Last week while I was on vacation, Apple was certainly busy. Most notably the iPad 2 was released on Friday, and I see from the e-mails that I received that many of you were lucky enough to get one. Congrats! I plan to get one soon, most likely the black 32 GB Wi-Fi model. My current iPad has 3G, but now that iOS 4.3 is out and the iPhone 4 on AT&T has a Personal Hotspot feature, I can just use my iPhone to provide 3G data to my iPad when I'm not in a Wi-Fi hotspot, so I don't see a need to have 3G on the iPad 2 itself.
Speaking of iOS 4.3, Apple released it on March 9, 2011. There were many improvements, and the ones that struck me as most significant are the following:
- Personal Hotspot. In the Settings App on an iPhone 4, if you go to General --> Network --> Personal Hotspot, you can now share the 3G data on your iPhone with other computers using Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or USB. If you have AT&T, this means that you need to change your rate plan to the DataPro 4GB plan that allows for tethering and which costs $45 a month. I had been using the $30 unlimited data plan so by changing to this plan I lose unlimited data, but in my experience I rarely go over 1GB of data a month so the 4GB plan should be more than enough even when I start sharing data with my iPad. And while I don't plan to share much data with my laptop, it is nice to know that I can also do that in a pinch.
- Wait and pause. When you assign a number to a contact, you can now add a wait within the number by pressing the "wait" button, which is displayed as a semicolon. This is useful if you have a voice mail system or a conference call where you need to wait before sending another string of numbers. There is also a "pause" button, which is displayed by a comma, if you just need a slight pause before more numbers are entered. This is a useful feature that I have wanted for a long time.
- Safari speed. Safari is now faster thanks to the new Nitro JavaScript engine.
- Side switch (iPad). On the iPad, you can now choose in Settings whether the side switch mutes the volume or locks the screen orientation. I find it easy enough to quickly mute the iPad by tapping the volume down button a few times so I have assigned the side switch to the screen rotation lock.
- Password required for in-app purchases. In-app purchases now require a password, solving the problem that I noted in this post where a child might make purchases without you knowing about it.
- Better security. Every iOS update brings security improvements, and this one does as well. Apple provided this list of what was improved.
- Other minor changes. There is a new font in the Notes app called Noteworthy and which is more cursive. The expanded AirPlay feature allows Safari and third party apps to send video to another device such as an Apple TV.
If you want to learn more about all of the nitty gritty details of the changes in iOS 4.3, I recommend this post by Rene Ritchie of TiPb.
