 The illusion of a ‘parallax’ view, icons seemingly floating above your home screen, gives the first indication that iOS 7 looks like it is made up of layers. The icons on your home screen will stay still while the background image moves slightly beneath them. It gives a 3D feel to all aspects of the device.
Another major change is that you will now be able to see which app is using cellular data and also be able to restrict the apps using said cellular data. This should help in incurring over usage charges from your network provider.
One thing that Jony Ive, Senior Vice President of Design at Apple, seemed to want to implement within this release was animation everywhere. There are subtle bits of animation all throughout the interface, such as when opening an app, the entire interface zooms towards the app icon you touch, and the apps contents comes forward until it fills the screen. If you press the home button, the view will pull back from the app you’re in to the home screen.
The Control Centre that has been added is something users have been wondering about for a while. Now with a simple swipe upwards, the Control Centre will open and give you options for music and some settings such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
Folders have also been updated. Many of us have home screens filled entirely of folders and still go on to two screens. Finally, we’ll no longer have to host a Games 2 folder as iOS 7’s folders will be able to support multiple pages.
Siri has been given a boost by giving the option of both female and male voices.
The calendar app icon has always been able to show the date, but the clock icon has been stuck at 10:15 since iOS was launched. That is now a thing of the past and the time will move as it should. Not a biggy but something that always ever so slightly irked me.
There are more new fantastic gestures that will make the devices you use that little bit easier to use. There is an upward flick to activate Control Centre and an upward flick when in the multitasking screen to hard exit an app you no longer want open. Another that may come in handy is that if you swipe down from the centre of the home screen you will activate a search mode.
In Safari, Private Browsing is far easier to activate. In previous versions you’d have to enter the Settings app and then into Safari options. Now there is a Private button in the bottom left corner.
While we’re on the topic of privacy, iCloud has a new feature called Keychain, which has the ability to store all of your passwords so that if something goes wrong with your device or you upgrade; iCloud will now restore all of your usernames and passwords. Obviously this is something that you must opt into if you wish.
So, iOS 7 is finally upon us this evening, and it is likely to take a while to get used to the complete difference in how our iOS devices look. One thing I would advise- give it a few hours before attempting to download as Apple’s servers will be rammed with the millions around the world trying to get the update at once... that is if you can wait that long.
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