What iOS 5 means for your apps
On Monday, Apple announced the latest edition of the operating system that powers iPhones, iPads, and the iPod Touch – iOS 5, set for release this Autumn. With a reported 200 new features, most reporting (and Apple themselves) has focused on the most visible enhancements to the user interface and new bundled apps it will include. However, what many people don’t know is alongside the front-end updates, each release also includes hundreds (if not thousands) of subtle changes and additions to the software development kit used to create iOS apps. Our tech team have taken a peak under the bonnet of the latest code, searching for what we think are the most interesting changes for both new and existing apps. Here is what we found, in friendly terms (the technical terms are given in italics):
iCloud's Other Functions
Whilst by no means the first of it’s kind, iCloud is still a big development for the accessibility and market power of cloud services. One of the interesting functions it offers that has been somewhat lost amongst the hubbub over music streaming and photo backup is the new ability for apps to store data and settings online. Previously, settings were lost when a user deleted an app from the handset, meaning there was a larger obstacle to winning back customers who had previously deleted the app and did not want to spend time setting it up again. Now, they can be back up and running with the same account in seconds. Plus, the App Store app now lists updates for every app the user has ever purchased, rather than just those currently installed – another opportunity to win users back with a juicy update. On the flipside, however, apps may now see less permanence on user homescreens precisely because reinstalling at a future date is trivial - provided they do indeed remember to reinstall now that the app isn’t staring them in the face every day. I know I have quite a few apps clogging up my iPhone, “just in case” I need to return back to them one day, that will be the first casualties of iCloud.
Another new feature of the app storage, called NSUbiquitousKeyValueStore, is the ability for several apps from the same developer to access the same information, such as user accounts, or basket data. For simpler apps, with some clever design this may remove the need for the development and hosting of custom webservices altogether, which is a boon for smaller scale projects.
The New Notification System
Long regarded as one of the worst parts of iOS, after five OS revisions Apple have finally seen sense and…completely ripped off Android’s notification system (albeit the version they had three years ago). What this means for app design is twofold. Firstly, the arrival of a notification is much less likely to continuously interrupt the user flow, meaning a smoother and more engaging experience throughout (and less risk of another app stealing your thunder). Secondly, the less obnoxious nature of the new notification system should mean users will soften up to receiving them from applications, which is good news for trigger happy marketing departments who currently can’t be trusted with the keys to the Push Notification server, lest they drive a user into disabling the app’s notification abilities (or worse, uninstall it completely) with excessive communication.
Better Social Integration Throughout
Obviously, the integration of Twitter directly into the operating system via TWRequest will no doubt help increase its use within apps; although the majority of suitable apps had Twitter support built in anyway via one of many freely available Twitter plug-ins, this will reduce development and testing time. Potentially more interesting is the new integration of Twitter, Facebook and Linked information directly into the device’s Contacts app via updates to the method ABPerson, opening up this data to apps without the need for a clumsy extra stage of signing in to each specific social network (assuming the user has allowed it). It will also mean there is far less duplication for apps that use the social networks to import what were previously four separate and possibly conflicting data streams.
Built-in Face Recognition and Address Searching
Whilst Facebook is in the midst of yet another privacy storm for silently introducing automatic face detection, Apple have in effect done the exact same thing with iOS 5. Buried within the iOS SDK is the new function CIFaceFeature, presumably built on the face detection featured in iPhoto, that allow for automatic facial feature recognition. As well as being a boon for the constant stream of FatBooth clones frequently in the App Store charts, the near-free nature of this functionality for developers may encourage the addition of tagging and manipulation features to apps that previously would have been too expensive to develop from scratch. Plus, this is surely the first step to biometric security, an important consideration as mobile devices begin to take over the function of our wallets that will hopefully increase consumer confidence in spending via the channel.
Another new function called CLGeocoder will return the exact co-ordinate location of Maps-style searches – addresses, places of interest, postcode – without the need for any custom webservices or API integration and with built-in disambiguation (AKA “Did you mean..?”). With location-based marketing still bubbling under in the world of digital, this is a timely addition will save a lot of people a lot of development time and as with facial recognition, will hopefully encourage a lot more location-awareness for apps that may not previously had the scope for it.
A New Page View Controller and Text Controls
This one gets a little technical, but Apple have implemented a new tool specifically for the simulation of books, involving two separate “views” (i.e. pages) connected by a spine, that can be quickly swiped between. Whilst obviously beneficial for the increasing number of iPad magazines, with a little clever development it also offers a new, more flexible way to approach the overall navigation and sitemap for an app. This should hopefully open up a range of more immersive navigation experiences that previously would have taken a lot more time and effort to code. There are also a whole load of new functions for controlling how rich text is displayed, which again will be a timesaver for apps focused on written content, but it’s a little early to tell just how useful they’ll be.
Safari Reader
New additions to Mobile Safari (which, it must be said, owe an awful lot to InstaPaper) include a save-for-later mode and Safari Reader, which “displays web articles sans ads or clutter so you can read without distractions.” Whilst the first addition is a positive step and yet more evidence that mobile content is no longer just about bite-size portions and blustered commuters, the second will be unwelcome news for the mobile advertising industry, who will almost certainly see iOS conversions fall if it takes off with users.
Incremental Storage and Spotlight Searching
A big plus for anyone handling large catalogues or databases in apps, like retailers or directory services, changes to the way iOS handles indexed files called the “incremental store” (NSIncrementalStore) means both speedier search times and reduced development complexity. Plus, it looks like apps can now register individual items with Spotlight (iOS’s search service, located by scrolling left from the homescreen), which can link straight through to the relevant screen in the app. If we’re right, this is a huge development for retailers who do it right – one touch searching of their entire catalogue without even having the app open! Once enough apps do this, it’s not hard to imagine that rather than taking the time to open up each app individually to look for an item, users will simply type its name into Spotlight and let it search them all at once – think of it to mCommerce as Google is to eCommerce. So make sure you’re in there! It’s also interesting for the various price comparison apps out there, who can only link to websites for the actual purchase; once a user can search for an item and link straight through to the superior purchasing experience their chosen mCommerce apps offer, will they really want to bother with the old way?
File Versioning, Better JSON Support and Increased Security
New additions to the way iOS treats cached files means it’s now simpler to implement full offline support via NSFileVersion – one of the key weapons apps have in comparison to mobile websites. JSON serialisation (the process used to turn data from the web into data within the app without errors) is now also built-in via NSJSONSerialization, speeding up the creation of connected apps. Finally, it looks like files can now be encrypted using CFFileSecurity so they can only be accessed by a specific device or devices, and not extracted from the iTunes backup files or transferred to a new handset, which may be of use to apps with strict security regulations to meet (the current lack of banking apps is no coincidence), or that are looking to sell content in a specific manner.
The Stepper Control
The first new control to be added to the standard iOS interface kit in a while, the UIStepper is a button that allows the user to hold it down to count a value up. A small addition, but useful one (particularly for adding items to a basket) that previously would have required some time to create a custom control.
Linguistic Tagging
Finally, there is a very interesting new option to tag text sentences within an app called NSLinguisticTagger, to help iOS identify which is the subject, object and verb. Presumably designed in part to help improve the Screen Reader for visually impaired users, this adds another string to the iPhone’s already industry-leading accessibility options (amongst the many other new accessibility features announced). However, it will be more interesting to see what other creative uses of the feature developers (and Apple themselves) will come up with. Mobile customer service bots, anyone?
This blog post was written by Alex Sbardella - Mobile Products Manager
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