It’s been a few days since Apple released their latest mobile operating system and now that the dust has settled I thought I’d post some of my first impressions about iOS7. This is not a complete review, of which you can find all over the web by better writers than myself, it’s just a summary of my initial thoughts after using it for a few days.
iOS 7 was unveiled at last Septembers World Wide Developers Conference and has been eagerly anticipated ever since. With this new OS Apple has introduced a new look and feel which gives new life to some of their older devices (iPhone 4 and above is supported). Visually everything seems somewhat flat and less cartoonish. The typography used throughout (mostly Helvetica Neue Ultra Light) is clean and easily legible, although I did need to bump up the font size a touch to help with my aging eyes.
We all have our likes/dislikes with various products. I’m going to focus more on what I don’t like about iOS7 (it’s a pretty short list).
Dislikes:
- Smaller folder screens
- You can only have 9 icons on a screen vs 12 in iOS6 (but you CAN have more than one page!)
- Takes up more storage
- 3.1GB needed to upgrade and you only get 2.8GB back
- Parallax Effect
- Not very smooth on the iPhone 4S or iPad 4th Gen, I ended up turning it off
- No AirDrop on pre iPhone 5 devices
- I was really looking forward to this feature but DeskConnect provides an alternative
- No weather app for iPad
- Plenty of 3rd party options but it’s odd not to have it on the Notification Screen
- Spotlight
- Only searches local data, no more Web or Wikipedia searches
With the negatives out of the way there are PLENTY of things to like about iOS7.
- Fresh new look
- Bug fixes
- Control Center
- iTunes Radio
- Slide anywhere to unlock
- Multi-page folders
- Safari Improvements
- Camera improvements
- Photo Collections
- App Switching
- iMessage Timestamps
- Siri Improvements
Overall iOS7 introduces a lot of new and updated features. I’m not sure where Apple is going to go from here but I think we have a few years before we’re going to see anything truly unique and revolutionary. I have an iPhone 5s on order & I’m looking forward to seeing how some of the restricted features work on it (AirDrop, new camera, etc.). I’ll be sure to post an initial look at the 5s once I get it in my hands & have some time to put it through the paces.