Matt Neuburg writes about what’s new for developers in iOS 6. One of his favorites is the collection view:
Moreover, the collection view generalizes the notion of layout. Thus the lines of represented data don’t have to be regular; they don’t even have to be straight lines! Apple’s WWDC 2012 videos demonstrate a collection view being used to implement Cover Flow View, as seen in Mac OS X’s Finder or iTunes, where items appear to twist and change size as they scroll across the screen; the videos even show a collection view displaying photos in a circle. So you can expect the collection view to form the basis of some very interesting interface in iOS 6 apps.
He’s absolutely right about the collection view—it’s incredibly flexible and powerful, and will allow developers to build much more imaginative UIs with much less effort than was required before iOS 6. There are other changes, like styled text fields, which will do the same thing.
On the surface, iOS 6 isn’t a very substantial update. But under the hood, it’s a rather significant one.