Well the simple answer is yes, though don’t confuse this with, say, the Windows XP to Windows 7 upgrade. If you head on down to iTunes for the free upgrade to your phone or iPad, on the surface there’s not much new – the phone, for example, looks pretty much as it did before.


But it’s the detail that counts.  I should say that already I’ve seen some confusion about the reminder service so before I go any further: you need to enable the CLOUD and don’t confuse tasks with reminders. That done, one of the new features added in iOS 5 is the reminder service, and I think this is going to help me in my daily life GREATLY.  Oh, sure I could always leave calendar entries on the phone but with only limited use until now.

For those of you with a rubbish memory like mine, this scenario should sound familiar – you’re just driving off from the office and you remember, or are reminded, that you have to do something next time you get into the office – fat load of use that is as you’re driving the opposite way. Well, now iOS 5 can help. The new reminder app is “location aware”, which means not only can you set a reminder for a time or day, but also a location – and amazingly, whether you are LEAVING or RETURNING TO that location. The possibilities are endless… “don’t forget your toothbrush” just as you’re walking down the road without it – what a godsend. I think this is going to be my number-one new feature. Of course, it works best if your device actually knows where you are so don’t expect it to work on a WI-FI-only iPad.
 
There are new multi-finger options keeping all your alerts in one place – useful but hardly amazing.… twitter integration and a load of extras that are no big deal individually – but as there are 200 of them, overall it’s worth the upgrade – after all, it’s free.  The only downside is that I’ve already noticed some apps that are going to need upgrades so expect to spend some time waiting for downloads, especially on slow connections.  Downloading the iOS upgrade last night took four hours due to – well everyone else doing the same thing.

And where does the iPhone 4S fit into this – well of course having the same operating system it’s going to have all of the features the rest of us will see in upgrades – but with more. Siri, the personal assistant, sounds like it’s going to be very exciting IF it really DOES integrate voice control with the new location-aware reminders (we’ve heard it all before how voice control was going to change the world… and it didn’t).

If you believe the hype, all that’s about to change.   I can see it now, I’m driving away from the office and my wife says “don’t forget you have to….” Just as I’m heading off with NO chance of remembering.  One button press and Siri takes my verbal note to remind me when we get back to the office.  REALLY?? We’ll have to see, non-Apple demos are a bit thin on the ground right now, but for the busy businessperson this could be the difference between Apple and the competition!
 

It seems pretty obvious to me that the current range of tablets out there are merely the first stirrings of a revolution. Those of you old enough to remember the first tablets will remember Windows-powered, heavy and quite slow products that were little more than the standard operating system with pen-add-on.

How things have changed. In April this year Apple released the iPad, which was as near to a Star Trek tablet as anyone had come up with – and along with the iPhone it helped change Apple’s fortunes. Almost immediately other manufacturers started to claim they had alternatives in the works yet even today there isn’t anything to really compete with the iPad, mostly it’s just promises and demos. That is about to change.

The new upgrade to iPad – IOS4.2 – gives iPad proper multi-tasking, unified mailbox and a host of other features including the ability to stream video to their new Apple TV box (which I have to say is quite nice). Meanwhile the Samsung Galaxy Tab is already in the shops (with a smaller screen size and so not necessarily in the same marketplace) and there are others creeping out of the woodwork. By Christmas you can count on a range of tablets from many manufacturers being available. But will they compete?
 
The currently available Android tablets (with the exception of the Samsung) by and large use an earlier version of Android which won’t handle Flash (but then neither will the iPad, though there is an App that attempts to address that) and even Google themselves have apparently said that Android 2.2 is not optimised for tablet use – it seems the manufacturers are rushing in regardless and there is always the NEXT version of Android.

Windows 7 is an option on some tablets but it’s worth bearing in mind that Windows needs a lot more power than some of the alternatives and so it’s going to take a fairly fast piece of hardware to make Windows fly on a tablet and that usually means reduced battery life or some other compromise. Windows 7 is also not optimised for large fingers! There are other operating systems but I’m guessing the key players will be Apple, Android and perhaps Windows.
 
I’ve been using my iPad pretty much every day now since it came out in America in April and I’m still getting the better part of 10 hours between charges. I attend a lot of business meetings and I’ve been able to virtually eliminate carrying paper around with me while business colleagues lean to one side due to heavy briefcases full of paperwork. The Apps for reading documents really do work well. Meanwhile everyone seems to be jumping onto this particular bandwagon with magazines and newspapers offering tablet versions of their publications and for the first time it all just seems to work – at least for iPad users who already have Richard Branson’s new publication and with more to come.

It remains to be seen if the 4.2 upgrade will be sufficient to keep buyers this Christmas going for the iPad despite its lack of camera or ability to handle Adobe Flash properly – of course then there’s the rumour mill which has it that an iPad 2 is around the corner which would address one of these issues. One things is for sure, THIS time there’s a revolution going on – the tablet  concept has a bright future ahead of it  - WHO’S tablet will be the winner? – well, that’s anyone’s guess! IBM had the first PC but look where we are now!