iOS 5 and iCloud: Should You Make the Move?

This week marked a couple big changes for iDevice users: iOS 5 was released on Wednesday, and iCloud officially replaced MobileMe. The event was not without some problems: First of all, you had to install iTunes 10.5, released two days earlier, before you could download and install iOS 5, and then you had to get through to Apple's servers for validation. For a lot of us, it took several tries before iOS was finally up and running on our iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches.

iCloud provides 5 GB of backup space that you can access from your iDevice running iOS 5 (iPhone 3GS or newer, 3G or newer iPod touch, any iPad), a Windows computer running Vista or newer, and any Mac running OS X 10.7.2 Lion - leaving those of us using OS X 10.5 Leopard and 10.6 Snow Leopard out in the cold.

Today our staff looks at iOS 5 and iCloud - the upgrade process, the new features, the improvements, and anything they lost in the transition.

Charles Moore (several columns): I can't really comment with any authority on iOS 5, because I haven't downloaded it yet. The issues early adopters encountered with failed updates and disappearing data were not encouraging.

However, I've been poring over iOS 5 new features lists and finding precious little that I find especially enticing. Here are the features that might have some useful relevance for me.

• Siri is interesting, and I'm a user of voice technology, but it's currently beta and is only available on the iPhone 4S.
• New camera features - Meh, and some don't support the iPad 2.
• Safari Reader will be handy, and real tabs (iPad only) is a major advance.
• Ditto for Improved full content mail search, and Draggable addresses between To:, CC:, and BCC: fields are also a nice addition.
• iCloud? Right now I'm happy with DropBox, but I'll keep an open mind.
• A full thumbs-up for text macros toggled by keyboard shortcuts.

Unfortunately, that's about it from my perspective. None of my beefs about the many shortcomings of iOS as a platform for content creators have been addressed - particularly multitasking. I am a consummate multitasker and miss it grievously on the iPad. The lack of productive efficiency in the iOS is a constant irritant. Double-pumping the Home button to bring up recent app icons is emphatically not multitasking.

Those who continue blithely insisting that media tablets and smartphone are going to push personal computers to the back burner - or even eventually off the stove altogether - are inhabiting a different digital universe from mine. Tech.pinions contributor Patrick Moorhead recently posted a blog pointing out that iOS's so called "PC Free" is really just about removing the necessity of a PC mothership for a few primarily administrative tasks.

Moorhead conducted an informal survey of his family and co-workers that revealed plenty of tasks the PC is better at or completely necessary for, such as multitask conversing on Google Chat while surfing Facebook, creating spreadsheets or presentations for which you really need a mouse, and iOS doesn't support them, even simple multitasking like downloading a file in the background while you do something else in the foreground, compressing big files for email, watching 1080p video, importing video into the iPad that wasn't taken on an iPhone or another iPad, storing all your pictures and your music collection and personal videos beyond iPad's storage capacity, cleaning up personal video that's shaky, dark, etc, face tagging, displaying different content on two different displays, viewing web site that uses Flash, and printing (reliably).

And I would say that's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Ergo, at this point, "beyond doing the very basics, a PC or Mac is still indispensable."

iOS 5 is a solid update for iPhone and iPod users, but for the iPad, hardly a gotta-have-it. I'll get around to downloading it after the dust settles, but my expectations are not high.

Dan Bashur (Apple, Tech, and Gaming): Although I am not an iOS user and I can't make a fair assessment of iOS 5, I can truly say that iCloud excites me. At Low End Mac, we have been using Dropbox , and although Dropbox is quite convenient to share content across users, iCloud could add endless possibilities for enterprise users with fleets of iOS devices collaborating on documents and other creative works. In addition to its productive uses, iCloud allows you to shift your iTunes purchased content to the cloud, freeing up precious space on your iOS device.

The only drawback I have noticed so far is that iCloud requires OS X 10.7.2 Lion, which means that you won't be using AppleWorks 6 any time soon in conjunction with iCloud. This is clearly intentional, since iOS devices are not designed with legacy apps crafted during the PowerPC era in mind, although it would have added some extra convenience, considering that iOS devices can still sync with PowerPC Macs as long as they are running the latest version of iTunes and OS X 10.5.8 Leopard.

Personally, I feel an amazing overall vibe for both iOS 5 and iCloud. There hasn't been a better time to buy an iOS device along with a Mac that are both capable of taking advantage of this great new technology.

Austin Leeds (Apple Everywhere): For me, iOS 5 was a relative breeze. The whole upgrade process went relatively smoothly (I accidentally unplugged my iPad during the restore process, thinking it was done, and this stopped the restoration of my apps and whatnot, but it also gave me an early opportunity to try WiFi syncing), and at the end of it, my iPad was running perfectly.Ê

iOS 5 lets you split the iPad's keyboard for easier use.

My favorite new feature (other than the WiFi Sync) is the new split keyboard, which allows me to type much faster when holding the iPad with both hands than was previously possible. I'm actually using it to type this in landscape mode! One interesting fact about the new keyboard is that you can actually type the letters Y, H, and B from the left side by pressing just past the letters T, G, and V, respectively. Same goes with vice-versa. It's an interesting addition that will likely help many get accustomed to the split keyboard.

Another of my favorite features is the delta update process - it's much faster and more efficient on battery life than the old update process. I'm also looking forward to OTA updates, to complete the whole PC-free feeling.

As far as performance and battery life goes, the 1st gen iPad is essentially unchanged, although with a little time and experimentation, extending the battery life should be possible.

iCloud has been great thus far, saving my novel right off the bat and backing up trouble-free every night.

My verdict on iOS 5? It's delightfully solid - a little disappointing, but much more exciting and functional.

Allison Payne (The Budget Mac): I haven't downloaded iOS 5 yet, but I will as soon as initial reports show no major bugs. Apart from all of the major features every review has covered, I'm particularly excited for the new multitasking gestures on the iPad 2: swipe between open apps, swipe up to bring up the app switcher, and four-finger pinch to go home. Although I've gotten very adept at navigating between apps, it's my biggest pet-peeve how often the Home button is necessary in iOS 4. Aside from being clunky, it's also one of the few moving parts on the device and thus subject to wear and tear in ways that the touchscreen isn't. Gestures will largely eliminate its use. I hope they optimize them and enable them on the original iPad and iPhone/iPod Touch.

iCloud is promising in a way that MobileMe and .Mac never have been for me. I would never trust private, corporate, or sensitive data to a third-party service, and part of me is still waiting for the other shoe to drop with things like iTunes Match, but Apple seems to finally have a coherent, resilient infrastructure in place (unlike the somewhat disastrous MobileMe debut), and I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays out.Ê

Charles Moore: I stand corrected on the app-switching by gesture support. That does indeed sound like a major improvement. I agree that the electromechanical Home button strikes a dissonant chord on a touchscreen device - one of the touchscreen's stronger points being its relative freedom from mechanical wear and tear.

Austin Leeds: True. In a moment of sweet irony, I recently test drove a 1987 Buick Riviera. Almost everything in and out of it was shot - except the original CRT touchscreen display!

Dan Knight (Mac Musings): It took 5 or 6 tries to get iOS 5 installed on my iPhone 3GS last week, and I have to say that I'm very satisfied with it thus far. I'm happy that the music player has been renamed Music (calling it iPod made no sense to me) and clearly differentiates it from the iTunes app. And now that iCloud is free, I have a free email account to use with the Mail app (I try to avoid doing email on my iPhone, so the bulk of it still goes to my Mac). The new Trailers app works nicely, and Reminders looks very promising (I'd been using a third-party freeware app).

iOS 5 feels more solid than version 4.x, although this may be totally subjective. I am disappointed that the camera icon does not show up on the unlock screen on the iPhone 3GS - I was really looking forward to it, as the Camera app has always been slow to load. I have to say that I am very impressed with the zoom feature, something the iPhone has long needed with its fixed lens. A true zoom lens would be nicer, but this is a big step forward.

My biggest disappointment with iCloud is that it requires Lion, and I am not enamored of the latest version of OS X. I use AppleWorks, Photoshop Elements 3, and a few other PowerPC-only apps that run just fine with OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard but won't run with Lion. If I have to choose between iCloud on my Mac and my PowerPC apps, I'll stick with what I know. I'm not holding my breath for Apple to add iCloud support to Snow Leopard, as Apple is making this one more compelling reason to get people to upgrade to OS X 10.7.

Except for some changes in the way iOS 5 clears caches in low memory situations (very ably explained by Instapaper's Marco Arment last week), I haven't heard of any problems with iOS 5 that should keep you from upgrading if your hardware supports iOS 5.