What’s new in iOS 4.3 and iOS 5?

New Features in iOS 4.3

Some of the new features integrated in iOS 4.3 are:

• AirPlay: Limited Web Video Support Added. AirPlay enables near-real-time streaming of certain videos and photos.
• The web-based videos will stream only when they are authorized and a permission tag is necessary for iOS 4.3 before allowing the video to stream.
• Audio from unauthorized videos can still stream any way.
• Self-made videos stored within the Photos application can be streamed through Apple TV now in 4.3.

New features in iOS 5

• All your alerts can be set in one place. All types of notifications like new email, texts, friend requests can be tracked easily now in one location. Even the lock screen displays notifications so that one can act on them with just a swipe.
• All to-dos can be listed systematically in the iPhone with the help of reminders. You can record your due dates and locations. It can be location based which means there will be an alert once you reach the supermarket. It can be synced via Outlook or iCloud too.
• You have the newsstand in one place. Your magazine and newspaper app subscriptions are organized in Newsstand. With new issues, the Newsstand gets updated in the background like the newspaper coming to the door.
• Now you can capture those unexpected moments which would get lost till you set the camera to the best position. The camera app is right from the Lock screen, and is adorned with pinch-to-zoom gestures, and single-tap focus. Press the volume-up button to snap your photo within seconds.
• You can set up all your devices wirelessly, right out of the box and even back up and restore your device with the help of iCloud.
• In iOS 5, Airplay supports video mirroring which implies that you can wirelessly stream whatever’s on your iPad 2 to your HDTV via Apple TV.

Apple’s iOS : origins and brief

Unveiled in 2007, the iOS has since then captured the imagination of the people. The first version of iPhone took the world by storm and more success came by.

iOS is the world's most popular mobile operating system brought about by Apple. It was originally made for iPhone but Apple has now extended it to support their other devices including iPod touch, iPad and Apple TV too. Apple, Inc. has not set up a licensing structure to let third party software use iOS. More than 500,000 iOS applications can be found in the Apple store and has been downloaded more than 15 billion times in recent years. Till the end of 2010, it had a smartphone market share of 26%, behind Google's Android and Nokia's Symbian.

The user interface of iOS involves direct manipulation concept, and makes use of multi-touch gestures. The best part about it is that the response to user input is quick and immediate and the navigation is pretty seamless. You can swipe, tap, pinch, and reverse pinch on the screen to get different events done within the context of the app and the interface. Internal accelerometers are also used by some iOS applications wherein shaking the device will result in different actions and also to switch from portrait to landscape mode.

The iOS platform is derived from Mac OS X and hence it is like a Unix-like OS by nature. There are four abstraction layers within the iOS which are the Core OS layer, the Core Services layer, the Media layer, and the Cocoa Touch layer. About 650 MB is consumed for the latest iOS 4.3 platform in the device's storage, approximately.

The latest version which is expected to be launched is iOS 5 and is about to turn up next month in September 2011.