Gadgetory

well this is David with a verge and this is iOS 7 this Apple says is the biggest change ever made to iOS and more than any hardware change it's made in the last six years this new software fundamentally changes how you'll use your iPhone Apple has been accused of being boring of being stale of not keeping up with the times iOS 7 is its response it starts with the overall look which is completely different from anything I OS has ever been it's not exactly unrecognizable but it's totally new different font weights white backgrounds a nifty parallax effect on the homescreen text as basically everything in the design there's nothing to the contacts app or the calendar other than different fonts and simpler backgrounds it's a much cleaner simpler look but in some ways it's not nearly as intuitive as iOS used to be there used to be skeuomorphism everywhere I'm glad that's all gone but Apple threw the baby out with the bathwater to some extent so many visual cues are gone with buttons replaced by words that you're just supposed to know to tap or a back gesture which works in some apps but not all and only in some places in those apps to alleviate that problem somewhat Apple swapped these guideposts for feedback whenever you do something something seems to happen when you open an app it's like the app explodes from its icon on your home screen when you close it it gets sucked back in when you swipe to unlock your phone the passcode screen doesn't just appear anymore it slides in from the side as if you dragged it over these animations are helpful in some places but they're often slow and always kind of jarring I don't need to watch my app open I just wanted to open Apple's big bet with iOS 7 is that you already know how to use a smart phone you instinctively reach to the top left corner to go back and you know to swipe from left to right to unlock your phone once you figure it all out it works basically like it always has and it's definitely cleaner and nicer but iOS just doesn't feel obvious anymore but there is truth to the idea that if you already know how to use a smart phone you'll figure out iOS 7 quickly because in most ways the OS here hasn't actually changed much there's only one really new feature that will actually affect how you use your phone that's control center a transparent window that slides up from the bottom of the screen and sits over top of whatever you're doing it finally gives iOS users a quick way to change screen brightness toggle Wi-Fi or launch the camera app from anywhere it's kind of a cluttered odd-looking collection of icons and sliders but it's really really useful most of the other quote-unquote new features are just tweaks to the way things always were when you double tap the home button to see the multitasking screen you get an icon and also a screenshot of each app you have running and you can close them easily by swiping the screen shot upward it's just like webOS always was but the basic multitasking and task switching haven't changed here your apps will be much more current as you jump around because apps that are running can finally update in the background in iOS 7 but getting around the OS itself hasn't really changed speaking of background updating apps themselves can now update without your intervention you just see a blue dot when the apps move to a new version the app store itself is nicer looking as is iTunes with the Pandora like features of iTunes radio and the fact that your purchases now show up in your library without you having to hunt them down in the store I actually found myself using iTunes regularly for the first time in a long time there's a new panel in notifications called today which shows your appointments for the day along with the weather and even your alarm clock for tomorrow it's not particularly powerful but I loved not having to open the clock app every night to check my alarm series also a lot more useful now you can pick between male and female voices and use Siri to do much more than just search the web just being able to say Siri turn off Bluetooth or Siri what was my last text message is really awesome series not quite as powerful or as contextual as Google now and still awkwardly asks too many questions and defaults to web search too often but it's a huge improvement there are lots of little features to which are neat but not exactly earth-shattering FaceTime audio is nice but it obviously only works with other people with compatible devices it's not going to replace my actual phone which by the way has a nice wrap than before anytime soon airdrop should be a handy way to share files pictures and notes between iOS devices but it's kind of clunky people have to be really near you for the phone to find them and they tend to appear and disappear in the list for no reason nearly every one of apples core apps has a new look a new uglier icon and very little new functionality male has a swiping gesture that makes triaging your email a little easier which I appreciated reminders and notes are just better-looking versions of themselves Calendar is still harder to use than most third party options so far has been cleaned up and improved a lot with a unified toolbar for searching and browsing are really easy rolodex for switching between tabs and all the app chrome at least on the iPhone does a nice job of getting out of the way if Apple did one thing well with iOS 7 it's that chrome really does get out of the way most of the time it's much flatter much cleaner and much more about the apps themselves which is good or at least will be one more apps update for now non optimized apps don't even get to use the new cleaner keyboard the one exception here is the camera app which did change in a big way it's jarring at first not having the aperture blades close and open every time you take a picture and there is a lot more interface chrome here than there used to be but it's super easy to switch from video to photos to panoramas to Instagram style square shots it feels faster and surfaces some of the features people might have missed before and there are filters too so you can basically just skip Instagram altogether the Photos app is a fun scrolling way to see all of your pictures at once or just one it automatically sorts all your photos and makes finding old ones much easier but mostly it's also just awesome looking there's a lot more than just this in iOS 7 basically every part of the OS has a new look and feel even if only a few places actually work differently than they used to the OS is out now for every iPhone after the iPhone 4 the most recent iPod Touch the iPad 2 and later and the iPad Mini it's pretty buggy on the iPad right now by the way so I'd hold off updating for a while if you can get away with it iOS has always been a good operating system but iOS 7 isn't some huge change some complete rethinking of how we use our smart phones it's really just a coat of paint iOS still has a Tico system which is just completely unrivaled but at this point Android has a much richer sharing system which lets you move easily between apps and do much more than tap I Oh s7 s inscrutable icon and upload things to Flickr it also has a better richer notification system which on iOS is still just things that pop over top of what you're doing and have to be dismissed individually but those are existing problems ones that many iOS users live happily with iOS 7 is a very good operating system just as iOS has been since 2007 for now it's just a bunch of mostly useful tweaks like background updating in the today's screen there are lots of new api's and tools for developers that could eventually lead to really fantastically useful features and better-looking and more consistent apps but right now it's awesome what less than that you