Compatibility and updating
iOS 7 comes pre-installed on any new iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. It's available as a free update to anyone using an iPhone 4, iPhone 4s, iPhone 5, or iPhone, an iPad 2, iPad 3, iPad 4, or iPad mini, and an iPod touch 6. Not all features are available on older devices.
You can update over-the-air (OTA) on on-device or over USB using iTunes on Mac or Windows. OTA updates-in-place are typically the fastest, setting up as a new device is typically the best way to get the best performance.
iOS 7 interface and experience gets its game on
The biggest change to iOS 7, and the most important, is the system-wide redesign. With, Apple has taken interface and experience from static to dynamic. It's more nuanced than that, of course, but that you have to see it moving to understand how it looks and works reveals the essential truth of that statement. iOS 7 feels alive and vibrant. It's the vision of Apple's senior vice president of design. Formerly restricted to hardware, he's now responsible for hardware and software both, and his predilection for stripping away everything inessential until only the most authentic, most necessary elements is evident. The green felt is gone. The wooden shelves are gone. The stitched leather Steve Jobs was so fond of is gone. In their place is a lot of solid colors with only the subtlest of gradients and textures remaining. Architecturally, it's laid bare. Design-wise, there's nowhere left to hide.
If you've used iOS before, everything is going to look different after you update to iOS 7. The change is striking. Here are some examples showing iOS 6 on top and iOS 7 on the bottom, including the Lock screen, Home screen, and Notification Center. (Yes, the hands on the Clock icon on the iOS 7 Home screen really do move now.)
Say goodbye to rich textured themes in Game Center, Compass, and Newsstand. You're not going to have green felt to kick around anymore:
Here's the new Lock screen, which shows the text, the translucency, and the physics-based wallpaper:
Speaking of which, the new default system font is Helvetica Neue, and it tends towards the ultra-thin at times. Why Apple didn't go with their own, custom system font is a mystery, and while Helvetica Neue looks beautiful at times, it can be hard to read as well. Luckily the same Text Kit system allows you to easily scale and thicken it if and as needed.
There are other problems too. The icons all reference the same grid now, one that seems drawn from Apple's hardware designs. They range from beautiful, like Photos, to unbalanced, like Safari, to background dependent, like Stocks and Voice Memos. Rumor has it they were specced out by the graphic design department instead of the human interaction department, something Jony Ive felt would bring fresh eyes and a new approach. It's triggered some legitimate criticism and some change aversion both. Over the last 3 months most of the icons have come to no longer bother me, but flat or not, few leap out at me as genuine improvements. Also, the glyphs are thin the point of looking fragile, and sometimes simplified to the point of non-obviousness.
Likewise, some of the interfaces are breathtakingly gorgeous to the degree that even now I can't stop starting at them. Everything from passcode entry to the dialer is palpably improved. Other interfaces, not so much. Particularly the status bar, which comes off as much cluttered and confusing now than at any point previously. Also, the cellular signal strength indicators, circles now instead of curved bars, convey the same information yet take up far more space.
Siri sits on top of iOS as a secondary, natural language interface layer. A personal digital assistant big on personality and partnerships, but challenged in reliability, with iOS 7 Apple has continued to add new services while redesigning everything that's come before. Gone is the linen and beautifully rendered sports, movie, and other widgets, and in their places is the starker, cleaner, and more translucent treatment. It'll even fly in sample questions for you if you're not sure what to ask. The resulting look is sometimes hauntingly great, other times murkily bad.
The principal new element is a sound wave that harkens back to Siri's predecessor, Voice Control. It's a fun visual. Not as fun is the heaviness of the text, which looks out of place compared to the thinner treatment found in the rest of the interface. It does help usability, however, and more specifically, glance-ability, which is more important than consistency when it comes to how Siri is used.
Siri gets two new, high quality voices in iOS 7. One is male, the other female. They're not available in all languages yet, but it's just a matter of time. Having new voices was increasingly important for Apple. The original female Siri voice wasn't exclusive to Apple, and that was an odd choice to begin with, and something others could use to graft onto Apple's attention, and competitors could use to tease them. Hopefully these new voices are original, and Apple's alone.
New features include the ability to change Settings. While that's geek-centric and mirrors another new iOS 7 feature, Control Center, it's also welcome. Likewise Siri can now access more communications feature. Where previously Siri could find email and messages, and read messages, playing voice mail is a nice addition. So is the ability to find and show tweets. Hopefully Apple continues to expand on this until Siri can find, read, and otherwise access with all messaging on iOS.
New services include Wikipedia and Microsoft for Siri search, especially image search. Some might assume that it's just one more casualty in Apple and Google's cold war, but Siri has always been a partnership play and it's just as possible Microsoft offered Apple the best deal. What remains to be seen is how good the results are, because that's the only thing that really matters at the end of the day.
Siri has also become persistent. Previously if you left Siri for any reason and then came back, all your previous results were gone. Now you can simply scroll backwards and see search results, movie listings, and whatever else you recently called up. This might seem trivial, but it's incredibly useful.
What Apple hasn't added is any local, on-device functionality for Siri. Google's been doing this for a while, and it helps minimize network connections and backend servers as a point of failure. Basically, for any action that involves only the apps on the phone or tablet, for example, toggling a setting or adding a reminder, all voice parsing is done on the device. Only when a request needs to go online, like to check the web or check with a service, does it hit servers. Siri currently goes to the servers for everything, making it slower and subject to more failures than Google's voice tech.
Siri also didn't get was any of the predictive assistant services Google Now enjoys. Like Google on Android (and in more limited fashion in the Google Search app for iOS), Apple on iOS can aggregate all sorts of calendar, location, environmental, and social data, and can synthesize from it where we are, where we need to be, with whom, and under what conditions. Instead of waiting for us to ask, Siri could be providing it preemptively so we don't even need to ask.
Apple has shown they're doing a little bit of that with Notification Center's new Today screen, which will tell you the time (with traffic) to your next most likely location. Perhaps they'll evolve a system complementary to Siri, rather than a component of Siri, to handle predictive assistance. That's be a shame though, since Siri has that Pixar-like personality that helps make assistant services accessible.
Ideally, a predictive Siri would replace the current notifications on the Lock screen, and the Today screen. Either way, Google seems closer to the movie version of Tony Stark's Jarvis right now than Apple, and I hope that turns around, and soon.
Quick access to system-level toggles has been something every power user has wanted since the day the original iPhone shipped. Some 7 years later, Apple gives us Control Center. Like Notification Center, Control Center is a layer that you can slide over the main iOS interface, including the Lock screen if you so choose. It enjoys the same, bouncing, playful iOS 7 physics, and the same blur effect that mutes but doesn't entirely obliterate what's underneath. Unlike Notification Center, which comes from the top down, Control Center is activated by swiping up from beneath the screen, and rather than dark, smoked glass, it's given a light, frosted treatment.
That Control Center functions so much like Notification Center, and even uses similar nomenclature makes it easy to understand, even for non-power-users who haven't been lamenting its absence on iOS for years. It'll give the obsessive compulsive among us nearly instant access to toggles we probably ought not be toggling all the time, but it'll also give plenty of regular people a fast, easy way - and more obvious than the old fast app switcher controls - to get at things as simple as media controls and even a flashlight when they need them.
Control Center's top row provides handy on/off switches for commonly used settings like Airplane mode (which, when turned on, will turn off the cellular radio), the Wi-Fi radio, and the Bluetooth radio, as well as toggles for Do Not Disturb mode, and the portrait/landscape orientation lock. Black means off, white means on, and a brief bit of text will show up to confirm it so.
The next row is a brightness slider, from dark to light, then media controls that includes a positional scrubber, the title of the track/episode you're listening to or watching, the name of the album/series that track/episode is from, skip backwards or forwards buttons, pause/play, and a volume slider. If you tap the track title, you'll be taken to whichever app is currently playing the media, be it Music, Podcasts, or something else.
If available, AirDrop and AirPlay occupy the next row, and allow you to quickly access sheets with their individual options.
The bottom row consists of icons to toggle the LED flash-come-flashlight on or off, and variants of Clock, Calculator, and Camera icons for quickly accessing those apps.
The wedding cake design is serviceable and keeps all the controls organized while avoiding clutter. The toggles on the top look good, though some of the lines lower down are thin to the point of fragility. The only downside is that Control Center isn't customizable, at least not yet. If you'd rather have different toggles, like personal hotspot, or different fast app access, like Twitter, well that's your tough luck, at least for now.
But, baby steps. I once wrote that iOS wasn't meant for geeks, and while I still think that's generally true, with iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks, Apple is now showing that they have more than enough love to go around.
Mobile multitasking is all about compromise. You either limit what can be done by apps, or you limit the battery life of the device running them. iOS has always been fantastic at multitasking. It was built on the same foundation as OS X, after all. The very first iPhone demo showed Steve Jobs start some music, fade into a phone call, jump out to check the web and email, jump back to the call, and then fade back to the music. The compromise then was no third-party apps, and post iOS 2.0 and the App Store, no multitasking for third-party apps.
iOS 4.0 brought multitasking to App Store apps, but compromised on who got access and what they could do. VoIP, navigation, and streaming audio were wide open, everything else tightly timed or still turned off. With iOS 7, Apple is trying to have their background and their battery life too, and they're using some very smart technology to do it. Instead of simply allowing persistent, pre-emptive multitasking like OS X does on the desktop, and like how some competitors do on mobile, Apple is recognizing that they have neither a power cable plugged into the wall, nor a desire to offload battery and task management to their customers, and they're using a dynamic, just-in-time system to try and get the best of both worlds. Here's how it works:
Intelligent scheduling lets apps you use frequently - for example, Facebook or Twitter if you check them near-constantly - to update frequently so whenever you launch them, they'll have all the latest information ready and waiting for you. Apps you use regularly but not frequently - for example, if you check the news when you wake up and before you go to sleep - can update just before you typically check them so they use less power but still have the information you want, when you want it.
Opportunism and coalescence let apps take advantage of circumstances to update efficiently as well. For example, apps can update during any of the very many times a day you unlock your device and the system is powered up. Apps that require it can update when your radio signal is strong and power requirements are at a minimum. And if and when something like GPS gets powered up for one app, other apps that need it can tag along for the ride and get their updates handled as well.
Where previously you'd get a push notification, go to the app, and then have to wait for the app to download the data, now push triggers prompt background updates so that the data is ready and waiting for you by the time the app opens. At least in theory. Developers can even send silent/invisible push triggers to wake up their apps for update, which greatly increases the usefulness.
With the iPhone 5s specifically, the M7 motion coprocessor will persistently track accelerometer, magnometer (digital compass), and gyroscope data without the need to power up the main processor. Apps can then pull the data, which essentially gives them full background access without the need to actually be open and consuming resources in the background.
This all works based on the concept of perception being reality. It doesn't really matter when an update happens as long as it happens before we see it. That's what makes just-in-time so much more efficient - and so much less wasteful - than all-the-time.
All of this sounds great in theory, but it remains to be seen how well it will work in practice, especially at first. As more and more developers integrate the new multitasking features, and Apple continues to improve the system, it should become better and better.
The new multitasking interface, however, is a huge improvement right now. The old fast app switcher was never a great solution. Apple tested other metaphors for iOS 4 before they settled on it, including something like OS X Expose, but Safari Pages, and more expressly, webOS cards, always felt like a better solution. Cards not only match the physicality of iOS 7 in general, they're something with which almost everyone is already familiar.
Not that it looks perfect yet. There's a Home card, for example, that might help ensure mainstream users aren't confused about how to find the Home screen, but there's already Home button for that. All Home does in card view is break the metaphor (how can the card view sit on top of Home when Home is in it?).
Unlike some other platforms, cards aren't kept "live". You can't watch a video play in card mode, for example, and it doesn't seem like websites update if you just sit there staring at Safari either. It's arguable live cards aren't necessary and not a great use of resources, but like constant blur filters they can be an impressive effect.
Also, in webOS, every instance of an app could have a card. For example, you could have multiple web pages open at the same time in card view, or multiple email message drafts ready and waiting. Multiple web pages would quickly over run the interface, however, and are better handled in Safari's rolodex. webOS used Stacks to organize sets of cards. Again, greater complexity, but greater functionality. Right now, simpler feels better.
Thankfully, Apple did duplicate the webOS method for closing apps. Instead of holding apps down until they jiggle, and then hitting the little X badge - which conflated the action with deleting apps from the Home screen - you simply touch and hold a card and then toss it up and away. You can also toss multiple cards away at once (up to three - the maximum shown on screen at any time). And no, there's still no option to "kill all apps", because you don't ever need to "kill all apps" even if sometimes it's a fast way to troubleshoot rogue processes.
In addition to the new card interface, Apple also retained the old fast app switcher's icons, placing them at the bottom of the cards. Cards capture static views from the apps they represent, but those representations might not immediately be recognizable. One mostly white page can be hard to differentiate from another mostly white pager. Icons are made to be recognizable, even at a glance. Cards and icons together provide for both greater information and faster recognition. Win. Win.
Back before iOS 6, I hoped for a better fast app switcher. With iOS 7, Apple delivered.
Like much of iOS 7, the Camera app has gotten a complete makeover, but for the most part has remained spatially consistent with previous versions. The shutter button, flash button, camera-switch button, and photo thumbnail are all exactly where they used to be. Options has been replaced by a dedicated HDR button, however, panorama moved, and the grid toggle banished to Settings.
Moreover, the method for changing between still and video has changed. Instead of a binary switch, you can now swipe left from still to video camera, and also swipe right to get to the new square mode (cropped still), and right again to get to panorama. Taking the place of the old still/video switch is the new filters button. There's a real-time blur effect between each mode, of course, just for good measure.
On the iPhone 5s you also get an additional video camera - 120fps slow motion.
And you can set in and out points right in the Camera app.
Taking photos on iOS 7 in general is lightning fast. Gone is the old shutter closing animation, new is a fade-to-white-and-back so fast if you blink you might miss it. You can just tap, tap, tap, and take photo after photo after phone. Did I mention how fast it is? Even high-dynamic range (HDR) is noticeably faster, though still much slower than non-HDR photos.
if you hold your finger down on the shutter button it'll take continuos photos. On the iPhone 5s, you also get a proper burst mode that, Instead of overwhelming you with tens of photos per second, Apple leverages the new A7 to automagically choose and present the best ones, including the multiple highlights of an action shot, if available, yet still lets you dive into all the shots if you ever want to pick your own. That's a great example of providing primary level ease of use, and secondary level expanded use, and how these types of features should be done. By everyone.
With iOS 7, Apple's peer-to-peer, ad-hoc Wi-Fi file transfer protocol, AirDrop comes to the iPhone, iPod, and iPad. Originally introduced on the Mac with OS X 10.7 Lion, it was attached to the Finder to allow anyone to beam any file or folder to anyone else with in range. The iOS version doesn't have a user-facing filesystem to work such universal wonders with. In a perfect world it'd be hooked into my long-lusted-after Files.app and FilePicker system, but for now it's Control Center and Share Sheet bound.
AirDrop works with photos, videos, contacts, voice memos, passes, and anything else that can hook into the iOS sharing system. Once an item is selected, AirDrop will automatically detect any discoverable iOS 7 devices within Wi-Fi range and, if available, show you the contact picture of their owners. Tap one or more contacts to start the sharing process. Providing the detection process works like it's supposed to (try toggling Wi-Fi off and then back on if not), it really that simple. Tap, tap, tap. Share. Share. Share.
If someone tries to send you an item via AirDrop, you'll get a popup. Decline, and it'll go away. Accept and the item will transfer and then open for you in the appropriate app. You can choose to be discoverable to no one, to contacts only, or to everyone with iOS 7.
It works by creating an ad hoc point-to-point Wi-Fi connection between devices. You don't have to be on the same Wi-Fi network, just within range with Wi-Fi turned on. It doesn't use or need cellular networking (3G or LTE), and while there may be reasons to hope it eventually ties into Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy, it doesn't do that yet either.
iOS 7 AirDrop also doesn't work with OS X AirDrop at present, which is perplexing given the shared branding. Hopefully that's coming soon. Probably not coming soon is near-field communications (NFC). Apple hasn't seen fit to include an NFC radio in any iOS device, and has gone out of their way to make fun of how competitors have implemented NFC-dependant features.
At the end of the day, NFC is a chipset not a feature set, and nothing any human should ever concern themselves with. Does a device do what it needs to do for you is the question. If it does, then who cares what chipset it is or isn't using. If it doesn't, then who cares what chipset it is or isn't using.
The ability to exchange small binary blobs without the need to physically bump phones, however, is compelling. PalmOS used to do it over infrared, and it was tedious and frustrating, but it was the future. Point-to-point Wi-Fi is way better than infrared and NFC both. BT LE might be as well. Maybe some day the distance limitation will be overcome and any contact we have, anywhere online, will be immediately available for... WarpDrop?
Battery life and performance for me on the iPhone 5 and iPhone 4s, and on the iPad 4 and iPad mini have been excellent. There was an initial hick-up after new installations, which could be the result of re-indexing or some other short-term overhead, but day-in, day-out I've been getting as good a battery life and performance on iOS 7 as I got on iOS 6.x.
iPhone 4 and iPad 3 performance hasn't been as good. Both were first generation Retina display devices, and the tax on the graphics processing unit (GPU) was already heavy. Still, being able to run iOS 7 apps will be incredibly important going forward, so updating might become a necessity, as might upgrading to newer hardware that runs iOS 7 better.
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