iOS 6: A Considered Guide

Maps I do not use maps all that often. I have poked around in the new Maps app and it has been fine for my neck of the woods. I have read that it is less than stellar in other areas. So much so that there is a Maps fail meme starting. There are at least a couple tumblr pages devoted to it already. I remember when I got my iPhone 3. On my first outing where I used the Google driven Map app I ended up about ten miles from where I wanted to go. My second attempt was better, but still off by a couple miles. Conclusion: Maps was a pool of diarrhea. I would never use it, ever. Then it got better. Fast forward to today. Apple€™s initial offering is not only not better than Google Maps, it is not close. How dare Apple offer such utter bollocks? To all the people pissing and moaning, get over yourself. Instant perfection is impossible. No, Apple€™s maps is not as good as Google€™s. It won€™t be for an unknown amount of time. Perhaps never. Thing is, there is something like 500,000 apps in the App Store. I am absolutely sure there are plenty of other maps out there, so use one of them. Problem solved. Here are a couple questions worth discussing: Was Apple right in deciding to cut ties with Google? Did Apple do so because of Jobs€™ thermonuclear war, or was it time to move on? Passbook Of all the features, this is the most disappointing. It was rushed and it shows. The iPhone 5 is the first phone Apple has had to play serious catch up with. Pushing a half-baked Passbook out shrieks that Apple does not want to get too far behind Google in the eWallet arena. First of all, I know it is not an eWallet, nor was it presented as one. It was a place for tickets and reward programs. Fine. Thing is, when you launch the app, there is nothing there. There is a button to go to the App Store. Clicking it takes you to a list of apps. Once installed, Passbook is still empty. How in the hell are you supposed to populate the damned thing? There are convoluted steps to get your reward cards to populate, but this fails the intuitive and just works level of perfection Apple strives for. The biggest bummer was the lack of Starbucks support. I might be mistaken, but Starbucks was one of the companies listed when they announced Passbook at WWDC, right? I have their app and I use all the time. Having it in a convenient place with others was going to be a real boon. What happened with that? I do not think it was Apple€™s fault, but it sure does not make them look good. Someone is getting punched in the throat for that one. Safari Tabs open in Safari are now saved to the cloud and made available to other devices. This has yet to come in handy, but it is still early days. They have made Reading List more useful. It nows saves whole pages for reading later even if you do not have an internet connection. I am sure this is great for some people. I never read websites when there is no internet. Plus, I prefer Instapaper or Pocket because I only save articles when I need to reference them later. Reading List is for things you plan on getting to later. If I gave into this urge I would have years of stuff jammed into Reading List€™s sidebar. Then I would just close it so as to avoid looking at the mound of stuff to read. Nope. If I do not read it right now, I am not going to. This is why Reading List has never made it past initial testing. Facebook Finally! Facebook is fully supported on the os level. The stock my have tanked, but once we are all assimilated money will not matter. Hive mind and Locutus of Borg€™s brownies will be all anyone needs. Phone I really like the Send to Voicemail, Remind Me Later and Reply With Message options when calls come in. Sadly, because I communicate mostly through text messages, I do not get to use these very often. One new feature I do use, every night from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. the following morning, is Do Not Disturb. It is not an active use, but I use it all the same. Sometimes I have trouble remembering to pay things. The more I forget, the more bill collectors call. For those really bold collectors who call late at night, or early in the morning, this feature cuts them off perfectly. Granted, I could just turn my phone off, or change the ringer to vibrate, but there is the off chance that someone will call that I need to communicate with. Or, I suppose, I could pay my bills on time, but in a pinch Do Not Disturb is my go to, and these days I am always in a pinch.