iOS 7

This week, Apple announced and detailed the new version of their iOS operating system, iOS 7. It's a totally new design and it looks amazing.





It's pretty epic. Here's some comparisons between iOS 6 and iOS 7 (7 is on the right):

It's not as though the "classic" iOS look was bad, exactly, but 7 just looks wonderful. It's flat, elegant, sleek, functional, and new.

I got to download the beta version of iOS 7 the day after it was announced, and I'm very very pleased with it. Here's some of my screenshots:

Those images really don't do it justice, as they're nowhere near the crisp retina-display resolution of the iPhone. Still, though, they're pretty.

The new features of iOS 7, namely the control center and automatic app updates, are awesome. With control center, I can control Airplane Mode, WiFi, bluetooth, the Do Not Disturb feature, the rotation lock, the screen's brightness, the system volume, and the currently-playing music. It also gives you access to a flashlight feature (it uses the camera flash as a lightbulb), a compass, a calculator, and the camera. It's all surprisingly easy to use, and it's all there to utilize with just one swipe of the thumb. It's surprisingly simple.

I almost feel like I have a new phone now. Since it's only the beta of iOS 7, there's some bugs. Apple's podcasts app doesn't work at all, so I need to use a third-party app to listen to podcasts. Ever so often a menu won't quite reorganize properly when switching between portrait and landscape orientation, and I need to rotate it around again to get it the way it's supposed to be. They're ultimately minor inconveniences overall.

The only other problem I have is that the Music app is much harder to navigate through. It's partially because every element of the entire app is white, so there's no contrast to tell you instinctively which part of the menu is which, or exactly where you are in the app. However, it's obvious that the app isn't final, since certain functions aren't even available to choose in the menus yet are still built into the app. (There's no "play all by Artist" function listed, yet I can ask Siri to do that for me and it works just fine)

On the whole, I'm really impressed with iOS 7. I keep finding new fun things to do with it, and it really just makes me happy that I have an iPhone.