Apple Inc. released the official video of iOS 7. Apple CEO Tim Cook got you a new operating system for the iPhone and iPad. It looks different. It works differently. It has a host of new features and design elements–from full multitasking to the Pandora-like iTunes Radio. It organizes your pictures, has remarkable new AirDrop sharing features, automatically updates your apps, and overall lets you do just about everything more quickly and efficiently.
Cook noted that iOS powers 600 million devices, and has been ranked number one in customer satisfaction by JD Power nine times in a row. What those stats mean is that it’s actually quite hard for Apple to make changes. If nobody loved iOS, it would be easy to rip it up and start over again. But as it is, changes affect hundreds of millions of users, and Cook called this update “the biggest change to iOS since the iPhone.” This is hard stuff, and here’s what’s inside.
The look and feel of iOS 7 is perhaps the most noticeable change. Apple’s longtime hardware design lead Jony Ive now runs the company’s software design too. The new iOS 7 design looks fundamentally different throughout, although it remains familiar.
Gone are many of the elements that mimicked real-world counterparts and in their place are simpler, often more colorful elements. All the icons have been redesigned–the envelope on the Mail icon no longer floats in the sky, Safari is a simple round compass, the Game Center icon is now just a series of abstract colors, with no chess pieces or rocket ships or hints of corkboard and wood.
Open the apps and you’ll find them redesigned inside as well. Translucency, parallax, animation and motion (like a weather app showing falling show) give the system a dive-in quality that it didn’t have before. It appears three-dimensional in some ways. Calendar no longer has that faux-desktop calendar look. Game Center has lost its felt. The typography is entirely new.
Apple iOS 7 is now official, and it's cleaner and more stylish than ever before. As expected, Apple has taken flatness to be a guiding principle by removing much of the layers and skeumorphic elements of the past. The new software is the "biggest change to iOS since the introduction to iPhone," said CEO Tim Cook. It even includes the key features that I asked for last week. A full release of iOS 7 will arrive this fall for iPhone 4 and later, iPad 2 and later, iPad Mini, and iPod touch 5th gen. Here's what's new in iOS 7.
Design has changed dramatically. layers are mainly gone as flatness takes over. Backgrounds are white and menus are mostly flat. Text is thinner and taller. You can also notice that in the Messages app, colorful bubbles have been replaced with alternating white and blue photos. The dock has a semi-transparent background as well.
Motion tracking is now part of the home screen. As users tilt the phone, the system follows by having the background and icons tilt slightly. It's a very subtle but noticeable change that gives the phone a 3D-like sense of depth.
Notification center is viewable from the lock screen, so you can jump directly into it without having to unlock. Notifications have been updated to show upcoming events and filters for missed alerts. There's also cross-platform synchronization; if someone dismisses a notification on his or her iPad, the iPhone will know to dismiss the notification as well.
Find My iPhone is now more secure because of Activation Lock. If a thief disables Find My iPhone or wipes the device clean, the crook will be unable to use the device because iCloud activation is required to use the phone again.
Control Center provides fast access to he settings that you want to change. That includes getting to a flashlight, turning on/off Wi-Fi, toggling GPS, adjusting brightness, controlling music playback, and more. Control Center is available from anywhere in iOS 7.
Apple iOS 7 screenshot
0 Comments