During the WWDC 2011 keynote, among the new features of iOS 5, Apple unveiled some important improvements to the Camera and Photos apps, some of which should hopefully extend to iOS developers.
Camera App Improvements
First of all, in the Camera app included in iOS devices, the volume button will now double as a shutter button; many of you will remember that Camera+ was temporarily removed from the App Store because developers had included this feature as a great Easter egg, loved by all users of the app. Hopefully, the volume/shutter button will be accessible also to app developers – after all, they were the first to implement it.
Apple also addressed the concern many iPhone and iPod photographers have with the time it takes to access the camera from a device in locked status; for this reason, Camera will get a shortcut from the lock screen for quicker access. It would be great if this feature were accessible also to other photography apps, with users being able to map their favorites to the lock screen, but we have no information pointing to this. Other improvements to the Camera app will be support for pinch-to-zoom gestures, single-tap focus and exposure locks.
Photos App Improvements
Editing capabilities, as crop, rotate, enhance, and red-eye reduction, will be included in the Photos app. Users will be able to organize photos in albums, push photos to all iOS devices using Apple’s new iCloud service, and post them to Twitter’s new picture hosting service.
iOS 5 will be available this fall for iPhone 3GS and 4, the third and fourth-generation iPod touch, and all iPads. iOS developers are already able to download iOS 5 from the developer area, but an NDA agreement theoretically prohibits them from unveiling their experience with the new operating system.
I do hope developers will be able to use all the new features. It looks like something interesting lies ahead.
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