iOS 7 — Three Weeks In

As of today, I’ve been using iOS 7 for three weeks. I’ve run Developer Preview One and I’m now running Developer Preview Two. What do I think so far? I’m pleasantly surprised and very impressed.

The all new flat design is great. I’m still not sure about some of the icon choices, but for me it is a much needed improvement since the initial design from 2007.

My biggest concern when upgrading to iOS 7 was really around losing my ability to jailbreak my devices. Now that I have been running iOS 7 for a while I can honestly say that I really don’t miss much about having my devices jailbroken. I had 22 jailbreak apps and tweaks installed and there are only four that I miss:

1. BiteSMS — Apple has really improved the usability of the lock screen with an updated Notification Center, but I don’t know why they didn’t address the ability to interact directly with notifications like they did with OSX Mavericks. This is one feature I hope to see in a future update.
2. Browser Changer — My default browser of choice is Google Chrome on all of my machines and devices. This tweak allowed Google Chrome to take over as the default from Safari on my devices. I wish Apple would allow us to change the default browser (all the default apps for that matter) or even allow us to remove them.
3. Diet Bulletin — The updated bulletin alerts in iOS 7 are a much needed improvement, but I still think they are way to large. This tweak allowed me to set alerts to only be the height of the top status bar.
4. ShowCase — This one is a total preference thing, but the tweak made the letters on your keyboard either capital or lower case making it real quick and easy to know what case you were typing.

iOS 7 is a welcome improvement over previous iOS versions. The updated design and new feature set that we know of so far have made a great mobile OS even better. I hope Apple has some other tweaks and big features in store for the official release later this year.

What do you think of the updates Apple has made to iOS 7? Do you think they made the right decisions for the platform or are you wishing they would revert back? Leave a comment below.

Originally published at https://johnbowersox.me on July 1, 2013.