Updating to iOS 8 on iPad Mini Retina

It's that time of the year again! Yes, Apple finally released the iOS 8 update to the mass consumers. I did my update on the very first day it launched and will do a quick share a bit of my experience here. :)
 

Installation

Since it requires a very large space on my iPad mini retina (like 6GB out of my paltry 16GB), I decided to download the IPSW file from the servers. Unfortunately, I had two problems. My iTunes was out of date and even after installing the update, the file was "invalid" when I tried to do a restore. So I had to use iTunes to auto-update feature to download and install it. After the download, it installed and rebooted my iPad, but the iPad got stuck half way through the boot. Good thing holding the menu and power button soft-reset my iPad and everything was ok. No bricking my iPad, though this wasn't a great use experience to begin with.

What's New

Unlike the iPhone, the iPad doesn't really benefit too much from iOS 8. But I've included three features here which I think are the biggest changes.

Widgets on the Notification

 

Still at it's infancy, there isn't much to shout about (hardly any apps on the store with widget for the notification shade), but there's one free widget currently which I quite like called, Wdgt which is a collection of useful widgets like the calculator.

A Better Camera

 

Now with exposure control, panorama and time lapse on the iPad! Probably everything you have already got from Android, but I do like the implementation of the exposure control which you use your finger to slide up or down to increase or reduce exposure.

Third Party Keyboards

I've tried the free SwiftKey keyboard, but it didn't have the flow functionality which I have come to use on my RedMi 1S, so it really wasn't so great. But I'm sure soon it would get better.

What's No Good

Before I upgraded my iPad mini retina, I deleted iMovie that came with the iPad due to space constraints. Unfortunately, after upgrading, I notice that I couldn't re-download iMovie for free, but instead it costs USD4.99! That's not nice Apple!


Well, so that's it for my review. I told you it's short.