
The long anticipated iOS 6 has been announced at today’s 2012 WWDC by Apple’s leading staff. iOS 6 will bring more than 200 new features to iOS (sound familiar?) and it will be borrowing a lot of new features from already existing functionality in the jailbreak community. So what is Apple borrowing from the Cydia store this time around? Take a look!
1. FaceTime Over Cellular Networks
FaceTime has always been a great feature of iOS, but competing video chat services like Skype and Tango have showed Apple that it’s time to make FaceTime a more 'mobile' experience by allowing people to use it even in areas where Wi-Fi may not be available. Edge, 3G, and 4G networks are perfectly capable of delivering video chat services from one device to another. iOS 6 finally brings FaceTime over cellular networks, which could normally only be done by jailbreak tweaks such as FaceBreak or 3G Unrestrictor 5.
2. iOS Facebook Integration
Facebook is the world’s most popular social networking Web site. It was only a matter of time before the world’s most popular mobile operating system came to an intersection with it. iOS 6 brings Facebook integration to those that prefer Facebook over Twitter and finally allows users to have a more ‘at-home’ social network media-sharing option. Facebook integration is a feature that could normally only be achieved with a jailbreak tweak dubbed Fusion.
3. Siri On The iPad
While iOS 6 won’t be reaching out to the original iPad or the iPad 2 with Siri, The new iPad is expected to gain Siri functionality with iOS 6. For a long time now, only the iPhone 4S has had rights to Siri. The only way to get Siri on other iOS devices was to jailbreak them and install a Siri port commonly known as Spire. While Siri is coming to The new iPad, there still won’t be any legitimate support for the iPad 2, iPhone 4, or iPod touch 4G.
4. Siri Can Understand Sports
As demonstrated at WWDC 2012, Siri has become much smarter and is just about out of beta. In iOS 6, Siri can now be asked about game scores for all kinds of sports. With the Siri we are all used to now, this never used to be a reality. Jailbreakers would be able to query Siri about sports, though, with a jailbreak tweak dubbed SiriSports that will allow Siri to fetch game scores from almost any sport and almost any game being played.
5. Do Not Disturb
iOS 6, as expected, is implementing a ‘Do Not Disturb’ functionality that can be used to silence notifications when you don’t want to hear from them. It is basically a switch that can keep notifications from lighting up your lock screen, causing noises or vibrations, or getting in the way of what you are doing with banner popups. This ‘Do Not Disturb’ functionality was introduced just a little while ago with a jailbreak tweak dubbed BannerDisable.
6. Enhanced VIP Mail Options
All jailbreakers know what it means to enhance the functionality of the Mail application. Mail is beautiful, but it lacks some common E-mail client functionality, such as that of marking the messages that are most important to you so you can expedite your read and response time to those that are most important first. iOS 6 brings a feature that allows you to mark certain contacts as VIPs and their E-mails will be separated from those that are less important. The jailbreak community is familiar with similar functionality in tweaks like Mail Enhancer Pro, which can color-coat certain messages to let you know that they are more important than some of the other E-mails inside of your inbox.
Even though Apple frowns upon the jailbreak community, it is pretty mind-boggling how they seem to enhance iOS with features that we bring to our iOS devices all by ourselves without Apple’s help.
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