iOS 4.3 Extending Capabilities of Your Favorite Devices

iOS 4 can be seen as a long-term investment of sorts. With the original release bringing us the long-awaited multitasking feature, later updates haven't just stuck to fixing bugs. We have steadily received a stream of awesome improvements with each new release.

iOS 4.3 is no exception here. With a few major new features, such as Home Sharing and a Personal Hotspot, 4.3 also includes some under appreciated features.

Personal Hotspot

The Personal Hotspot feature was first available with Verizon's iPhone 4 back in February and is now available for GSM iPhone 4s. This lets you share your 3G data connection through Bluetooth, USB, and Wi-Fi.

The Personal Hotspot is meant to replace the old tethering function, which was limited by its added cost and necessary removal of plan features.

Home Sharing

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

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

Airplay

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

The downside to Airplay is that it doesn't work immediately. Airplay video support has to be included with third-party apps in order for them to work, so expect a bunch of updates in the near future. For websites, they have to both define their videos as compatible with Airplay and format the video to something iOS devices can play.

Miscellaneous Features

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 over twice as much as the same devices running 4.2.

New parental control options are available, such as the ability to lock Location Services, a feature previously only able to be disabled. Other options include disabling iTune's Ping network, and adding a password to purchase apps in 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 their customers and are dedicated to providing functionality and performance in their devices.