Wow, Merry Christmas indeed. Dieter Bohn over at The Verge has put together the end-all-be-all guide to iOS, an overview of Apple’s plucky little mobile OS so well-illustrated, informative and complete, all we can do is stew in jealousy we didn’t do this ourselves.
The whole thing is just too massive to even begin to summarize, so we’ll just give you a taste of the lede:
In what is widely regarded as his greatest presentation ever, Apple’s Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone to the world on January 10th, 2007. In the nearly 5 years since then, the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch have literally redefined the entire world of mobile computing. That world is moving so quickly that iOS is already amongst the older mobile operating systems in active development today. That certainly doesn’t mean it’s underpowered or underfeatured — quite the contrary. Through what can only be described as relentless and consistent improvement over the years, Apple has made iOS one of the most feature-rich and well-supported platforms on the market.
iOS 5, the system currently powering Apple’s mobile devices, offers an easy-to-understand smartphone operating system to new users, a powerful platform for app developers, and a relatively un-fragmented experience across multiple devices. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about iOS is how similar the OS as it exists today is to the OS as it existed 2007, yet the number and breadth of features that Apple has baked in since then is mind boggling. Far from suffering from the “feature creep” that typically bogs down operating systems over time, iOS has managed to stay relatively snappy and is more internally consistent than anything else available today.
What are you waiting for? Get on over there and read it already. This is the best Apple feature you’ll read all week.
