Once you open the App you're greeted by the sign-in screen. The one thing that did bother my right from the beginning is the fact the change between landscape and portrait orientation doesn't work. It's not a big deal but definitely annoying.
After you have signed in you're greeted by the G+ Overview Screen, that gives you access to your Settings, Stream, Messenger, Photos, Profile and Circles. On the bottom you have a status bar letting you you if you have any notifications. So far this screen looks exactly the same way as the Android App.
Let's take a closer look at the settings tab:
This is the place to go if you want to sign out of the App.
The next tab are Push Notifications. In essence it let's you decide when you what to be notified about mentions, shares & comments. You can also set when you want to be notified if someone added you to their circles, tags and comments on photos of you. It allows you to specify if you want be notified if someone comments on post after you've already commented. The default settings seem to do here a good job...not quite sure if you end up with a notification overload if you were to turn on all notifications. I guess only future will tell.
The next tab are Streams. Circles, Incoming and Nearby are selected by default. Here you can change the views around.
The Messenger tab let's you choose who can IM you. You have the choice between Everyone, Extended Circles and Your Circles.
The last tab gives you access to Help, Feedback, Privacy Policy and TOS.
All in all the Settings Interface is clear, uncluttered and straight forward.
In the Stream you can side swipe through all the Views that you have selected in the Settings. Quite a nice feature. Here you can also check into Places and write your Posts. The Post-Tab is straight forward. It let's you add your current location to the post and gives the choice between taking a pic with your iPad camera or choose one stored on your iPad and of course it let's you choose which of your circles you want to share it with. It doesn't allow you however to record a video status update and post it right away. This is a feature I would love to see in a future release of this App.
The fact that you still don't have a reasonable good way of posting Links besides 'copy and paste' is a big disappointment!! I'm not talking about adding a 'text link', I'm talking about pulling the link feed and adding top Pic, Avatar or Icon with a small excerpt of the Article automatically to the post.
The Messenger tab contains the Instant Messenger. It is pretty straight forward and that's all there is to that tab.
The Photo-Tab is exactly what one expects. It houses all your Photos, all your pix, if you have a Blog with Blogspot, all the photos from your Circles and if you have a Google Phone (like the Nexus S) it also holds all the pix that have automatically been added via instant upload from your phone. The top tab let's you take new pix with your iPad camera and gives you access to the pix stored on your iPad.
The Profile-Tab gives you the option to change your Profile Pic with a pic associated with your G+ Account, take a new one with your iPad camera or choose a pic stored on your iPad. This is a huge improvement compared to the mobile version of G+, that didn't give you that option.
The About-Tab in the bottom status bar contains your personal Info and let's someone send an email to the owner of the Profile. Is the same as in the mobile version of G+.
The next 2 Tabs give access to your Posts and Photos.
Once you open the Circles you find 2 top Tabs. 'People' view shows everyone in your circles in alphabetical order. If you tab on a name you can change which circle this person is associated with and it gives you access to that users profile. The 'Circles' view shows your contacts sorted by circles and gives you access the the same information as in 'People' view. In 'People' view you have an additional tab at the bottom that offers you a list of suggested people.
All in all a great App and a huge improvement over the mobile version of G+!! If I had to rate that App I would give it a 3.8 on a scale of 1 to 5. My main complaints are that the Link Sharing needs to be optimized in order to pull the Link Feed automatically and that this App still doesn't give me the option to share certain G+ content with other social networks. Fixing the page orientation issue and integrating the iPad video cam into the App would be nice, but isn't essential for me.
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