iOS6.

The install is verifying right now on my iPad. I will let you know more soon.

Because everyone around here is hip to early updates and all.

Dare we ask how you got it so far ahead of official release?

Same way I did last year. From lifehacker.

Browser is fast.

Hacking is piracy and is a sin so I don't do that.

Good for you.

If you want, I can pray for you and your soul.

Let me take this opportunity to remind you, Face, that this is not the Red Room and you probably ought not be trollin' in here.

iOS6 is not the step up that 4 to 5 was. That said, I have hardware that doesn't "support" it.

I think I will jailbreak as soon as a jailbreak is available. With f.lux I will have everything I want.

Piracy is trolling Steve Jobs' ghost and god.

But Steve Jobs and God won't report your trolling if you don't knock it off.

None of my apps broke whatsoever on the iPad. I feel comfortable enough with this that I will go ahead and move up the iPhone as well. That way, I will avoid overloaded authentication servers on Wednesday.

Each upgrade is now checked against Apple's servers to make sure the image matches what they have on file.

OK, the new map app? Killer. Worth it.

One thing that iOS6 does better is photo handling. Today, I updated my avatar from my iPad after editing it in snap seed. I did this through the browser. In the past, the browser did not have access to photos on an iOS device.

Doesn't seem like everyone is as convinced!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19659736

I put iOS 6 on my iPad this morning and gave the map app a test run during my lunch break today.

In the interest of fairness I'll disclose the conditions:
1. I'm in Austin, TX. Being a very tech oriented city, state capital, and having a high enough population to warrant extra attention from a map app creator, I would expect Apple to put in a little extra effort here.
2. The LTE network by AT&T is excellent in this city.
3. I asked for directions to a common bank branch about 6 miles from my office, then back to my office in downtown.

It worked perfectly and had great 3D and none 3D displays with a very easy to navigate touch interface like you would expect from Apple. It was MUCH more responsive and quite a bit faster than the old Google Maps app. The interaction with the new Siri was easy as well. The first time I tested the app I opened it and typed the bank branch in the search manually and within 2 seconds it found it. I pressed the directions button and the start button and 2 seconds later again it was directing me. On the way back to the office I used Siri and said "give me directions to my office", the map app popped open and directions started within 5 seconds. The only catch there is that you do have to set up your contact info with Siri but I had already done so and I won't have to do that any more. Now it recognizes requests to get to my house or office and can give proximity reminders using that info as well.

In iOS 5 that was the extent of Siri's usefulness. I haven't had much of a chance to see if the improvements Apple claimed are real yet.

Back to the map app vs Google Maps app for one last point. Apple's map does not have nearly the level of detail that Google's does about the businesses around you when you're zooming all the way in. Apple's map will show you the buildings but not necessarily label the business inside them. I assume this is because they've been working on a native map app for a few years and Google has over a decade of data ready to go. I expect that this will improve over time but IMO is a serious flaw with the App at this point. If you're looking for turn by turn driving directions in a large city the Apple's app wins. If you want transit directions or greater detail about what businesses are in a particular area without having to ask specifically (a very useful thing to have when traveling and wanting to just see what's around you), Google wins.

So when Google releases their stand alone Google Maps app I'll download it and have the best of both worlds.

Every single person in the world with half a brain knows its a piece of shit.

Yes and its a piece of lousy shit compared to Google Maps.

I have to disagree so strongly that I'm either going to have to chalk your opinion up to Apple Hate, Android Fanboyism, or a combination of the two.

I played around with the new map app extensively today. Even in my rural area, it worked absolutely and totally flawlessly. Reading the documentation and acknowledgements, the GPS is handled by TomTom.

The first time I played with it, I asked Siri to give me directions to a local gas station. As I drove I noticed it did a lot better job of naming streets than google maps. I also noticed that there were symbols all over the place. I clicked one that was obviously a restaurant and it brought up the Yelp page. It worked well enough that I'm probably going to discard my Garmin GPS unit.

I wouldn't. A cellular GPS still requires cellular signal. Your garmin pulls from satellites.

When you need that, you NEED it!

I won't throw it away, but I won't use it regularly. The GPS function that my iPhone has now is much better than my sole purpose unit.

And, you're right. But, I still have a 3G signal in my hunting stand, on the back side of a mountain down in a valley. You don't really get more remote than that.

Maps kicks ass. Passbook, on the other hand, is entirely useless -- for the time being, that is, and probably for quite some time to come.

Indeed. My 2nd run on maps today was as smooth as the first. When Apple gets more data about the locations around you in there it will be the best map app ever built.

I can't even get Passbook to function at all. It keeps giving me the " Can't connect to the App Store" error. Seems like an ok concept that isn't even ready for a beta run at this point.

Still nothing special about Siri either IMO.

Passbook OS sort of like newsstand. You install apps that go in it. I think they should have waited until there were more of those apps.

Well, the apps don't so much go in it as push ticket purchases, coupons, etc. etc. to it where they're all held in one app. Which is theoretically awesome -- the problem is that, like I said -- for the time being -- there aren't too many apps ready for it. Worse yet -- for the moment -- nobody at point-of-sale knows what the hell to do with something you show 'em in Passbook, or so go the reviews of the app thus far.

Passbook currently has a bug in it that makes it inoperable for all users.

Ugh!!

Apple has moved all of it's podcasts from the video/music app to their Podcasts App that turned out to be a piece of shit over the summer! I rated version 1.0 at 1 star and uninstalled it and now I'm forced to listen/watch my podcasts through it. So far, version 1.1 seems to be more stable, but I'm still skeptical and would rather have a choice of what I want to use. We'll see.

Google encourages hacking. It's not a sin to run Cyanogenmod. That is only so in Apple Wonderland.

I wonder why they did that. I don't understand why they would want to unconsolidate their media apps. I really hope the rebuild of iTunes into a non-piece-of-shit is nearing completion. Having to manage everything through it is almost reason enough to switch to Android by itself.

I don't agree with their decision, but they made it a seperate app because you browse for these things and ultimately handle them differently than music. This is subscription based, and that's just different.