iOS 4.3: Expanding the capabilities of your favorite devices

iOS 4 can be seen as a kind of long-term investment. With the original release giving us long-awaited multitasking, subsequent updates weren’t just about fixing bugs. We have consistently received a number of incredible improvements with each new release.

iOS 4.3 is no exception here. With some big new features like Home Sharing and a personal hotspot, 4.3 also includes some less appreciated features.

personal hotspot

The Personal Hotspot feature first became available with Verizon’s iPhone 4 in February and is now available for GSM iPhone 4s. This allows you to share your 3G data connection via Bluetooth, USB and Wi-Fi.

Personal Hotspot is intended to replace the old tethering feature, which was limited by its additional cost and the necessary removal of plan features.

share the home

Home Sharing was first introduced with iTunes 9 as a way to play media from one computer on your network to another. iOS 4.3 brings this feature to iPhone 4s and iPad 2s in a simple and straightforward way.

Streaming performance is excellent, with videos and music starting almost instantly. Movies require some time to buffer before starting to play.

Airplay

In iOS 4.3, Airplay lets you stream audio to Airport Express and Apple TV devices directly from your iPhone 4 or iPad 2. It also lets you stream from websites, the Photos app, and many third-party apps.

The downside of Airplay is that it doesn’t work right out of the box. Airplay video support must be included with third-party apps for them to work, so expect plenty of updates in the near future. For websites, they have to define their videos as Airplay compatible and format the video so that iOS devices can play it.

miscellaneous functions

Safari gets a speed boost with iOS 4.3 due to the use of the Nitro engine found in the OSX version. According to the SunSpider test, iPads and iPhones running 4.3 show speeds in Safari more than twice as fast as the same devices running 4.2.

New parental control options are available, such as the ability to block location services, a feature that previously could only be turned off. Other options include disabling the iTunes Ping network and adding a password to purchase apps from the App Store.

There are tons of new features with the iOS 4.3 update, many of which are not listed here. This just goes to show that Apple is serious about its customers and is dedicated to providing functionality and performance in its devices.