Celebrate iOS 6 for iPhone and iPAD

For iPhone and iPAD app developers iOS 6 will lead to some interesting possibilities for future apps. Developers can access a number of new capabilities at the OS level including Maps, Facebook integration, Passbook, Reminders, new features with In-App Purchase, new camera APIs, and more.

The Magic Application Platform support and functionality for these new capabilities has yet to be announced nor has there been an indication of much of it works out of the box. But developers can hope for new capabilities from among those now supported by the iOS platform:

Maps. The war between Google and Apple continues with the  new Maps engines built into the OS and accessible to apps. The new Map Kit provides developer access to a different kind of more visually aesthetic cartography and interactivity. This makes it easier to build things like routing apps for transportation management systems.

FaceBook. Integration methods to FaceBook are now supported at the OS level. It will be interesting to see if this truly adds value or just provides Apple more say over how far FaceBook creeps onto their devices or both. It seems like the support for single sign-on will be a plus however.

One of the biggest problems facing users is the plethora of apps, tickets, passes, gift cards and loyalty programs residing on their phones. Apple’s plan is to simplify access through a Passbook including accessibility to the Passbook via apps, email and the web.

Reminders. There will now be an iOS 6 supported app called Reminders that provides a central repository events and reminders with control over properties such as due dates, priority, and location based alerts.

In-App Purchase. Apple has added improved in-app purchase and in-app content purchasing, including blocking recent widely publicized hacks that exposed in-app content to free access even when the developer intended the content to be purchased through the Apple Store.

Camera. Apps will be able to control the camera’s advanced features such as focus, exposure and region-of-interest. Face-recognition APIs and hardware enabled video stabilization will also be supported. New APIs let you control focus, exposure, and region of interest. You can also access and display faces with face detection APIs, and leverage hardware-enabled video stabilization.

 

Other.  iOS 6 will also support apps that want to do in-app Bluetooth pairing, audio and video sampling, rich text on labels and text fields, and in-app access to Game Center features like multi-player settings.

 

How much of this should or will be supported for Magic xpa developers remains to be seen, but its nice to see Apple moving in a positive direction with all these improvements.