Chrome for iOS

Yesterday marked day 2 of Google's annual "I/O" conference, where on day 1 they had already revealed the next installment of their bloatware Android OS (now with Butter!) along with their pretty cheap tablet and a media streaming device. Those don't matter; what does is what they released for a better platform yesterday. First came Google Drive for iOS, which was overdue and only a file viewer, not an editor or uploader. But the big piece yesterday was Google Chrome being released for iPhone, iPads, and iPod Touches. Here's my rundown of the long awaited Safari-crushing browser. (Click on any image to enlarge it.)

iOS 6: Beta 2

To check out more blog posts about iOS 6, including my introductory one, click here.

Earlier today, Apple released the second beta for iOS 6. As soon as I heard the news, I did a backup & sync with iTunes, just in case something went wrong, and then updated using the OTA (over the air) delta updating system that was added in iOS 5. I discovered something I think is new: the setting icon becomes animated while updating. Not the actual Settings app icon, but the one in the Settings app.

 It felt like the update took awhile, but that may have been my impatience. Despite that little inconvenience, the update completed without a problem. The only big new things I've noticed are performance enhancements and bug fixes. Things don't lag or crash as often as they used to. One of my favorite bug fixes is one I mentioned in my first iOS 6 blog post: keyboard clicks not being registered and producing a sound. They all do now! Other than that, there's nothing notably new in the second beta. The build ID is new, from 10A5316k (beta 1) to 10A5338d. I'll report anything else I find here.

Interesting readerbase

Blogger has tools that show a ton of information about who views blogs, including location by country, device/operating system used, and browser used. It also shows, if people found a blog via a Google search, what they searched to bring them to that blog. Here's the demographic of my blog for the last month.

iOS 6: More neat features

To check out more blog posts about iOS 6, including my introductory one, click here.

In my last blog, I highlighted some of my favorite features of iOS 6. Those weren't all of the good new features, however. Here's some more notably good ones, however small. Clicking on any of the images below will enlarge them.

Reminders

The Reminders app always seemed like it lacked something that would make it more useful than any other reminder app you could download from the App Store. In iOS 6, Reminders got much better location integration. Instead of only being able to use your home or work address, Reminders now allows custom locations to be set. In the screenshot to the left, I have a notification set when I arrive at Apple's headquarters in Cupertino. I probably won't ever get that notification, but the location can be set to anywhere.

iOS 6: Favorites of the beta

To check out more blog posts about iOS 6, including my introductory one, click here.

The iOS 6 beta is full of "over 200" new features. In fact, there's a list being compiled on a great Apple fan forum called iFans, and you can find the nearing-200 feature list here, and an amazing overview of iOS 6's big new features here. 200+ features do seem like a lot, so I thought I'd go over a few of my favorites. Clicking on any of the images below will enlarge them.

Do Not Disturb

A neat little feature added in Settings is called Do Not Disturb. When enabled, the device will continue to receive notifications normally, but it won't make a noise, vibrate, or even light up. It's very nice for overnight, instead of having to turn on airplane mode or something else.

When enabled, a moon icon is displayed next to the time in the status bar. Specific times can be set for Do Not Disturb to be automatically enabled and disabled. Other nice settings include allowing a specific contact group to be able to reach you by having their notifications work normally. Also, if someone calls twice within 3 minutes, the second call will ring. That's toggle-able also.

iOS 6: Should YOU update to the beta?

To check out more blog posts about iOS 6, including my introductory one, click here.

In my first iOS 6 post, I said that I was using the iOS 6 beta easily on a daily basis. Does that mean that anyone who updates could easily use it? Official answer: only if your device's UDID is registered with the Apple Developer program. Unofficial answer? That's a little bit trickier.

iOS 6: Beta update

To check out more blog posts about iOS 6, click here.

WWDC 2012 was kicked off last Monday. It stands for World Wide Developer's Conference, and it's a week-long event hosted by Apple for developers to get informed about Apple's new line of products. On Monday, the Apple exec team presented a keynote showing off all the new hardware and software, including the next major update to iOS, chronologically named iOS 6. Its official release date is sometime in the fall, but Apple began distributing a beta for iOS 6, meant for developers to mess with and get their apps working with. I don't necessarily make apps, but I too enjoy testing out new features, so I got my iPhone's UDID (Unique Device Identifier) registered with Apple's developer program, and upgraded to iOS 6. I did the same thing with iOS 5 when its betas were released, and it was fairly buggy. With that in mind, I didn't think I'd actually be using iOS 6 betas a lot. I figured it'd be just as buggy and would crash just as often as my experiences on the iOS 5 betas. However, I was wrong. After an entire day, my only complaints are the instability of the new Maps app (which I can get over seeing as it's new), the lack of a jailbreak (which I relied on before updating for those extra helpful features, and also root access), and some keyboard clicks not making a sound (it's slowly driving me insane). Other than that, I can use iOS 6 on a daily basis with ease. It only has been a day and a half since I updated, so I'll see how things start to change. The first beta expires in about a month, so another beta will have to be released by then. I plan on continuing to update to the latest betas until the official release, and hope it works out well.