What makes ios 6 better

You can in iOS 6, yes! Apple has gone its separate ways from its one-time partner—and current, Android-making rival—with a revamped Maps offering that it built in-house.

The new Maps app offers all new maps, with custom cartography from Apple. Maps includes built-in, Yelp-integrated local search, with more than million business listings. It integrates traffic details, with the ability to tap in to see descriptions of individual traffic incidents. And the hallmark new feature is probably turn-by-turn directions, which work in tandem with Siri, guiding you towards your destination. You can get re-routed around traffic and also ask for points of interest like gas stations along the way.

Also new is Flyover, a 3D model Apple has built by flying over major metropolitan areas with planes and helicopters. The maps are vector-based, so zooming in and out is quick and painless. Tap on a specific building to get an information card with more details from Yelp. When I spoke to a number of dedicated Siri users last November , some of them used the tech upwards of 20 times per day, so it's clear that at least some of Apple's user base has found ways to incorporate Apple's virtual "intelligent assistant" into their everyday lives.

If the improvements aren't dramatic, they are at least useful additions. Even more significant than Siri is the newly remade Maps app. For the first time since the iPhone's launch in , Apple has rewritten its Maps application from the ground up after buying mapping companies C3, Poly9, and Placebase and then smashing their technology together to create something new. Why would Apple do this? Aside from Apple's strained relationship with Google, the company may have wanted to offer something more than Google's own API could deliver.

The strengths of all the firms compliment each other, and Apple believes its newest version of Maps is superior to the Google Maps-based version that many of us have been using for more than five years. Indeed, Maps features many notable improvements. For one, the application finally finally! Any time you get directions between one point and another, the application can tell you the next step regardless of whether you're actively looking at the app; if your phone is asleep, it will awaken and read you the next step, then display the next direction on your lock screen when the time comes.

Verbal directions only apply to the iPhone 4S—when you use the feature on the iPhone 4, the phone will only display your directions on the screen. The app will re-route automatically when you go off-course. The turn-by-turn directions work largely as expected, though I did have one incident while driving to a place in the middle of Nowhere, Wisconsin in which Maps led me to the middle of a highway before declaring I had arrived at my destination.

But in general, the directions have been quite beneficial while driving; no longer do you have to look at your iPhone or invest in a separate GPS app or GPS hardware unit in order to get the basic features offered by other solutions. The 3D capabilities, on the other hand, feel a little less practical. While cool, they do less for me than some of the other features added to Maps.

Your own city may not show up in 3D view until a later date. What if you prefer to leave the display off and simply listen for the voice prompts? The app can run in the background, and your lock screen wallpaper even turns into the current navigation step, so you won't be tempted to touch your phone and unlock the screen. It's a clever addition, and we suspect drivers will appreciate that little detail.

Traffic data is also presented in these new Maps. Granted, this was already a feature on iOS, but it's much improved here.

The information is now crowdsourced, meaning Apple will judge traffic by looking at your speed and position not to mention, millions of other commuters with iPhones. This allows for more accurate real-time reporting of delays, accidents and other complications that might cause you to be late for work.

Road construction and closures appear as small icons; click on one and a card will pop up from the side, giving you all the information you need about the hold-up.

Maps will also recommend new routes if it determines you'll save commuting time by making the switch. Speaking of which, small icons can be found all over the place as points of interest. Click on a restaurant icon and you'll be greeted by its name, overall Yelp rating and options to get directions or contact information. You can also go directly into its Yelp page and take a peek at individual reviews.

Apple also cleverly sneaked in an easter egg: all of its stores are represented by an Apple logo. Google Street View fans will be disappointed to see that there isn't really an equivalent feature here. Still, you'll still be treated to a couple new options that aim to provide a similar level of granular detail. Flyover is Apple's take on the " birds-eye view " feature found on Bing Maps: you get a 3D render depicting an aerial view of large cities as if you were, you know, flying over them.

This means you can see streets, parks, buildings and every other aspect of the city -- and you can finally use multitouch gestures to rotate the maps again, this was a Google Maps feature sorely missed on iOS.

You won't find the Flyover feature available everywhere yet, but it's so far available in a handful of major cities, with more to follow. In case you can't make use of Flyover, you should be able to take advantage of 3D view, which comes complete with Google Earth-like topographical capabilities -- pan over a mountain, for instance, and you can see the various canyons, slopes and other details. Rounding out the feature list, the Maps application also includes pinch-out maps that let you see a globe view, and information cards for businesses and points of interest.

Big city folk, you're going to have one significant qualm with the new Maps: there are no public transportation options for navigation. The button is present next to driving and walking when you plug in your destination, but when you attempt to set up a route, you're taken to a "Routing Apps" screen that makes references to the App Store. This makes sense, given that Apple is supplying developers with a transit API, but we can't imagine that homegrown public transit options aren't already in the works.

Until an official solution is put into place, however, this omission is likely to frustrate urbanites who rely on subways and buses as their primary means of getting around. We also noticed that there may be some amount of concern with the infant Maps search results.

Apple has partnered with Yelp, a highly respected service with a healthy database of its own, but plenty of businesses not aligned with the site may be missing out. In our comparisons between the old Maps and new, we found that the results varied wildly between the two: Google typically yielded more results, though we noticed that the new Maps was able to find some businesses and points of interest that Google couldn't.

If you're missing the old Maps, there may be some good news on the horizon: Google is rumored to be working on its own standalone Maps app for iOS, which would give users the best of both worlds. In general, the new Maps is a work in progress and won't be perfect.

It may even be frustrating for many users who have grown accustomed to the familiar look and feel of Google Maps. However, we're intrigued by the direction Apple has taken pun intended ; Apple is now addressing many concerns we've had with Maps in the past, and though there are certainly some things that need massaging, we're optimistic that the app will continue to expand in scope, coverage and functionality.

The feature's main function is to act as a wallet of sorts: instead of hunting through your iPhone to find a barcode, coupon or boarding pass, you can find these types of items bundled together in one place.

It wouldn't be difficult to imagine this application being expanded to include mobile payments and maybe even work badges, hotel room cards and car keys compatible.

As you may have seen in last week's keynote , such wireless technology didn't even get a mention. The iPhone 5 does not, in fact, have NFC, and gossip-mongers will likely turn their attention to next year's model the iPhone 5S? But this doesn't mean Passbook is useless in the meantime. On the contrary, anyone who shops, travels or attends concerts and other events will likely find it convenient. As new items begin to pour into your Passbook, they'll show up as a stack of tabs, each one spanning the width of an iPhone screen.

Pull up any tab and it'll be presented as a card, complete with barcodes and any other relevant information. Delta boarding passes, for instance, will look very similar to the ones you'd find in the official iOS app, and are just as scannable.

Whenever you have multiple items in a specific category -- let's say you've purchased tickets to more than one concert -- they'll show up under the same tab. The first card will be seen, but you'll need to swipe horizontally to check out the rest. This can be a little confusing the first few times you use it, so be careful not to lose your bearings. Fortunately, Passbook has also been integrated with the iOS lock screen, which means your boarding passes and event tickets will appear there as notifications when the time approaches.

Overall, the convenience of this new feature intrigues us, and it should become even more useful over time as more developers take advantage of it. We sadly weren't able to test it with real boarding passes or coupons, but we were able to generate a few sample cards via a third-party website to get a good idea of the user experience have a look at our screenshots to see what we're talking about.

However, they've still been enhanced with new features that should make the apps even more tempting to use. For starters, Find my iPhone is now introducing a "Lost Mode," a new option which triggers an alert sound on the device and provides a remotely set phone number for good Samaritans to call and coordinate a place to return it. Does your mother tell you to text her when you get home? If she has iOS 6, that's no longer necessary -- she can be notified when you get back.

What if you're worried about your kids getting to and from school? Find my Friends will likely add precious years back to your life. Staying on the subject of location-based features, the beloved Reminders app received a couple minor but much-needed enhancements.

Chief among them is the ability to add locations manually. When the app debuted last year, we loved the idea of receiving a notification when arriving or leaving a certain location hey, we all forget stuff sometimes , but until now we didn't have the option of putting in any address we wanted unless we happened to be there. No more. Additionally, reminders now show up on iCloud.

Lastly, you'll now be able to rearrange your reminders, add custom lists and have notification badges nag you when an outstanding task still needs to get done. Brace yourselves for the onslaught of new Siri commercials: with iOS 6, the virtual assistant is adding a few more tricks to her repertoire. It's hard to know where to begin: first, the program studied up on several new languages listed below ; it's capable of looking up sports scores from nearly every major US league as well as a heap of international ones you'll find the full list of supported leagues below as well ; you can look up movie reviews and ratings courtesy of Rotten Tomatoes; you can get Yelp reviews, find restaurants and make OpenTable reservations; and you can also launch apps directly from Siri, which can be incredibly beneficial if you have a large collection.

Siri handled our requests without too many misunderstandings. There were a few times we had to rephrase our queries it had a difficult time understanding us when we pronounced Mexican restaurants, for instance , but in general we were able to ask the same question in many different ways without stumping the computer.

While we primarily used Siri on an iPhone 4S, iOS 6 is bringing the virtual assistant to the new iPad version as well. There's still one more enhancement worth mentioning, though we admittedly haven't had the opportunity to test it: Eyes-Free Mode.

We've all seen advertisements from car companies that show a driver making a phone call or getting directions just by pressing a button on the steering wheel. With iOS 6, manufacturers will be able to install Siri into cars in pretty much the same exact manner. The manifestation that appears on these devices is only one half of the equation, with the second half being the software development kit SDK that Apple makes available to paying developers so that they can write applications for the devices that run it.

To this end, iOS is now one of the best supported operating systems on any platform — not just on smartphones — with over half a million applications produced to date.