iOS 4.3 to Bring Personal Hotspot, iTunes Home Sharing, Customizable iPad Switch

At Apple’s iPad 2 keynote today Steve Jobs announced some of the features that will be introduced to our iOS devices when Apple launches its iOS 4.3 software, which will ship with the second-generation tablet on March 11th, and will presumably be available for other devices around the same date.

Firstly, Apple has made some improvements to Safari, which it claims will significantly increase performance using the ‘Nitro Javascript engine.’ With this new engine, iOS runs Javascript more than twice as fast as before, and is a lot nippier.

iTunes home sharing was next on Steve’s list; a new feature that allows you to wirelessly stream iTunes content– such as music, movies, and TV shows – over your home network to your iOS device. Why this wasn’t integrated into AirPlay somehow, I don’t know, but AirPlay was up next:

AirPlay will be even better in iOS 4.3, improving slideshows with cool built-in transitions, and enabling you to stream content to your AppleTV from apps and websites. This means if you’re watching a video in YouTube or Safari, you can now enjoy it on your TV – a feature I’ve been looking forward to for a while.

After saying it would never happen and causing some chaos amongst iPad users, Steve finally gave in and and provided us with the option to customize our iPad’s switch in iOS 4.3. You can now change it back to a rotation lock if you’re not keen on using it as a silent switch.

iOS 4.3 also introduces the new ‘Personal Hotspot’ feature we’ve seen already in the Verizon iPhone 4, however, this will only be available to iPhone 4 users. Personal Hotspot allows you to share you iPhone’s data connection with other devices by turning it into a Wi-Fi hotspot.

Look out for our next post on PhotoBooth, iMovie, and Garageband for iPad!

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3 Comments on “iOS 4.3 to Bring Personal Hotspot, iTunes Home Sharing, Customizable iPad Switch”

  1. Mikecell85

    Will one be able to stream non-purchased videos { legally downloaded from elsewhere 😉 } within itunes?

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