Much has already been said about the high-profile features in the new iOS 4. But there are also a bunch of smaller, subtler changes that I really enjoy.
Mail
Gmail settings for mail, calendars and notes are now all integrated and accessible from one attractive page.
To take advantage of this change you’ll have to reset your Gmail account. Afterwards you’ll also get the custom Gmail icon in your Mail application…
…as well as the option to Archive instead of delete Gmail emails.
Notes
I don’t know about you, but I use Notes all the time. It’s terrifying to me not to have a better backup of these things than what iTunes provides. At long last, in iOS 4, we get over-the-air note syncing.
To Gmail, no less. This is sweet.
Photos
The Photos app now remembers the state it was in. This is great because I use it for, among other things, subway maps, which are broken up into several JPEGs. In previous iOSes, every time I quit the Photos app I’d have to navigate back to the Subway Maps gallery, then back to my image upon reopening the application. Photo app now remembers where it was, so now I just reopen the application and pick up where I left off. I’d guess this is a likely consequence of the new multi-tasking and fast-application-switching features of iOS 4. It’s a very welcome change.
Photos also requires a re-sync after you upgrade the OS. Directly after the update my photo album was all lo-res thumbnails. But once you re-sync, the photos seem to be a bit higher resolution than they used to be, which is especially nice for my subway maps.
Task Bar
Multi-tasking is great, allowing you to fast-application switch, which makes it possible for me to draft a post like this, with text and images, much more quickly and easily than before as switching between text and photos is much, much more efficient.
Portrait lock. Finally, I can read in bed!
Lastly, here’s a good article on some of the other more subtle changes in iOS 4:
http://nikf.org/post/722500438/8-subtle-changes-you-may-or-may-not-notice-in-ios-4
It’s little refinements like these that often make me the happiest. It’s always great to see the attention to detail that Apple gives its products.
7 Comments
Setting up a “GMail” account in iOS 4′s Mail seems to set up mail and notes via IMAP and calendaring via CalDAV. Besides calendar colors from Google Calendar synching correctly in CalDAV calendaring, have you found any advantage to IMAP+CalDAV over Google’s Exchange support?
Patrick,
I haven’t tried Exchange for Gmail/Gcal. Back when it first came out there were certain peculiarities about it that I remember wanting to stay away from. If I remember correctly, Exchange forces contact syncing (or something like that), which I didn’t want. So I’ve never used and can’t really speak to it.
I can say that I’ve been very happy with the IMAP/CalDAV combo. It works great for me, and better with each iOS implementation.
-systemsboy
At least in iOS 4 you can enable Mail, Contacts, and Calendars individually for Google Sync’s Exchange support. Personally I have Mail and Contacts enabled under Google Sync’s Exchange support and Google Calendar set up with CalDAV to preserve the calendar colors between iCal Google Calendar iPhone.
Nice! Thanks for the info.
-systemsboy
Nice! Thanks for the info.
BTW, here’s a list of known limitations for Exchange support:
http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139635
I don’t think any of those limitations apply to IMAP/CalDAV, but calendar support sounds much richer in Exchange than it is with CalDAV.
-systemsboy
I like the idea of synced notes using the Gmail mail setup. But what is missing is the Shared calendar. I have a family shared calendar in google and if I setup gmail as an Exchange service I get this calendar but NOT notes. WTF? Come on Apple, give me the cake and let me eat it!
Unless I missed something (please tell me I did), and then I will gladly eat my hat.
Well, I do *not* use Exchange sync, but rather the standard email and calendar sync, and this gets me notes and calendar sync. Not sure what the advantage of doing this over Exchange is.
Unless you really need to use Exchange, maybe you should try using the standard Gmail account sync. It does it all, and well in my experience.
-systemsboy