Yeah, gotta agree it wasn't impressive. There was nothing in this that warrants it to be a major release, it's more like an iOS 5.7 or something. Features that stood out to me were:
- Ignore calls with SMS
- Dropping Google Maps for TomTom and adding turn by turn navigation
- Enhanced (?) Siri
- Facebook integration
- Fancy rewards card app
- Ignoring calls with SMS really had me missing my old HTC Fuze, but honestly I never ever used this feature, but it is really nice to boast about.
- The 3D maps was meh, it was more about turn by turn navigation which Windows Phone 7 is missing by default even though they have a working system. I think Microsoft needs to pony up some money, pay the licensing fees for turn by turn navigation and just plain enable it. Switching to Nokia Maps might be good, but I found quite a few errors last time I used Nokia Drive when compared to Bing Maps. I prefer Bing Maps, but Nokia Drive is nice for offline.
- Enhanced Siri? Wtf? Siri couldn't pull sports scores before? It's a pretty simple web search I'd imagine wrapping results into fancy rendered boxes. I can see some use for this, but I have never seen Siri used in the wild aside from accidental activations.
- Facebook integration was like Apple finally catching up to Microsoft's "put people first" sorta thing. It just reminded me of the People Tile integration (I know MS wasn't the first with this idea).
- That fancy wallet thing does some have cool factor to it imo. Like how it's able to say pull up your Starbucks card front and center when you're at a Starbucks, or something similar if you went to a grocery store or airport. It just saves the user a little searching, which is very nice, but really isn't something that needs to be featured as revolutionary.
I think the biggest thing that Apple slapped onto Microsoft's face is the number of devices that will be getting this update. I have a feeling Apollo might follow this if Microsoft is smart about it. Apple is giving iOS all the way down to 3GS, which is about 2.5 generations back in terms of hardware. There's a catch of course that the 3GS won't sport Siri support, neither will the iPhone 4, so they'll be missing out on some of the Siri dependent stuff like the new maps application with turn by turn navigation. (
PSA: Which iOS 6 features can my device run? -- Engadget) I think this is the statement Apple made to Microsoft with all these rumors flying around that 1st and 2nd gen handsets won't be jumping to Apollo, "hey we're updating lots of old hardware, what about you?" Microsoft needs to see this and needs to deliver, even if it's going to be like Apple cutting out some features due to new hardware requirements (like NFC based stuff). The whole reason Microsoft kept strict hardware requirements was to make updates easier due to less fragmentation, and if they don't deliver on updates, they'll lose customer credibility, and would just look like hypocrites because of how underspec their hardware is right now compared to the competition that Android is bringing. The ball is in Microsoft's court now, I guess we'll find out next week what they plan.