Jony Ive shrunk the OS

[Artemis]

Download has so far failed once. Now "15 hours remaining".

So great to see Apple is ready for this.

[Ignatius_S]

Download has so far failed once. Now "15 hours remaining".

So great to see Apple is ready for this.

I wasn't paying too much attention as I was doing stuff, but download and installation was well under 30 minutes for me.

[chocky909]

Pretty quick for me too. Although it got stuck at the beginning of the actual installation a few times when it was verifying it.

Seems a bit underwhelming at first. I noticed there were a few long pauses when browsing the new settings which is a bit annoying but existing apps are OK. The parallax backgrounds are a bit rubbish too. They looked great on the videos.

[Artemis]

Still major problems here; errors all over the place and insane downnload times. Fuck it. The update isn't worth it.

[QDRPHNC]

Just got it, fuck these icons are disgusting.

I keep finding more stuff I dislike. Like the shitty contrast in the Messages app between the not-too-dark-not-too-light-washed-out grey message background and the baby blue link colour.

[Artemis]

On the upside, familiarity with iOS is one of the few reasons I stick with an iPhone. If 7 is bad, I'll seriously consider jumping ship.

EDIT: I forgot my iPhone was stolen. :(

[imitationleather]

I don't know about the OS, but the new brightly coloured phones look really stupid when held by the middle aged men doing these online reviews.

[werfvgbhnj]

On the upside, familiarity with iOS is one of the few reasons I stick with an iPhone. If 7 is bad, I'll seriously consider jumping ship.

EDIT: I forgot my iPhone was stolen. :(

and that your stupid fingers are so fucking fat

[werfvgbhnj]

Don't know why I said that to you apart from really wanting to.

[Artemis]

Don't know why I said that to you apart from really wanting to.

You were quite right to, don't feel bad. I don't - you should see my cock!

[Replies From View]

you should see my cock!

"Flat" like iOS 7?

Don't worry about it.  You should see my cock!!  Like iOS 6.1.3 it is!  Nothing to write home about, but at least it isn't flat, as my mother used to say.

[werfvgbhnj]

unlike your stupid fat fucking fingers

[Artemis]

This is what Jobs would have wanted.

[Replies From View]

It's true.  Whenever I see my fat stubby fingers I think "Jobs would have loved these."


All in the past now.





Onwards!  Onwards and upwards!  Well, not upwards.  Onwards though.  And flatwards.

[mcbpete]

I like the look of the icons 'floating' over the background which react to the tilt of your device. So erm, looking forward till ADW.Launcher steals that tech for my Samsung Galaxy.

[Steven]

There's a bunch of wallpaper apps that do the parallax background thing, they were out for Android before Apple even revealed theirs at their press conference. Some of them are pretty shitty though so it's a crappes shoot if you think about buying one.

[Artemis]

Just updated now. First thought? That generic grey used for the bottom four icons and folder icons is horrible.

EDIT: Oh god, this is all so childlike. The lock screen is gorgeous, but aside from that it's like the Comic Sans of mobile OS's.

[QDRPHNC]

Just updated now. First thought? That generic grey used for the bottom four icons and folder icons is horrible.

EDIT: Oh god, this is all so childlike. The lock screen is gorgeous, but aside from that it's like the Comic Sans of mobile OS's.

You know that new control panel you slide up from the bottom? Those icons are way nicer than what's on the home screen.

[Replies From View]

I'm not too worried about what the icons look like on my phone, and I'm intrigued enough by what the new interface will be like.

My iPad, though, I use for reading documents and writing.  It's more an extension of my laptop than my phone, and I don't want these neon Fisherprice playset icons distracting me!

[Replies From View]

Hmm; supposed to be able to open spotlight search by swiping down from the top of the homepage.  But doing that pulls down the notification bar.  What am I missing?

Edit:  oh - I get it.  You swipe down from any part of the screen, not the top.

[Artemis]

I'm slightly less horrified by this today but the 'frosted glass' effect for folder and dock colours desperately needs some customisation options, chiefly a transparency setting where you can tone down the BLOCK feel of the thing.

[Ignatius_S]

Battery life seems to be worse (considerably on the iPhone 5) – see Ars Technica below. That kinda tallies with my experience, however, my main use today was while I was on the move in areas with very variable coverage so it's hard to compare like for like – and I hadn't turned off various battery-chomping features. In any case, an update is needed!

In terms of my experience, I was a bit 'Meh' about it yesterday evening when I had only a quick look as I was doing stuff. However, I consider this largely to be because I had seen a fair bit about the new look and UI and it certainly meant it didn't come as a shock as it has to some.

However, when I started playing around with it late last night, I took to it more and this morning, even more so. It's very early days and I think it'll take a good couple of weeks to form a firm idea, but I'm feeling positive about it. For me, it looks a lot more attractive than the images I had seen of it – one thing, I particularly like is that it doesn't seem that flat to me, as it feels much more 3D than I was expecting.

Not sure about all the icons (but I actually like the music one) and I haven't change my mind about the Safari one – I don't like it! However, I'm digging the Safari app a lot – wasn't too certain about how it handles tabs, but I already much prefer it to the previous style and feel that history, reading list, bookmarks and open tabs on other devices are much better integrated more.

With regards to a lot of the looks, I'm sure there's going to be refinement. One thing that I hope they change is the network strength bar; initially, I loved it but gradually felt that it's taking up more space but conveys exactly the same information – and I'm not alone!

However, I'm sure what other people have to say is a lot more insightful, so...

Ars Technica's review has a good look and I like the site; it looks at iOS 7 on other devices as well - http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/09/ios-7-thoroughly-reviewed/

The Loop has a load of interesting links (some of the ones below are also on here) and there's two links to lots of tips - http://www.loopinsight.com/

12 new and hidden features - http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/x-new-and-hidden-settings-in-ios-7

iMore's huuuuuge review - http://www.imore.com/ios-7-review

MacRumors' subforum - http://forums.macrumors.com/forumdisplay.php?f=165

[Artemis]

Re: battery life, if you go to settings > general > background app refresh, then turn it OFF, apparently that helps with battery life no end.

EDIT: Lots of hints 'n' tips here: http://www.macstories.net/roundups/ios-7-tips-tricks-and-details/

[Replies From View]

Yeah, I'm happy with it on my iPhone 4S, though scrolling through things like notifications and emails is now slightly less smooth, which is to be expected since they want you to pointlessly upgrade your devices, ultimately.

Many of the icons are an improvement, though Newsstand is an abomination, let's be honest.  It helps if your wallpaper is dark, I think.  Mine is a dark sepia Laurel and Hardy image and everything sits quite nicely on that.  The disappointment is that in order to create the "floating icons" effect your wallpaper image needs to be zoomed in slightly more than before.  So if it was previously carefully framed it won't be anymore, and you can't force it to zoom out further, I've found.  It's very picky.

It's fine, though.  Wallpaper just becomes abstract shapes in the end, and this Laurel and Hardy photo has enough curves and patches of light and shade to add variety to the new icons.  And being sepia the blurred overlays are quite subtle, too.  I'd recommend doing this if you're finding everything only looks horrible.

[biggytitbo]

Whilst I quite like IOS7 itself, safari is an absolute disaster for web developers.


Thanks Apple, you just fucked the web.

[mcbpete]

There's a bunch of wallpaper apps that do the parallax background thing, they were out for Android before Apple even revealed theirs at their press conference. Some of them are pretty shitty though so it's a crappes shoot if you think about buying one.

Just bought this one and it works like a bloody charm - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=opotech.image3Dlwp&hl=en

[Steven]

Just bought this one and it works like a bloody charm - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=opotech.image3Dlwp&hl=en

Fair do's, I tried a few a while back and most were cack.

A horrible point about Android they haven't fixed yet, don't know about Apple as I've never used them - it's something that's been annoying me for over 3 years is that you can't put a youtube video on or a webpage with streaming audio and then turn the screen off.

Usually I walk with headphones in and want to listen to youtube audio or a buffered stream, the way around it is to use an app like Floating Browser which will stay in the background and keep playing whatever you do, playing games or turning the screen off works fine, can't believe Android hasn't implemented shit like this even 3 years on. This is incredibly basic multitasking that was capable on single-core phones nevermind the quad core and eight cores that we have out now.

[Ignatius_S]

Re: battery life, if you go to settings > general > background app refresh, then turn it OFF, apparently that helps with battery life no end.

EDIT: Lots of hints 'n' tips here: http://www.macstories.net/roundups/ios-7-tips-tricks-and-details/

Already done by 09:15 yesterday! But in any case, cheers for the suggestion – much appreciated!

At the moment, that feature uses WiFi and cellular data, so that's another reason I wanted to turn it off. Also, I want to read up more about it as so far, I'm not convinced how useful it – it's early days, though, obviously. This might be overly paranoid, but at this stage I would be concerned how optimised the feature is.

Yesterday, I ran down the battery and fully charge it as thought that would help calibrate the battery – and today, it's a heck of lot better.

[MojoJojo]

Usually I walk with headphones in and want to listen to youtube audio or a buffered stream, the way around it is to use an app like Floating Browser which will stay in the background and keep playing whatever you do, playing games or turning the screen off works fine, can't believe Android hasn't implemented shit like this even 3 years on. This is incredibly basic multitasking that was capable on single-core phones nevermind the quad core and eight cores that we have out now.

It's not really a technical issue as such, more a UI thing. The problem is you are watching a video (even if you are only interested in the sound), so when you turn the screen off it pauses the video, because you can't watch a video with the screen off. It's being helpful, just it's not actually helpful in this case.

It's more annoying with iplayer app, which does it[nb] or it did anyway, haven't tried recently[/nb] while listening to radio because it's just treated the same as video.

[katzenjammer]

The facetime icon looks like a farting suitcase