At the iPad 2 announcement today, Scott Forstall announced a few updates to iOS that will be rolling out on March 11th, some to do with the iPad 2, some more general improvements.
First, they’ve added Photo Booth as a free app, with special tweaks to make it more touchable. For instance, you can adjust the swirl with your finger when you do that effect. Fun for fifth-graders, sure, but I think the rest of us will be happy simply with the ability to save snapshots.
They’ve improved Safari Javascript performance with a new engine they claim is twice as fast. They call it Nitro, since everything has to have a special name. I like “Gecko,” personally.
The switch on the side of the iPad is now, of course, either mute or orientation based on user preferences. Thank god, I think the move to switch an existing interface element to something new was really foolish. They’ve fixed it now, though.
Facetime! If you’ve got any Apple product with a camera basically, you can now Facetime to each other. It works from iPad to iPad, iPad to iPhone, iPad to Mac, etc. And of course you can switch to the rear camera as well.
They’ve improved Airplay and iTunes home sharing, mainly in the ability to run Apps and websites over Airplay. Could be handy for streaming video, though I think games will be a little strange on the big screen. Actually, racing games could be tight.
This will be headed out to all compatible devices on March 11th. If you don’t have cameras you obviously can’t take advantage of the camera features, but hey.