One marked improvement I’ve seen on my iPhone 3GS since upgrading to iOS 5 is that it has improved the speed of installing multiple apps or app updates from the iTunes App Store. In iOS 4 or earlier, each app would download and install one at a time, making installing updates for many apps a sometimes slow process.
In iOS 5, however, apps will download and install simultaneously, speeding up the process of installing many apps or updates. More specifically, what happens now is that once an app is finished downloading and begins installing, iOS immediately begins downloading the next app in line. This process of installing and downloading in tandem noticeably speeds up the process, which is good for those of us who are constantly updating the many apps installed on our iOS devices.
Kevin Rose posted on his Google+ page October 15, 2011 that he envisions iOS to include push updates for apps in the future. He doesn’t have any inside information on whether or not this will actually come to fruition, but I’m certainly with him as far as the idea is concerned. Everyone with more than just the stock iOS apps will agree that it’s a pain to have to manually poll the App Store to see if there are updates for your apps.
To take it one step further, I imagine App Store updates could happen automatically on all your devices, just like photos show up in your photo stream now. The apps are already stored on Apple’s servers, so it would just be a matter of including an option to turn on automatic updates. With all the money Apple’s been spending on servers for iCloud, I’m pretty sure they could handle the extra bandwidth of sending out push notifications.