Apple officially took the wraps off of iOS 7 at its WWDC 2013, Monday. The presentation began with a video introducing the latest version of iOS and showed off many of its new features, including its redesigned interface. The video impressed the audience so much that when it ended and Apple CEO Tim Cook returned to the stage, he was met with a standing ovation and cheers. He told the crowd that iOS 7 is the "biggest change to iOS since the introduction of iPhone."
iOS 7 is all new, yet completely recognizable to the millions of users already using the mobile operating system. The redesigned flat interface looks simple and elegant with new fonts, colors and features throughout. The home screen looks very similar to previous version of iOS but there are some new features that can't be seen until the iOS device is picked up and touched. The wallpaper of your home screen will actually move when you tilt your iPhone, allowing users to see behind the icons on their home screen.
All of Apple's built-in applications have been redesigned in terms of looks and features. There is a new thinner font that is used system wide, as well as a black and white UI that is seen throughout the operating system and inside of applications. Apple's belief is that it brings everything front and center to the user without any distractions. Apple has added a new scrollable page feature to many apps, instead of pressing a back button the user just needs to swipe the screen to navigate through apps, and it's very similar to current third party iOS apps like Gmail.
Safari appears full screen and its controls disappear from the screen when scrolling. A new tabbed browsing feature ditches the smaller screens in previous versions of iOS for iPhone and adds an almost cover flow feature for cycling through your opened tabs. Users can now navigate Safari using on-screen gestures, swipe to the right to go back, and left to go forward.
The Weather app now displays animated weather effects based on current conditions. The Photos app has been redesigned and organizes Camera Roll by what Apple calls "moments" - it uses the tags from photos to organize with information like location and date. It also makes scrolling through your camera roll appear much more organized compared to the current setup. The Camera application has been redesigned with gestures in mind - a user can swipe through camera settings to choose still, video, and the options of using different filters while snapping pictures.
Control Center is your one stop shop at getting to your most-used settings and features fast. Control Center can be opened anywhere in iOS 7, the user just drags up from the bottom of the screen and is greeted with a semi-transparent interface that has controls for settings like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Do Not Disturb, rotation lock, Airplane Mode and brightness. Apple has also included music controls, AirDrop, AirPlay, flashlight, clock, and camera. It's not clear if users will be able to add apps to Control Center.
Notification Center has been made over and also uses a slightly transparent interface that gives information on current day, weather forecast for the day, and notifications. Notification Center can now be accessed without having to unlock an iOS device, very similar to Android's notification shade. Apple has improved its multitasking feature and took some inspiration from webOS. The new multitasking feature can be accessed by double clicking the home button and all open apps now appear by icon along with a larger page preview of the current app. Users swipe through apps and close them by simply flicking the app off the screen.
Siri has gotten smarter and has also been given new voices. Users can choose a more natural sounding female or male voice for Siri. Siri's UI now displays text on screen while a user is speaking, similar to Google Now. Twitter, Wikipedia, and Bing have all been integrated into Siri.
Apple's streaming radio service will officially be called iTunes Radio (and not iRadio as rumored) and will be completely free and very similar to Pandora. User can easily create stations, purchase songs now playing, and also share what they are listening to. The service will include ads, but iTunes Match subscribers will get an ad-free experience.
Air Drop will allow users to quickly share content with nearby iOS users. Users just tap an image of the person in the sharing menu and can even select a group of people to share content with. Apple took a dig at all those Samsung commercials showing Galaxy smartphone users bumping their phones to share content while showing iPhone users being left out of that party/feature; Apple explained there is no need to wander around a room bumping phones. The company also demonstrated a new security feature called Activation Lock. If someone steals your iPhone and disables Find My iPhone or completely erases the device, the person will not be able to activate it without knowing your Apple ID and password. It's basically a deterrent to thieves to not steal iPhones since the device can't be activated without the original account information being entered on the iPhone.
Apple claimed there were many more features in iOS 7 but there wasn't enough time to show them all off on Monday. It will be releasing a beta version of iOS 7 for iPhone developers on Monday, followed by a version for iPad in the coming weeks. Apple announced that iOS 7 will ship in the fall and will be available for iPhone 4 and later, iPad 2 and then, iPad mini, and iPod touch 5th generation.
The company appears to have delivered a solid update to iOS with iOS 7 in terms of features, usability, and design; it keeps a familiar feel while adding some very useful features that will make any iOS fan happy and put some pressure on its rivals.
Check out the video below explaining the redesign and new features in iOS 7.
