“iOS 7 is a big deal, really big – the biggest change to iOS since the original iPhone,” Brian S. Hall writes for TechPinions. “Indeed, it’s hard to prepare long-time users for how significantly different iOS 7 is compared to its predecessors.”
Hall writes, “Though still in beta, there are three new features that I think will be ‘game changers’ – each will have a significant and lasting impact on users, developers, competitors and Apple’s bottom-line.”
• iTunes Radio
• Auto-updates
• AirDrop
Hall writes, “iOS 7 contains many new features, new gestures and a rather jarring new visual language – with fully re-designed colors, iconography, and fonts. There is the very clever (and long overdue) Control Center panel and more robust notification options. Peer deeper, however, and you discover far more has changed.”
Read more in the full article here.
still not sure if AirDrop is catching on.. but the other two are definitely great. Anecdotally speaking, I’ve had airdrop for a while now and never got the urge to use it. why not just attach a file to an email, etc?
I think because with HD pictures and videos we are coming to a point where things cannot be shared by email only. sending a batch of pics is not as easy as it used to be.
and I might want to send you a video uncompressed longer than 45 seconds.
This and it’s adhoc, no wifi or data required. I wish Apple would alter Mac airdrop to this.
I find AirDrop on the Mac to be essentially useless. Why in the world the person I’m trying to send a file to has to be logged into AirDrop at the moment I’m trying to send a file is simply ridiculous. Let me drop the file to them (so first I would need to be able to see them in AirDrop!), then let the recipient accept or decline to receive the file. It’s a nice idea not done well.
True dat Bizlaw and joe!!!
AirDrop support is a God-send. So many times I have wanted to easily send a picture, file, link, etc. to someone in the same room but have had to resort to email or text messages. This will be soooo much easier.
The point is, airdrop is realtime. Email is a bit more convoluted and has to go through servers, etc. AirDrop, bypasses all that.
I’m curious for sake of discussion – I recently bought a Sony xperia z tablet because I wanted to give android a try, ultimately I didn’t like it enough and returned it. I returned because of poor battery, battery took forever to charge abd apps I wanted were not available. What I did like was a more customizable desktop on the android tablet and fast app switching. I didn’t like the auto app update thing as it slowed down the whole tablet everytime apps were updating. Won’t all the fandroid people say android has had the auto update forever and Apple is playing catch up? I’m looking for sincere feedback or opinions on how these features are game changers, I’m not saying there not, just looking for better explanation, because I’m holding out for the next coming ipad. Thanks
Auto App Update is actually put there because McCain asked for it. It is NOT a game changer. What, for example, if you did not want to update an App…..because you just happen to like the penultimate version better than the latest version. Some old fogies want the auto update feature. YOU however can turn it off.
Don’t worry about the fandroids. Most of the features they have are badly implemented without thought of how it will be used. Apple will only implement when they have perfected the idea in terms of how it will be used. Take for example the “eye following thing” and “hand waving thing”. They are first on both these, and yes, both are quite useless. IF a need for this transpires in the future Apple will implement it.
The implementation of Auto update seems half baked compared to Android actually. In iOS so far (yes I know it’s still beta) you can only turn auto update On or Off. In Android, you can control Auto Update PER APP. If I don’t want Facebook to auto-update but I do want my maps application to auto-update, then I can select auto-update for one and leave the other turned off. So not everything is ‘perfected’ when Apple decides to implement it. I think a fair amount of their implementations leaves much to be desired. Take the notification shade for instance. Apple implemented it after Android however in the iOS implementation I can’t just swipe away a single notification. I have sit there and attempt to peck at a very small ‘X’ (and I have to tap it twice mind you) and I can only clear a whole notification grouping at once. On Android I can swipe single notifications I want away or tap a prominent button to clear all. I am no Android fanboy in the least mind you, I do have an iPhone 5 however I also have a Nexus 4. Seeing the need for improvement in areas doesn’t negate your fondness or loyalty. Contrarily I think you are a better fan at least attempting to help your preferred faction achieve greater improvement.
Agree, your always a better fan suggesting improvement as opposed to following a piper over a cliff. Pecking at the small ‘X’ is the perfect pest and you make other good points, as well.
From the article:
“iOS 7 contains many new features, new gestures and a rather jarring new visual language – with fully re-designed colors, iconography, and fonts.”
Jarring, indeed! My biggest beef with the redesign is the lame look. Suggest thy increase the font size for better legibility (older people). Suggest they design icons for better communication for all ages. We have the greatest eye candy right now in the world thinned down to flat, extremely boring outlines. Great for the eat your veggies and visit the Museum of Modern Art crowd. For the rest of the non-hip world full of old farts, traditionalists, conservatives, children and others would be great if I had my CHOICE of LOOK.
The tighter integration, Control Center, AirDrop et al welcome additions. Article stated it will be hundreds of miles wider under the hood and far improved. Biggest concern other than the lame look, is battery life. Jony already proved he is lame at UI iconography design, so I hope he does better at battery design.
My issue with iOS7 is that you simply can’t remove the borders on every button or region and keep usability.
I have been using it for a couple weeks now and there are things that are just too confusing or appearing “cluttered” because of the lack of definitive regions/areas.
I like the ideas and concepts, but if you take away the borders then you must rethink the use case.
I fear that iOS is too far from being complete and Apple won’t make a fall release schedule. We’ll see.
I will install Beta2 tonight and see if there are improvements.(menu and title bug fixes I hope).
I think iOS7 may be a step forward in technology, but a step backwards in usability.
All (many) apps need to be redesigned to take into consideration the obscurity of button and menu item user interaction.
As far as AirDrop is concerned, I haven’t found a use for it. ITines radio-annoying… Back to my play lists. Auto update- great except I had two occurrences where the app downloaded half way and I was without an app while I was out of signal range.
“I think iOS7 may be a step forward in technology, but a step backwards in usability.”
You sound sincere and sorry to hear. I would only add it is also a step back in visual design.
Totally bland.
My wife agrees
Why are you even lurking here?
The Android Fanboys will say that and more. Who cares. It actually works on iOS and doesn’t seem to slow it down.
Airdrop is better in most ways (IMHO) than bumping to transfer files as on a Samsung Android phone. Now you can transfer files to anyone in the vacinity with little effort and no direct contact.
For me full multitasking is the biggest game changer here. Apple wasn’t playing catchup on that one. There just wasn’t enough control over third party apps at the time to ensure great battery life (which is one thing you mentioned as important – it is for me too).
As for the desktop well, not much you can do about that. I’ve tried the various jailbreaks and all they proved was that widgets and fully customizable everything coupled with constantly updating displays created all kinds of problems including random crashes and poor battery life. But it is an option. You may have better luck than I did. Jail breaking is the equivalent of Android’s openness. It seems to come with a steep price tag.
Just to clarify. Samsung has had ‘air drop’ on all of their devices since the Galaxy S3. It’s part of a technology called Wi-Fi Direct and while they didn’t popularize it as much as they did that insanely stupid and slow NFC bump crap, it is and has been there for almost 1.5 years now. Again this update by Apple was indeed catch up in most areas.
Auto-Update – Playing catch up (with a worse implementation)
Air Drop – Playing catch up (with a better implementation)
Scrollable Wallpapers – Playing catch up (with a unique implementation)
Dynamic Wallpapers – Playing catch up (with a worse implementation as I speculate that they will not allow others to make more. Meaning that whatever dynamic wallpapers iOS7 are launched with, that’s are the only ones you can have until they launch more with iOS 8)
iTunes Radio – Playing catch up to not only Google (only by a week or so) but to several other phones/platforms.
Parallax – Uniquely Apple and pretty neat
Control Center – Playing catch up (with an arguable worse implementation as I can’t decide which controls show up in there. For instance I still have to dig through menus to turn off GPS and I can’t add that to my control center)
There are many others but you get my point. Again don’t get me wrong, I love Apple as a company and I think when they really decide to go after something they usually do it very well and set the stage for everyone else (like the introduction of the iPhone in the first place). However there just isn’t any logical denial that as of late (the last 2 years or so) they haven’t really been doing much in the way of improving user experience but on the contrary in many cases actually making it worse.
There own arrogance to not compromise or even reevaluate their philosophy of simplicity is ultimately killing them for the majority and it is making the use of iOS needlessly cumbersome. Case in point, how do I save a bloody file to my phone? My church posts MP3’s of their sermons and I want to download them. How do I from my device? Simple… I can’t. Driving home from a long road trip some friends and I wanted to listen to the newest. I whip out my iPhone but it begins to stream in Safari instead of download it. We hit a bad signal area, and poof no more streaming. My android carrying mate said ‘no problem once we get signal I’ll download it on my Android’; obviously poking fun because he realized what the dilemma was. As soon as we get signal, he clicks on the link and downloads the file. Then we proceed to listen the rest of the way. If my iPhone is the most advanced phone in the world, why can’t I do that? Also just as an aside, my mate was also able to download the itinerary for our trip to his phone as well… Was I able to do this? No. Each time I wanted to view this, I had to perform a search through my email and bring up the attachment but I could not however save the attachment to my phone. There a statement made I believe 2 WWDC’s ago that Apple strives to make sure that they made it possible for technology to ‘get out of the way’ for their customers so customers spent more time doing and less time thinking about how to do. Well in this case (which I actually encounter very frequently) technology is in the way and it’s purposely like that for the time being.
“There own arrogance to not compromise or even reevaluate their philosophy of simplicity is ultimately killing them for the majority and it is making the use of iOS needlessly cumbersome.”
+1000
Even better and more detailed points. Well done.
You should be on a focus user group inside Apple to improve their products. Oh, that’s right. They know better than anyone …
Are four of you hanging in mummy’s basement? Most likely just one of you. Life; get one!
We’re 50% leaner than the gang of eight.
One of us eh, see any black helicopters in your backyard lately? What a joke, but if it is good for your mental health, by all means indulge yourself.
Ah, what’s really wrong silverhawk1?
A little constructive criticism got you down?
“There’s an app for that”
— I am sure…
If I had this need more than once, I would download a file app…with folder sync’s… Yes I would need to prepare my trip …
Personally, I could never buy anything or use anything from Google or Samsung again just because I don’t like how they conduct business, so I’m highly biased when I tell you to hold out for the next iPad.
At this point both OS’s have similar feature sets which are only refining the UX (user experience) so you probably can’t go wrong one way or the other. iOS’s eco-system is great and apps are usually kept up-to-date since there isn’t any fragmentation, which can’t be said for Android.
Google will also be keeping EVERY SINGLE THING you do online on record to fine-tune how they generate advertising revenue from you with each tap. Also they may dump all that info to the NSA if needed.
If you like having a ruthless marketer in your bedroom, cheers.
Those are the exact same reasons why I stay away from Android and google. Nicely said.
If they want me to give up my soul they’ll have to offer more than the same old mediocrity that we got with Microsoft.
No fragmentation? BS.
If so my iPad1 would work with iOS 6, iOS 7 would support iPad2, iPhone 5 wouldn’t have a weird aspect ratio. IMO Apple’s planned obsolescence makes for it a bad game platform. Spend $600+ on a new iPad only to have it no longer supported in 2 years and many apps (games specially) perform like crap because they’re optimized for latest device.
Game changing in that these features, while done elsewhere, have been incorporated into the simplest operating system without sacrificing its elegance and minimalism for the sake of increased functionality. Apple could’ve made a mess of it all, but iOS at its core is still there, still recognizable. It’s still the only OS that doesn’t require one to read the instructions. That’s extremely difficult to do, but the team at Apple appears to have brilliantly pulled it off.
You make it sound like a good thing. Keep drinking the koolaid…
Android definitely has an infinitely better desktop and file management UI than iOS, and the latest beta has no signs that this will improve. Second, so far auto update isn’t working right for me: it will begin an auto update but then hang. I then have to delete the app and reinstall it. So Apple still needs to work on this. Finally, the new iOS eats away battery life, I’m having to recharge three times a day now–this will need to improve dramatically before finally release.
“I’m having to recharge three times a day now–this will need to improve dramatically before finally release.”
Without a doubt this will be fixed in the coming months. It’s beta.
Renaldoo, if you are playing with the iOS7 beta, remember: it’s a BETA. Do not judge battery life of Apple’s or anyone else’s beta OS, because it’s still a long way from being compiled and optimized in the final version.
For what it’s worth, I am experiencing exceptional battery life in iOS 6 on my iPhone 5, and am confident that it will be even better in iOS7. Assume however that shortly after iOS 7 comes out, that there will be an update or two in the first months that follow, specifically to address the inevitable bugs and improve battery life.
This is true again for iOS, Android or Windoze Phone. Software development is not easy.
As for anything else annoying you about the iOS7 beta, let me say it again: IT’S A BETA. GET OVER IT and stop complaining.
There. I feel better. Jesus H Christ…
Could your poor battery life be caused by Auto-Update constantly trying to download if it isn’t working properly? Try turning Auto-Update off and see if that affects battery life.
He is just trolling.. he is using Samsung Galaxy Y
I have had none of those issues with the first beta or now with beta 2.
As far as the “hang”…. It’s not hung. It’s waiting…
If you want to restart it immediately, open AppStore, find the App in the “purchased list” and tap on the pause button.
It will immediately restart for you.
Also, there was some gesture I did to get it to restart from the home screen. A bit obscure though…
don’t delete the app, that will kill your databases!
iOS 7 is the suckiest piece of crapware in the universe. Welcome to the Suck, gents, Apple is sliding into the crapper on this one.
Piece of shit.
Why does the owner of this app not control the likes of you?
You are what your screen name includes: you ‘suck’ big time!!!
It’s like asking a 12 year old their opinion on anything:
“____ is the suckiest piece of ____ in the universe.”
It’s nice that Google’s executives take the time to post here though.
@ Welcome — you poor, pathetic loser.
Nothing but a cesspool of negativity, rage and poison swirling around. I really can’t help wondering:
– how old you are
– what a terrible life you have that you have nothing better to do than come here and post this drivel.
Name calling again I read.
TOTAL HYPOCRITE!
Yeah, lost his mojo and proving hypocrisy day by day.
No, like many of us we dont drink the apple koolaid and are pissed off at many things apple. Things like cutting off iOS support once a device is 2 years old. Not updating iOS 5 with fixes for ipad1 users so safari stops crashing on web pages including apple website! Thing like ipad backups being corrupted for no good reason and not being able to restore because of that.
Like iOS being slow and laggy even after a wipe and resync.
They do so much half asses it’s not funny
I could go on and on…
THE potential game changer is the built in 3D effect in the interface (gyro and accelerometer based parallax and layers). If the APIs for that are published and developers can very easily create 3D apps for iOS devices, then the entire app world changes. Even business graphics on the iPad changes with real 3D graphs and effects. I won’t even go into what can be done with 3D games as that is pretty obvious.
I won’t be upgrading to iOS7 if they keep the girlish looking interface with the fluorescent color scheme from the 60’s on the final product…
You know those colors that Apple use in their promo shots is from the background image right? If you put a manly background image in iOS7 it changes the colors. You can still change the background to silver shiny dildos and it’ll match up to what you have now and look all tough and manly, but with silver shiny android dildos.
What’s up with the blatant trolls today? When did Samsung/Google decide to spend their social marketing on this site?
The colors used in the icons and UI:
green
blue
orange/yellow
white
black
red
gray
with two exceptions– iTunes logo which has always been a pinkish purple, and a pink bubble on Game Center, which you’ll probably hide in a junk folder with News Stand anyways.
So i’m not sure what “girlish” looking interface elements you are talking about. The only difference between iOS 6 and iOS 7 as far as “girlish” colors are one pink bubble on Game Center.
Unless the fluorescence is feminine to you but that’s honestly a real stretch and to my knowledge isn’t a sexist stereotype that insecure men complain about in the same way pink and purple are.
Make that two.
Q: if iOS7 is a flop (all iPhone 4S and 5 users stay put), will they fire Jony?