iOS 5

iOS 5 finally arrived on Oct 12th as Apple announced on during "Let's talk iPhone" event on Oct 4th. I was prepared for the arrival of iOS 5 - upgraded iTunes, Sync'd up and Backed up my iPhone 4.

This time, I wasn't interested to upgrade to iPhone 4S. There are 2 main reasons ...

    •    One, I have 2 year contract with AT&T and AT&T approves my upgrade after Feb 2012 (18 months completion of the contract).
    •    Second, except for Siri, I didn't find the new capabilities of iPhone 4S compelling for me to upgrade. I'll wait, I am good with my iPhone 4 for now :-) 

iOS 5 Upgrade

Upgrade to iOS 5 took a long time, it was more than 2 hours - the upgrade failed for the first time and then, iTunes was trying to restore from the backup. I was beginning to get worried if I'll end up with no phone for a day or two. Thank god, once iTunes prompted that restore is complete, there was a sigh of relief. Interestingly, I was surprised that my iPhone 4 has been upgraded to iOS 5 regardless. So, I really don't know if my upgrade was a successful upgrade ;-). My iPhone 4 with iOS 5 is working fine since then …

In this blog, I am going cover some of the iOS 5 features based on my experience on my iPhone 4. I won't be writing about Siri or other features that are iPhone 4S specific or iPad specific. Let's jump right in ...

Notification Center

One of the very first and visible features of iOS 5 is its notifications center. Pretty good implementation for handling notifications and catching up with Android platform. Prior to iOS 5, the notifications were terrible on iOS platforms - notifications were handled like a system message/alert, interrupt your work or game play, can't handle multiple notifications and you can't get to notifications later. I am glad that iOS 5 notifications took care all of those issues.

New System Apps (Reminders, Newsstand)

Apart from enhancements to existing system apps on iOS devices, Apple has added a couple of new system apps in iOS 5.

    •    Reminders

          ⁃    Finally, there is a TODO app that comes with iOS - for free. It was long overdue. Location aware (Geo-fence) Reminders are pretty cool. Now, you can set up a reminder to buy milk when you are near a grocery store.

          ⁃    Didn't quite understand why there is an integration with Yahoo Reminders given that there is an iCloud Reminders.

    •    Newsstand
          ⁃    Newspapers and Magazines - Similar to Books, specifically designed for subscription based content delivery. As a user, I didn't find anything great or interesting enough content.

iCloud and PC-Free

Now, you can back up your iOS device on the cloud with iCloud - pretty neat. iOS upgrades are PC-free (no iTunes tethering required anymore and everything can be done Over The Air (OTA)). Apple hopes to end jail breaking with such features, it would be interesting to see what happens on that front. Apple is smart with 5GB free option - I had to clean up my iPhone 4 content to less than 5GB to use the free iCloud backup. I suspect most people will have to pay for iCloud services (Nothing really comes for free from Apple).

There are more than 200+ features/enhancements on iOS 5. Check out iOS 5 features @ http://www.apple.com/ios/features.html. 

Summary

iOS 5 adds significant number of improvements, enhancements and takes the OS capabilities of smart phones/tablets to the next level.

Steve Jobs, RIP!

You have made the world a simpler and better place. 

You are an inspiration, a visionary and a legend. 

We'll miss you. May god bless your soul rest in peace. 

My Favorite Quotes by Steve Jobs

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle for less.”

“Have the courage to follow your heart’s desires. They somehow already know strongly, what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary, of much lesser importance.” 

“You have to Trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, intuition, yourself, to go against what most people are saying. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."

“Getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your own intuition.” 

My Favorite Videos of Steve Jobs

Gamification - Lessons from the Swim Schools

I recently started swim classes for my 3-year old daughter in a swim school. We were given a welcome kit which had a swim passport.

Interestingly, each page of the swim passport is designed for specific goals of a certain skill level. Since my daughter is 3 years old, she started at the Pre-School level.

As you can see, each level is associated with certain high level goals. Once the student completes all the goals for a level, the student will be awarded with a level completion 'ribbon' and recognition infront of rest of the swim students & instructors at the end of the swim session.

After 4 swim classes, my daughter completed all the goals for the Pre-School level and earned her Pre-School ribbon last weekend.

My daughter is really proud of her achievement !! Ofcourse, it made myself proud as well.

So, each level has certain goals and the swim instructor tries to train them towards these goals. At the end of each swim lesson, there is an inspector, who goes around to each swim instructor and verifies if the student passes any of these goals. If the student pass the test, the student earns a 'star' (completion) towards the goal. For each 'star' that a student earn, they get to pick their favorite sticker and stick them against the completed goal(s).

At the end of completion of all the goals for the level, the student is awarded with the ribbon (level completion).

Now, my daughter moves on to "Intermediate Pre-School" level starting next class with next level of goals.

A lot to learn from theses swim classes - how they approach in making a new skill learning more engaging, keep them focused and motivated. These swim classes are designed not only to train the students on swimming skills, but also

• Focus one or two learning goals at a time 
• Award/Reward them frequently (sticker reward for goals completion) to make them feel that they are making progress 
• Motivate them to make incremental progress (goals completion) towards bigger achievements (level completion)
• Parents get to see the incremental progress, accomplishments and achievements

This approach is what are doing at ZippyMind (Lively Language Learning for Kids). Each of our game has different levels and each of the level has certain goals towards learning the language. At the completion of all the goals for the given level, the user gets to move on to the next level of challenges. 

Parents will be able to see the progress made by their kids, get more involved in their kid's learning, be able to share their kid's accomplishments/achievements with family and friends. 

Check us out at http://www.zippymind.com - we'll be launching soon !!