The Best of iOS 7
I believe that one changes things in technology to make it simpler and more efficient to use.
With the release of iOS 7, I think it is clear that Apple is moving ahead. The company is able to appreciate what was done in the past and continue their journey without thinking what the Founder would say.
I have been using iOS 7 from beta 3 on my iPhone 4S and I am excited about the new redesign. I like the idea of creating iOS based on dynamics. Motion, depth, transitions, translucency — all contribute to create a better user experience, and to understand how technology works. It gives you the perspective of where you are in the app. In addition, Apple has changed the visual interface: there are more vibrant colours in iOS, simpler icons, buttons (now they are text-only), sliders, etc.
It is interesting how the shape of circle became a fundamental attribute of iOS 7. Control Center and Passcode buttons [bye-bye to latter], signal “bars”, photos for your contacts or profiles, the back of the case for iPhone 5c, icon grid, and more. I am curious why they put so much emphasis on it.
[update]: Dustin Curtis mentions that the metal ring, passcode circles and back circles of the 5c case are all identical in size. I find it quite fascinating.
The following are my favorite bits about the new version.
- Communication is very important to me, especially with my family and close friends abroad. As such, FaceTime audio is an incredible addition. It is on my first screen, it replaced Skype, it changed my habits.
- Again, since my family is scattered around the world, you start to share your photos more frequently. I remember how happy I was when Apple announced Photostreams. Now they fixed the biggest drawback, letting multiple people contribute towards one photostream.
- A new cool system behaviour where when you have a pending message to read, even if you open the Messages.app, the system doesn’t open that conversation to prevent sending a Read Receipts to the receiver. It also prevents opening the conversation when the message just arrived and you are unlocking your phone. Super handy. I hope more people will use Read Receipts option as only a few do currently
- Control Center. All the toggles you need are now in one place, accessible from everywhere on your device. Very handy and eliminates an app or two.
- Organizing your apps became much easier with the ability to put more than limiting-twelve apps into a folder. No more apps scattered around now with one big folder called “social”.
- Automatic app updates are very convenient, especially if you have tons of apps. You don’t have to worry about being late on discovering the new features and always can find release notes later.
- Finally we can open as many tabs as we want. The app has nice animations, conveniently placed iCloud tabs, unified address bar [notes], and even twitter links from your followers in one list.
- Another very promising feature — the intelligent API that periodically as well as automatically downloads app data in the background. Basically, you have the latest information before you even open an app. Think about twitter, mail, various readers, games, podcasts — no more “pull-to-refresh”, or sitting and waiting for it to download.
Little details that I enjoyed finding.
- iTunes displays a small equalizer in front of the song that is currently playing (songs list view).
- Swipe to the left in a conversation in Messages to see the exact time of each message.
- Triple tap home button while on Lock Screen and listening to music to show the time and leave artwork only (no controls).
- The Clock.app on home screen shows your current time. (Calendar.app used to be the only app that utilized this function. I am surprised Weather.app is just a static icon.) [notes]
- The space estate under the time on Lock Screen is used quite often. If you put a timer and lock the phone, you can check how much is leftthere. If you charging your iPhone, it will show how much the battery is charged there, instead of huge battery icon previously.
- Spotlight Search is now a slide-down-anywhere-on-home-screen step away. Finally less and less pages to scroll through on home screen. (I currently have two pages to go to which helps to navigate faster)
- Multitasking got significantly better. Apart from showing you the updated app screens, you can close apps quicker than before. Even with three-finger swipe (that is three apps at a time)!
On the other side, I found certain areas in the new design where I think Apple didn’t make my life easier.
Photos. Yes, the team added a cool mechanism for automatically organizing your photos into Moments-Collections-Years (based on place and time). However, it became harder to see what’s new in my shared streams, even with Activity view. Maybe because of the volume of photos, likes and comments; or perhaps smaller screen size (I use 4S) in combination with too much empty space on screen; or because of how Apple shows new stuff.
Calendar. I love the simplistic redesign and the level of detail in the app. I love the ‘year’ and ‘month’ views. The transitions. But what happened with the ‘today’ view of events?! Where did the convenient list of all the things today go? Previously I could glance quickly and see what I have for the day, but now I have to scroll all over to see it. And when you have two-three events scattered during the day, it is no fun
[update]: @urbanMalek mentioned to me on twitter that you can tap a magnifying glass in calendar.app to get a “today” view. However, it is just a condensed version of the calendar which does show today’s events in a more convenient list, but also shows the upcoming days. I find it a bit distracting and not the solution.
Notification Center. In the versions prior to 7, I liked how you can again just glance at the screen and get all your information needed: weather, and then stocks. I check both of them quite often as the day goes. Now weather doesn’t tell you the whole story, stocks take up the entire screen and you have to first scroll to find them. I also rarely leave notifications to sit for more than 24 hours, so two separate tabs (All and Missed) for one purpose is excessive for me. In general, I feel like everything there is too spread out.
Safari. The only problem I have with Safari is that the app doesn’t save the pages as before. Whenever I leave a website open for later, it tries to refresh it every time I open it again. This is very disappointing while I am on the subway.
All in all, I think Apple did incredible job at trying to bring something completely new to the world, redesigned from a clean sheet of paper, while keeping the operating system still familiar to users. There are a lot of changes and small surprises. Moreover, I am excited to see what developers bring to the App Store: certain apps are redesigned for iOS 7; some are newly created, replacing some old players.
Apple is known to make their inventions better with the time, so I know that this is just the beginning. But right now I am looking forward to play with the new iPhones. Touch ID, which I think ironically kills its “Slide To Unlock” signature mark, is very intriguing.
P.S.
- My favorite app icon by Apple: Camera. First, I like the combination of grey and yellow. Second, it is ironic how they picture the massive DSLR camera and constantly improving their iPhone’s camera to take on real professional ones.
- My two most favorite Apple apps: Voice Memos and Weather (both for their interiors). Voice Memos is one of the apps that I use on a regular basis in university, and the new design astounded me: scrolling sound wavelengths while recording, how they display the recording process on Lock Screen (again), all the information showed, saving process — so much for such an app. Weather is a gorgeous piece of design with delicate details.
