Siri
iOS 6 also introduces a number of
improvements to Siri. The most important of these for UK users is that it now
locates business information so, for example, you can ask Sin to “find an
Italian restaurant” and it will display search results from Yelp and open them
in Maps. You can also ask for sports- related and business information.
Siri is now also available for the new
iPad; holding down the Home button brings up a Sin box.
Another new feature is the ability to
launch apps by saying their name into Sin. While this is a small improvement,
the packed nature of people’s iOS home screens makes it a welcome one. We’re
increasingly finding ourselves using this rather than returning to the home screen
and foraging though our folders.
Siri
is now also available for the new iPad; holding down the Home button brings up
a Sin box.
Also new to Sin is the ability to control
where the audio output of iOS 6’s virtual assistant goes. When there’s more
than one option say, for example, you’re in a car with a Bluetooth stereo a
button appears that allows you to route Sin’s voice to either the iPhone’s
speakers or your car’s.
Sin still has plenty of shortcomings,
though. For example, it still can’t read your email to you, or change your
settings (though it will recognise commands to turn on Airplane Mode or
Bluetooth), and trying to edit an email message or iMessage you’ve composed via
Sin is liable to induce hair-tearing for anything but the shortest messages.
It’s still fantastically annoying when it
misunderstands things, but both Sin and our usage of it is improving.
Facebook integration
Like Twitter, Facebook is now a central
part of iOS. You’ll need to configure it by visiting the Facebook section of
Settings and entering your username and password or create an account if you’re
one of the few people who doesn’t have one. Apple will provide you with a
lengthy list of apps that you’re giving access to, along with telling you to
disable many of the features. You’ll also be prompted to download the Facebook
iOS app if you haven’t already.
Like Twitter, this also works alongside the
regular app that you download from the App Store, but now integrates features
throughout iOS.
You can now read Facebook posts in the Notification
Center and post directly from here. You can also share photos and web pages
directly to the service. A nice touch is that you can use Sin to create both
Facebook and Twitter posts.
Perhaps the most useful inclusion of
Facebook is direct integration with the Contacts app. This means that once
you’ve connected iOS to Facebook your contacts will sync with the social
networking service. So if, for example, a friend changes their phone number or
email on Facebook, it’ll also update on your iOS device (although this was
included in the Facebook app, it now works more tightly with iOS 6).
Phone Features
With all these new features, it’s easy to
forget that for most people their iOS device is also a phone. Thankfully, the
Phone app hasn’t been forgotten and has some handy new features.
The most obvious of these is a new control
on the right-hand side of the incoming call notification slider, which enables
you to deal with calls you can’t take right away. There are two options: Reply
With Message or Remind Me Later. The first of these provides you with three
stock responses: “I’ll call you later”, “I’m on my way” and “What’s up?” You
can also customise a response by typing in your own text. The second option
offers you the choice of being reminded an hour later or when you’re at a
location or when you leave a location.
With
all these new features, it’s easy to forget that for most people their iOS
device is also a phone.
Another new feature is Do Not Disturb,
which enables you to silence incoming calls and messages. There’s a switch in
Settings to turn this on or off. When it’s activated, a half moon icon will
appear in the top bar.
You can also schedule when you use this
feature. Go to Notifications> Do Not Disturb and dick Schedule. Use From and
To to select the time. An Allow Calls From setting enables exceptions for
people or groups of people. Finally, there’s a Repeated Calls option, so ifa
person calls and then calls again within three minutes they’ll be allowed
through.
Mail
The most prominent alteration in Mail is
the addition of the VIP option that arrived with Mountain Lion. To add someone
as a VIP, tap the blue arrow next to the VIP mailbox that shows up in the main
screen of Mail. Then tap Add VIP, and you’ll be prompted to choose a contact.
You can remove a contact by swiping it and tapping Delete.
Once you’ve designated someone as a VIP,
you’ll see a blue star appear next to any new messages from them; once you’ve
read the message, that blue star will turn into a grey one. Note that you don’t
need to detail a specific email address for the VIP; any address that’s in the
Contacts entry for your VIP will be flagged. Also, thanks to iCloud, your VIPs
are synced across all your devices.
VIP messages have two other special behaviours.
First, they’re all collected into a VIP smart mailbox at the top level of Mail.
Secondly, you can set up Notifications for Mail that trigger only for VIPs. You
can configure those VIP-specific notifications in Settings >
Notifications> Mail > VIP.
In addition to this, the other major
improvements to Mail include a much-awaited Flagged smart mailbox. You’ve been
able to flag messages since iOS 5, but if you wanted to see all those messages
in one place, you had to resort to your computer. This new folder will show you
only the number of flagged messages for mail that have actually been retrieved.
So if, for example, Mail is configured to show your 50 most recent messages,
that’s all you’ll see.
The workflow for flagging has changed, as
well. Previously, you tapped a small Mark link that appeared under the subject.
This has been replaced with a little flag icon in the toolbar, where the
Refresh button resided.
In testing, we weren’t able to flag
messages in our Gmail account configured via Microsoft Exchange. However, in
iOS 5, we could flag these messages; they just didn’t show up on the desktop
client.
A couple of other improvements to Mail make
life easier. For example, tap and hold on the New Message button, and you’ll a
slide-up tray of your previous drafts will appear. You’ll also get an option to
Insert Photo Or Video. Tapping on this will yield a standard photo picker that
allows you to easily embed pictures or videos from your iOS device, without the
hassle of copying and pasting, or having to remember to send emails from your
Photos app.
Apple has taken a page from the book of
many third-party developers and implemented a pull-to-refresh mechanism for
Mail, which replaces the old Refresh button that you could tap.
