iOS 6 beta in the Singaporean eyes

Hi guys! So basically after finally getting iOS6 up on my new iPad, i have been playing around with it for pretty much the entire day (After I got 3 hours of sleep at least, thank god Im on leave today). So here I am now at the end of the day with some of my take backs from playing around with it. This might even prove more useful to Singaporeans since I will try to make my comments based on how it will affect us. Click on!

First up, a quick focus on the main new change for iOS6 which everyone is talking about, the new Maps app! I will begin by going on about the new interface.

This above here is basically your new basic view of maps. Not that I wish to start on a bad note, but this is one pretty disappointing part of the new Maps app. Basically, the maps only go as far as the street level zoom, meaning you do not get to see blocks and their block numbers. Thats pretty useless in our Singapore context, especially when you need to check the map to find that particular block / check your surrounding blocks to get your bearings etc. This is similar for overseas, including for USA itself.

As for satellite view, as I expected, the beautiful 3D rendition of maps you see is purely restricted to USA only. Heck, even in USA itself that is an issue, where there was none of it being shown for New York. Chicago had it though, and honestly looks amazing, though it does take some time to load depending on your data speed. For Singapore and other countries that were not supported, you basically have something similar to Google Earth view, a satellite top down view of the map. Whats worse is due to what I believe is a lack of map data, you can actually get "cool" maps like above where the area is covered by thick clouds that happened to be there when they took the shots. Regardless of how I rotated and pinched and zoomed, etc, those clouds refused to budge so I couldn't get any visual on the area for satellite view. Another minus point for foreign users. Otherwise satellite view looks just about the same as Google Maps version

Next up is turn by turn directions for the maps app, which is the only saving grace in my opinion for the new Maps app. For standard view wise its pretty plain, though simple to look at and gets the job done. I haven't had much chance to really use it since I don't have a car, but it looks pretty much like a standard GPS app which made it easy.

You can select your routes where they will suggest 3 routes for you, pretty much like Google's current implementation. You get a nice drop list on the side that summarizes all the turns you have to make and the distances. As mentioned I didn't really get to test it out any further, but the initial instructions at least came in nice and clear.

Well, do note that my comments is still based on the iOS 6 SDK beta. Considering that the buildings were nicely indicated in the demo during the keynote, there is the hope that it will actually be nicely up by the time the public release comes out next month. Especially since Singapore was specifically mentioned during the keynote, one can always hope, lol.

 Your iTunes and App store apps have also received cosmetic updates. The changes made have in my opinion made looking for top apps and other such info much easier. Furthermore, you can now download a new app, yet stay within the App store itself.

The universal sharing button has been updated to be graphics based making it much more easy to select the right option. You can see the nice Facebook option there as well.

Notification center comes with a do not disturb function, together with settings for it. You can set schedules for it based on timing, or set to allow silence calls only from certain groups of people in your contacts, or also to set that a person calling for a 2nd time will still be silenced or not. 

Siri is up! Takes up only that small space and doesn't have any other major outlook differences from a 4S. Though yes, the new function to launch 3rd party apps is pretty useful and I think I will start using the location based abilities a lot more. (Though either their database needs to be updated or Siri still needs more work. Not finding a clinic when I have a 24 hour one in the next block, or finding a gas station when I live directly across the road from one is pretty crap. Finding me a random canteen 4 and canteen 2 with 0 review ratings as my top nearby restaurant options is also kinda.... hmmmm)

The new music app's interface now has a nice sleek view to it. It is black in the album art view, while a nice silver hue to it in your album/song view.

Clock app is updated! Looks that much better now really, i really love the world clock view.

And lastly, notification center updates to allow tweeting or Facebook updates anywhere.

Thats about all the updates that I have noticed so far. As you can see, the main updates are all focused in the Maps app. The rest have had some minor updates put into the apps and the above are some of the more noticeable ones so far. Do remember that these are the changes based on the beta so I do expect some additional changes to be made for the public release. Hopefully they fix up the maps app and everything will be good in my opinion.

I do expect that the changes would be different for iPhones (Setting reminders or directly texting a person who called you would be a pretty cool ability) but I don't have a spare iPhone I can play around with since I would like to keep my 4S jail broke. Feel free to comment if you have tested out the SDK and are willing to share info of your experience for the iOS6 phone app~