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.











Facebook integration
In iOS 5, Twitter was built right into your iPhone. Now, in iOS 6, Facebook is too. But Facebook is much more widespread than Twitter is. With Twitter, you could share things within apps. You can do that with Facebook too, actually in even more places, but there's so much more. Facebook contains more personal information, which can be put right into your phone in places like Contacts and Calendar. To the right is the panel for Facebook in the Settings app. You can see that a variety of apps use Facebook for various things. The App Store and iTunes use it so you can Like apps, music, and movies. Game Center lets you add Facebook friends to your Game Center ones. And below are Contacts and Calendar. In Contacts, information from Facebook is synced either with existing contacts (which is why the screenshot says Unified Info at the top) or new contacts will be created using the information from Facebook. In Calendar, Facebook Events are displayed along with birthdays, each as their own separate calendars.



Share Widget for Notification Center

Along with Facebook and Twitter integration, iOS 6 brings a new "widget" that can be added to the Notification Center. It consists of a tweet and status update button, for Twitter and Facebook respectively. It can be added by going into Settings, Notifications, and it's called Share Widget.


Siri
Siri learned some new tricks in iOS 6, including a ton of sports information implementation. But I'm not at all a sports guy. I am, however, a bit of a movie person, and Siri's got some new movie addons.

Siri can search for and display information for movies, and even find you theaters. And she does it all in a nice, old-fashioned theater looking display. Siri also hopped on the social bandwagon, now able to post tweets to Twitter and statuses to Facebook.

Picky notification settings

iOS 6 has added a ton of settings so you can fine tune who and what can notify you in any style you please. Call and text tones can be set differently for each individual entry in Contacts.

Each account in Mail (and VIP contacts) can be set up with different notification settings. Shown above right, my Gmail account and VIP contacts will display banners and badges, but my iCloud account won't.

There's some more nice new features of the iOS 6 beta. Questions/comments can be left below.