Macworld has taken a sneak peek inside the next version of iOS and brought you the lowdown on what you can expect when the update hits your device in November.
AirPrint
Safari, Mail, and Photos all now sport print options, usually under their Share buttons.
Unfortunately, we have neither one of those aforementioned printers nor the requisite software for testing shared printers (it requires Mac OS X 10.6.5) so we can’t regale you with tales of making printouts appear from our iPad as though by magic.
However, we can tell you that the print option appears in Safari, under the Share icon to the right of the Bookmarks button; in Mail, where it lives under the Reply button; and in Photos, where you’ll have to tap the Share button before you get an option to select and print pictures. Tapping print under any of these brings up a popover that asks you to select a printer by searching your network, and a control for selecting the number of copies.
Third-party developers will also be able to build in support for AirPrint into their own applications, finally bringing wireless printing to the masses.
AirPlay
The AirPlay menu in the iPad's iPod app
Whenever you’re listening to music in an AirPlay-enhanced app—for example, the built-in iPod app—under iOS 4.2, you’ll see an AirPlay button. Tap this button, and any AirPlay-compatible devices on the same local network appear in a popover menu. Tap a device, and your media is streamed directly to it. (If you’ve ever used Apple’s Remote app to control iTunes on your computer, the process of choosing an AirPlay destination is similar to using the Remote app’s Speakers menu to choose an AirPort Express for streaming music.)
As the new Apple TV is not yet available, we couldn’t test video streaming—if you choose an AirPort Express as the AirPlay destination from within the iPad’s Videos app, for example, only audio is streamed.
Additional iOS 4.2 features
Notes After three long years, our national nightmare of Marker Felt is finally over. Settings now has a Notes section which allows you to switch your font to Chalkboard or, happily, Helvetica. It’ll even update all your existing notes to use your new font voice. You can also set your default account for Notes.As of iOS 4.2, the iPad's multitasking shelf now features a software orientation lock and a brightness slider.
Brightness Apple also added a brightness slider to the left of the media playback controls, a huge win for those who like surfing their iPads in a dim room, but hate having to navigate all the way into the bowels of Settings to find the control.
Safari now allows you to enter text in the search box that you want to look for on a page.
iOS 4 and 4.1 features
Users who have updated their iPhones or iPod touches to iOS 4 will be thrilled to see, at long last, most of iOS 4’s features make their way to the iPad.Multitasking In iOS 4.2, the iPad adds support for the same seven types of background tasks that were introduced in iOS 4. You can double-click the Home button to bring up a shelf that lets you quickly switch between apps (on the iPad, it holds six icons in portrait orientation and seven in landscape mode). You can also play music in the background, make background VoIP calls, and receive local notifications, as long as you’re using an app that’s been updated with support for the relevant features.
Folders work on the iPad just as they do on the iPhone, but they can hold up to 20 apps instead of 12.
Mail The iPad’s version of Mail gets the unified inbox, conversation threading, and top-level inbox index introduced in iOS 4, and—hurrah!—you can finally tap the iPad’s menu bar to jump back to the top of a message list in portrait orientation as well as landscape.
Game Center iPad users now get their own version of Apple’s new Game Center app, specially designed for the app’s larger screen—there’s even a new home screen for the app that displays icons for Game Center-enabled games; tap any of them and you’ll be taken to that app’s listing in the App Store. Logging in with your existing account shows all of your existing friends, achievements, and games.
Calendar Those with Microsoft Exchange accounts will now be able to see event invitations in the iPad’s calendar application, giving them one less excuse for skipping out on that morning meeting.
iOS 4.2 forever—or at least until iOS 5
We’ll be honest: after checking out iOS 4.2, the idea of going back to 3.2.1 is inconceivable. Multitasking, folders—blessed folders!—and Mail’s improvements feel natural on the tablet and we’re sure that AirPlay and AirPrint will make us even more at home when they finally arrive in full force this November.
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