Devir Kahan

Apple made a lot of things far easier to access on your iPhone since iOS 5. In fact, I found myself using quite a few apps far less, if not never, due to these new capabilities. Allow me:

Weather

With the Notification Center, why actually ever go into the Weather app? You get all the info you could possibly need just by swiping down.

If the need ever does arise to use the actual Weather app, just swipe into Notification Center and tap on the weather info. It will launch the app for you. No need to take up space on your homescreen with the Weather app any longer.

Stocks

Ditto.

Dictionary

I used to have a handy little dictionary app that I could hop into if I ever needed to know the definition of a word. Since iOS 5 though, there is no longer any need for a convoluted app, much less having it take up space on your homescreen.

Instead, as iOS 5 already has a dictionary function built in, I can just swipe into Spotlight, launch the Notes app, type the word I wanted to look up, then tap the word to get the definition. Now I understand that sounds a little bit more convoluted then just simply using a dictionary app, but trust me, it’s not. Notes - and iOS as a whole - launch and work much faster than any dictionary app. Plus, the interface is far nicer to use, and when you think about it, it’s really only like one more tap.

That’s all I’ve really come up with so far in terms of this kind of a thing. But it certainly is interesting to see that iOS 5 really has changed the way I do certain things.