At the iPad event in San Francisco, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that its iOS devices will receive a new mobile operating system, called iOS 5.1. Part of the update improves Siri, the AI virtual assistant currently exclusive to the iPhone 4S, by giving the technology the ability to work with Japanese-speaking users. Now, Siri can support six languages, including English, British English, Australian English, German, French and Japanese.

Cook did not offer any more details into the features on iOS 5.1 at the event, but the update includes many more features, mostly bug fixes.

In iOS 5.1, the camera shortcut on the Lock Screen, which was previously only accessible with double clicking the home button, is now always visible. Furthermore, the camera's face detection features now can highlight all of the detected faces in the picture -- Apple promised this before, but the feature was buggy. Apple also gave users the ability to delete photos from Photo Stream, and also improved the network indicator at the top of iOS devices for AT&T specifically.

The iPad also got a number of minor upgrades in iOS 5.1. Apple redesigned the iPad's Camera app, improved the audio quality of TV shows and movies on the iPad, and also gave iPad users additional podcast controls for rewinding and playback speed.

Beyond that, iOS 5.1 fixes an issue that occassionally drops audio in outgoing phone calls, and also added Genius Playlists and Mixes to iTunes Match, which only applies to subscribers of the $24.99/year program.

More to come...

Iphone Tim cook Apple inc. Ipad 2