Apple made their session videos from WWDC 2012 available earlier this week in record time. It’s nice to see since tickets for this years event sold out in under two hours. Apple has an iOS 6 Preview page touting some of the new features such as Siri’s new abilities, tighter integration with Facebook, Photo Stream sharing, and things like iCloud tabs for Safari all of which look great.
What stands out most about iOS 6 to me are the changes Apple has made to the OS to compete in the mobile arena. The all new Maps app that uses their own data instead of Google’s, the Safari search field now reads "Search" instead of "Google", the OS level integration with Facebook (to go along with Twitter), features catering to the expanding Chinese market, and increased use of iCloud.
Apple took some shots at Android and Samsung during the keynote but looks to take an even larger one when iOS 6 is released this fall, likely alongside the release of the next iPhone. If the adoption rates for iOS 6 are similar to iOS 5 (which are huge compared to Android’s 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich release) and if the next iPhone sells anything close to how the 4S is, it will be interesting to see how market shares and revenues turn out late this year for the two companies.
