysis by prodigy blogger Chad Williams.
