October 5th, 2011 at 8:25 AM

The long awaited Apple event has come and gone and now, instead of of speculating on what you might see, we now know what we are going to get.  When it comes to the iOS5 the features seems to be well worth the wait.  While several of the latest iOS updates have brought a little tweak here, or a little change there, iOS5 looks like it will truly change the way you use your iPad and iPad 2.  So what do we get with the iOS5 updates?  A ton of great stuff.
 
Notification Center
The Notification Center means that you can get all your notifications in one place.  No longer will you have to close one app, and open another to go from your calendar, to your task list to your email.  Swipe down on any screen and the Notification Center will pop up.  Here you can view your new emails, calendar reminders, task reminders, friend requests (we’ll get to that in a minute) and texts.  Yes you read that last word right …

iMessage
One of the coolest features, and one I’m going to get a lot of mileage from is the ability to actually text from the iPad or the iPod Touch as long as you are connected to the internet (either WiFi or 3G.)  As long as you are texting someone else who has an iPhone, an iPad or an iPod, you can send and receive as many texts as you want.  With other iDevices iMessage works as a chat client, as you can see when the other person is responding before they’ve type out a message.  You can also include read receipts and can start talking from your iPod and finish the conversation on your iPad.

Social Network Integration
iOS5 will have much deeper social network integration in regards to Twitter and (in the near future) Facebook.  Right now Twitter is the main social networking service and if you sign into your Twitter account through the settings menu, you’ll never need to sign in again.  You can also tweet from photos, camera, Safari, YouTube, or Maps.  Quick and easy.
 
 

Wireless Syncing
There are actually two awesome uses for this particular feature.  The first is that the iPad really can replace your home computer now.  Using iCloud, you can set up and use the iPad right out of the box and you can download updates wirelessly.  Should you not want to completely ditch your home computer, you can now also sync your iTunes libraries without needing to connect the two with a cable.  Whenever you plug in your iPad to a power source (like charging for the night) everything you have downloaded will sync automatically.
 
The best part about the new features that have come with the iOS5 is that there are a ton more that we didn’t have room to mention.  Airplay Mirroring, updates to the Safari browser, the email inbox, the Calendar, the Game Center and Multi-Tasking gestures are just a couple more.  The best news of all is that we aren’t going to have to wait too long for all these great new functions.  iOS5 is going to be launching on October 12th.