This morning at Apple’s iPhone event in Cupertino, Apple’s Senior VP of iOS Software Scott Forstall took the stage to fill in the rest of the details regarding iOS 5 before they moved on to talk about new hardware.
iOS 5 will launch to everyone on October 12th.
For those who need a recap, the top 10 features of iOS 5 (as hand-picked by Forstall himself):
- Notifications: A replacement system for iOS’ otherwise antiquated alerts system
- iMessage: A free to use, iOS-to-iOS SMS replacement
- Reminders: user creatable time/location based reminders
- Twitter integration
- Newsstand: Apple’s in-house distribution system for iPad magazines
- New and improved camera (One click access from the lock screen, red eye removal, cropping, rotating, etc)
- Game Center (Recommendation engine, Achievements system)
- Improved Safari browser (Faster, lighter, tabbed browsing on iPad, and the “Reader” content scraper)
- Mail.app improvements
- PC-Free (Activation without iTunes)
Also hugely important to iOS 5, but mentioned later in the presentation: iCloud, Apple’s photo/document/data syncing solution. It stores your photo stream, backs up your contacts, keeps a catalog of all the apps you’ve ever purchased, and can store documents and files from third-party apps. iCloud will launch to everyone on October 12th, as well. Everyone gets 5 GB for free, while 10 GB, 20 GB, and 50 GB plans are available for $20, $40, and $100 per year respectively.
The iOS 5 update will work on the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 1 and 2, and iPod Touch (3rd/4th gen).