Today has been very unproductive, with all the Apple stuff, along with E3 news, and NHL Stanley Cup games. Finally finished watching the Apple keynote, and in no particular order, my thoughts on iOS 5:

The new notifications with the pull down drawer do appear at first to be a pure copy of Android, but these are the differences I noticed:

• Incoming notifications are larger. iOS already reserves the right to double size the status bar at the top, and it looks line the new notifications will be doing the same. For me, this should keep incoming SMS messages readable at a glance in the car, without the distraction of either dismissing a modal dialog (iOS), or squinting to read a quick flash on a small status bar (Android).
• Widgets also live in the pull down "Notifications Center, or at least stocks and weather. No announcements at the keynote if any of that is accessible to other apps for putting their own stuff there, or if it's just reserved for Apple baked in apps.
• Instant access off the lock screen to any app that generated a notification. Stock Android doesn't offer this, but I know Samsung's skin (unless disabled by AT&T) offered similar for some things, by having users move different puzzle pieces to an unlock slot.

iMessage is a big shot at RIM with their Blackberry Messenger service. I've heard this is amazingly popular with kids that moved to Blackberry once the Sidekicks died off. Good to see it's also heading to the non phone iOS devices too, and with continuous client feature that lets you change devices without losing message history or state. I switched away from Adium/BeeJive to Trillian for continuous client, and it's awesome once you have it.

Reminders, about time. The lack of a todo list was always an odd gap with iOS, and they made sure to take it a step beyond basic todo lists. It's also integrated with location, allowing a reminder to pop up when you either first arrive at a location, or when you leave.

Camera, instant access from the lock screen is a welcome feature. And they added the ability to use the volume up button as a physical shutter. Glad to see Apple do this, since it's a backtrack from when they banned an app off the App Store for doing the same. No idea if this is locked to Apple, or if developers can now also do this.

Safari, finally proper tabs on the iPad. This was one thing I noticed, umm, "Browser" on the Xoom doing better then iOS Safari. They are also bringing over the reader functionality from the desktop (I use this all the time, especially on the annoying story broken into 10 pages sites). Reading list may also be nice, but I've already transitioned over to Flipboard + Google Reader with stars for this for now. The syncing between devices might win me over though for sites not in my Google Reader setup.

PC Free, good to see. No longer will Apple need to activate devices in the store by having people hook them to a store Mac, it will now just start working, pretty much like every other smartphone or tablet. Wireless syncing will also be a nice addition.

New gestures on the iPad. I've been using these in iOS 4.3 already, and they are handy. Looks like iOS 5 is officially bringing these out. I pretty much never touch the home button now, but would feel weird if these moved to the iPhone. Not sure what they will do there if the goal is to get rid of the home button.