Oct 13 2011

iOS 5 – be one of the first in the world to get on board

iOS 5, the new operating system for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, was released by Apple today. You can still be one of the first in the world to try it out.

This is a free upgrade, and includes ‘over 200’ improvements and new features, including new ‘Reminders’, ‘iMessage’ and ‘Newstand’ apps.

 We have tested it out on an iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad and iPad 2 and things have gone fairly smoothly. There were concerns that it may be ‘sluggish’ on the iPhone 3GS, but Will reports that all is fine.

There was an enormous spike in Internet traffic today, and Apples new iCloud servers were put under intense load. This caused delays for some users – but things seem to have settled down now.

 These are the steps to upgrade to iOS 5

• 1 Make sure that you are running the latest version iTunes on your Mac/PC by selecting ‘Check for Updates’ in the iTunes menu.
• 2  Plug your iPhone/iPad into the computer.
• 3. You will be asked if you want to update to the new operating system. Click Yes.
• 4. At one point in the process, your iDevice will be backed up on the computer. Although this usually only takes a few minutes, many users have reported long delays (up to 2 hours) during this process.
• 5. The software on your iPhone/iPad will be updated, it will start automatically, and then your apps and music will be restored.
• 6. Do not unplug your iPhone/iPad until all restoring is complete.

Let us know in the comments if you run into many problems.

(The SMH app kept crashing, and we had to delete it from the iPad and then restore it from the ‘Purchased’ section of the AppStore App.)

Tomorrow we will kick the tyres on some of the new features of iOS5.