7 ms·

The iOS 7 review

57 points by gmac 13y ago

corporalagumbo 13y ago
I think it's interesting, but for me one of Apple's weakest points as a company is its taste in software UI. iOS 7 strikes me as catch-up - Apple is late to a party started by Google and Microsoft, and is trying hard to pretend its been there all along - hard to recognise the hint of insecurity behind their ever-slick advertising, but it's there I think. It's a new area for the company, and a good reminder that Apple has its vulnerabilities. It will be interesting to see how things play out as the design language of the big three (A, G, & M) equalises, norms emerge, and the competition begins to really heat up.
- dferlemann 13y ago
  If you gonna say UI in general, Apple's iPhone and iPod interface were designed first before Android caught up... Microsoft is even later... just saying. If you are talking about flat UI, then yes, Android advanced it. However, I agree 5c and flat UI make the current Apple reek insecurity.
  - corporalagumbo 13y ago
    I'm not talking about UI in general, I'm talking about taste in UI - style and general good looks. I don't know how everyone else feels on this, but for me Apple has stuck far too long to simply ugly styling on both iOS and OS X to convince me that attractive UI is a part of company culture. Some of Google's efforts (Now, Maps) and where Microsoft is heading (e.g. it's new websites, Outlook, Windows 8.1) have all impressed me much more. I think Apple is clearly trying to retrofit company culture here. But I wouldn't say Apple "reeks" of insecurity... We don't really have any knowledge about how much they have up their sleeves, and they've had a long time over the last half-decade to lay foundations for future maneuvers. Besides, if they can convince the everyman that they thought up modern design all by themselves, they could gain a massive advantage here.
    - dferlemann 13y ago
      I have always feel the old skeuomorphism UI is a pretty good design. It's quite unique and doesn't give me "color panic attack" because it has depth perception... I like Flat UI that are simple and clean, like few of Microsoft design these days. That's why I don't think iOS 7 gets it. I think Apple is trying to capture low-end market using iPhone 5c (well... China), yet the production is not efficient enough to make it significantly cheaper. It's also a failure because Apple consumers are not that price sensitive. In addition to gold version of iPhone 5s (for the vain), and flat UI I upgraded last night, if their only innovation is finger print scanner, I'm not impressed at all at Apple this year.
    - iMark 13y ago
      Don't forget that the advancement of Jony Ive to oversee both software and hardware is still a relatively new development at Apple. All the design changes in iOS 7 have been done in little under a year, following the ousting of Scott Forstall. Apple are definitely playing catch up on the software design front, but signs are that they're heading in the right direction. iOS 8 and OS X 10.10 will be interesting to watch, to see what the Apple's design team can manage with a little more breathing room in which to work.
    - 123jay7 13y ago
      Just because you have stupid ideas doesn't mean you're not an 'everyman'. People like you critize Apple after every one of their product annoucements while they continue to use their OS. Apple has had the best UI in the business for the past two decades. If you don't see that, you're stupid.
  - naterator 13y ago
    I assume he was talking not just about UI functionality, but UI look and feel. In that later respect, MS and Google definitely were ahead of Apple. Hell, the design trend is even called "the metro look" by some in the design community.
  - threeseed 13y ago
    In what bizarre universe does the 5C reek of insecurity ? The easy road would have been to release a cheap iPhone. But instead Apple chose to price it the same as the previous iPhone 5 and expand their margins.
    - corresation 13y ago
      The 5C is a very cheap phone, where cheap is $0 on a contract. That is the pricing that Apple is talking about right now, as the North American market is overwhelmingly driven by contracts. The 5C is built cheap. It has old, high-yield silicon, a plastic case, and a small screen. It is almost certainly cheaper to manufacture than, for instance, a Nexus 4 (which, as much as Apple wants to criticize "junk", is one hell of a well built device for $199, no contract). Where Apple needs to compete with cheap I have every belief that they will do what is necessary with the pricing of the 5C.
      - officemonkey 13y ago
        >small screen The 5c has the same size screen as every other Apple phone.
        corresation 13y ago
        And? What is your point?
        officemonkey 13y ago
        Apple did not give the 5C a "small screen" to save money. Saying that a "small screen" is evidence that the 5C is cheap is misleading.
        corresation 13y ago
        I said it was built cheap. That has literally nothing to do with any other Apple phone, and your counterpoints are not counterpoints at all. Many competitor phones are coming with much more expensive 5"+ 1080p IPS screens.
- saturdaysaint 13y ago
  Unless you're really into 'design inside baseball', these kind of comparisons are pretty moot. Sure, Nexus phones have been riding an interesting line between flat and 3 dimensional for a little while, but they've also had quite a few insecure 're-imaginings' getting there, and the Android phones %95 of people have been using are a hodge-podge of Android and Samsung/HTC/Moto too ill considered to even be worth criticism. When I say 'Android UI', absolutely nothing comes to mind because almost everyone I know uses a fairly distinct Android skin. And I don't know anyone with a Windows Phone that doesn't have a Visual Studio license. All that to say, for all intensive purposes, iOS 7 will be the mainstream's introduction to flat UI elements. My guess is that Samsung will actually drag Android kicking and screaming further into iOS 7's "flat 3-d" model than Matthias Duarte would like.
  - JoelAnair 13y ago
    Lol at "And I don't know anyone with a Windows Phone that doesn't have a Visual Studio license."
- 123jay7 13y ago
  Apple's weakest points as a company is its taste in software UI That might be the stupidest thing anyone has every said.
nakedrobot2 13y ago
Does anyone else think that ios7 and windows phone look really similar? I don't think it is only the "flat design" aesthetic, it's something more. I think they are both less than ideal for this reason, because it is no longer obvious what is a button and what is not. But it's pretty.
- harrytuttle 13y ago
  I use windows phone 8. No they are not the same. The style is similar but the actual functionality is nothing like iOS 7 from what I can see. It's really obvious on Windows Phone what is a button and what is not apart from a few shitty 3rd party apps. This is regurgitating one of the many fables about WP.
  - untog 13y ago
    Agreed. I've heard multiple people say that iOS7 looks bad in screenshots, but you really need to use it to understand it. I'd say the exact same has always applied to WP.
    - harrytuttle 13y ago
      Yes but rationality and experience doesn't get you any upvotes in the tech communities. Raging fanboyism and denouncing the competition does. Thanks for being rational - you are spot on.
    - thirdsun 13y ago
      Agreed - I never get those people saying that in a flat environment the user can't distinguish different elements. Both iOS 7 and Windows Phone are well done and appeal to me. And Microsoft deserves some credit for developing their own design language and UX ideas with Metro.
  - danieldk 13y ago
    The style is similar but the actual functionality is nothing like iOS 7 from what I can see. I have two Windows Phone 8 devices and an iPad. And indeed, they are nothing alike. Live tiles are a central concept in WP and does not really have an equivalent in iOS 7. Another use difference (although it's a bit undermined by Microsoft's Facebook app) is that iOS is app centered ("There's an app for that."), while Windows Phone centers around hubs. E.g. you wouldn't go to the Facebook app to look up e.g. the latest Facebook status updates for a person. You go to that person in the people list (or that person's live tile) where you have information of different social networks integrated.
Yaggo 13y ago
Honestly I cannot avoid a feel that Apple has lost its sense of taste and iOS UI was redone just because of outside pressure and nobody with enough authority having the final word.
- threeseed 13y ago
  Well your feelings are horribly misplaced. Jonathan Ive has more authority than anyone at Apple (Tim Cook included).
  - devx 13y ago
    Then maybe Jon Ive is just not very good at software design. His changes to the iOS UI seem like what an amateur designer would do (brighter colors, lots of random ugly icons, inconsistency throughout the UI, and so on). It's like this is his first ride in software design.
    - simonh 13y ago
      I installed iOS7 for the first time this morning, and it's way too early for me to tell. The colour scheme is a bit jarring, but it's also very unfamiliar so time will tell how well I get used to it. Some of the setting and new functionality seem a bit odd or confusing, but no more so than I'd expect with a new interface. The huge configurability in the camera app was a bit of a surprise. Right now I have absolutely no idea how much I like or dislike the new design. I've been able to do everything (very few things so far to be fair) I wanted to do, and encountered some small frustrations and nice surprises. I'll see how I feel in a week or two. How long have you been using iOS 7 for?
      - guilhermetk 13y ago
        I've been using iOS 7 since beta 1. My first reaction was: "wtf are these colors?". Now, after some months using it daily I'm used to it and even started to like it.
  - Yaggo 13y ago
devx 13y ago
> The only issue is that after a while some animations start being a lot to sit through each time, especially the multitasking interface animations and app fly-in This is what annoyed me a lot about WP7, too. Long "cool" animations that slow you down with each action you perfor, get boring very quickly, and eventually become frustrating. On my Android phone, I've even set the animations to be faster than they normally are, precisely because I want stuff to be done fast, not watch a 1-second long animation each time I tap on the screen.
- erso 13y ago
  Setting animation speed is also available for jailbroken iOS devices, if anyone's interested. The Cydia app is called FakeClockUp. I like setting it to 1.4x.
  - r00fus 13y ago
    Is there a recent jailbreak? I googled and am getting lots of paid options, but not sure I trust those...
    - erso 13y ago
      I've used only evasi0n on iOS 6.
partyanimal 13y ago
Siri's search result UI is a game changer and has a real chance of disrupting Google imo. Siri's UI is customized for a mobile device, no ads, and it uses search results from Bing, Twitter, Wikipedia, Yelp and Wolfram Alpha. Missing from the list is Google. All they need to do is somehow figure out how to add web search to Spotlight, use the exact same UI and Google's in big trouble.
normloman 13y ago
I don't get the hype over flat design. The original iPhone UI was gaudy and overbearing, but the solution ain't a complete 180. Android strikes the right balance between clean looks with just the right amount of shading to lend affordance to the UI. Also: Helvetica Neue? What were they thinking?
blinkingled 13y ago
I posted my experience installing ios7 on my ipad 3 yesterday but deleted it thinking I should give it more time in order to be fair. I continue to feel it's not an overall positive - glitchy, stuttery and slow animations, degraded battery life, UI inconsistencies, touch lag and inaccuracies ( never thought I would say that about iOS ) are all significant downsides for what is essentially a paint job and a one that I happen to not like very much. But then maybe it works better on newer hardware. This would be the second time in Apple's update history that older devices got a poor update experience. Curious what new features people like enough to offset the downsides.
- partyanimal 13y ago
  > Curious what new features people like enough to offset the downsides. i have iOS 7 on an iPhone 5, iPad 2, iPad 3 and iPad mini. no touch lag, "slow animation" or "inaccuracies" so far.
  - corresation 13y ago
    I have iOS 7 on an iPod Touch 5th generation and a iPad 3rd generation, and I will say that it absolutely brought a little bit of Android (well, to be fair earlier generations of Android as this isn't really an issue anymore) to iOS -- touch lag all over the place, often a second+ before the keyboard starts accepting inputs, etc.
- kmfrk 13y ago
  My iPad 3 works fine. That said, it's still unacceptable that yours doesn't run well, but at least the experience of others with a similar device suggests that there's a chance you can fix it. Spotlight indexing could be the culprit.
  - blinkingled 13y ago
    It's gotten little better overnight but the keyboard input lag is still there - I type a bit fast in any text area and characters appears slowly - some time after multiple key presses. So are the slower animations. Lot of people are saying to DFU and reinstall to fix it - I am reluctant as I have to restore a bunch of things - PDFs, iTunesU stuff, music and videos manually.
rimantas 13y ago
So much talk about the flat design. People, if the only experience you had with iOS7 is looking at screenshots, then you are not really in position to say anything.
ocean12 13y ago
As a tech enthusiast, I've spent the last several months watching the iOS7 design arguments play out online, and I've read a few reviews with interest this week. So it was with interest that I observed my wife and MIL's reactions to the upgrade on their iPads, which was really no big deal at all. A cogent reminder to me that there's a vast difference between us and them.

57 points by gmac 13y ago

I think it's interesting, but for me one of Apple's weakest points as a company is its taste in software UI. iOS 7 strikes me as catch-up - Apple is late to a party started by Google and Microsoft, and is trying hard to pretend its been there all along - hard to recognise the hint of insecurity behind their ever-slick advertising, but it's there I think. It's a new area for the company, and a good reminder that Apple has its vulnerabilities. It will be interesting to see how things play out as the design language of the big three (A, G, & M) equalises, norms emerge, and the competition begins to really heat up.

dferlemann 13y ago
If you gonna say UI in general, Apple's iPhone and iPod interface were designed first before Android caught up... Microsoft is even later... just saying. If you are talking about flat UI, then yes, Android advanced it. However, I agree 5c and flat UI make the current Apple reek insecurity.
- corporalagumbo 13y ago
  I'm not talking about UI in general, I'm talking about taste in UI - style and general good looks. I don't know how everyone else feels on this, but for me Apple has stuck far too long to simply ugly styling on both iOS and OS X to convince me that attractive UI is a part of company culture. Some of Google's efforts (Now, Maps) and where Microsoft is heading (e.g. it's new websites, Outlook, Windows 8.1) have all impressed me much more. I think Apple is clearly trying to retrofit company culture here. But I wouldn't say Apple "reeks" of insecurity... We don't really have any knowledge about how much they have up their sleeves, and they've had a long time over the last half-decade to lay foundations for future maneuvers. Besides, if they can convince the everyman that they thought up modern design all by themselves, they could gain a massive advantage here.
  - dferlemann 13y ago
    I have always feel the old skeuomorphism UI is a pretty good design. It's quite unique and doesn't give me "color panic attack" because it has depth perception... I like Flat UI that are simple and clean, like few of Microsoft design these days. That's why I don't think iOS 7 gets it. I think Apple is trying to capture low-end market using iPhone 5c (well... China), yet the production is not efficient enough to make it significantly cheaper. It's also a failure because Apple consumers are not that price sensitive. In addition to gold version of iPhone 5s (for the vain), and flat UI I upgraded last night, if their only innovation is finger print scanner, I'm not impressed at all at Apple this year.
  - iMark 13y ago
    Don't forget that the advancement of Jony Ive to oversee both software and hardware is still a relatively new development at Apple. All the design changes in iOS 7 have been done in little under a year, following the ousting of Scott Forstall. Apple are definitely playing catch up on the software design front, but signs are that they're heading in the right direction. iOS 8 and OS X 10.10 will be interesting to watch, to see what the Apple's design team can manage with a little more breathing room in which to work.
  - 123jay7 13y ago
    Just because you have stupid ideas doesn't mean you're not an 'everyman'. People like you critize Apple after every one of their product annoucements while they continue to use their OS. Apple has had the best UI in the business for the past two decades. If you don't see that, you're stupid.
- naterator 13y ago
  I assume he was talking not just about UI functionality, but UI look and feel. In that later respect, MS and Google definitely were ahead of Apple. Hell, the design trend is even called "the metro look" by some in the design community.
- threeseed 13y ago
  In what bizarre universe does the 5C reek of insecurity ? The easy road would have been to release a cheap iPhone. But instead Apple chose to price it the same as the previous iPhone 5 and expand their margins.
  - corresation 13y ago
    The 5C is a very cheap phone, where cheap is $0 on a contract. That is the pricing that Apple is talking about right now, as the North American market is overwhelmingly driven by contracts. The 5C is built cheap. It has old, high-yield silicon, a plastic case, and a small screen. It is almost certainly cheaper to manufacture than, for instance, a Nexus 4 (which, as much as Apple wants to criticize "junk", is one hell of a well built device for $199, no contract). Where Apple needs to compete with cheap I have every belief that they will do what is necessary with the pricing of the 5C.
    - officemonkey 13y ago
      >small screen The 5c has the same size screen as every other Apple phone.
      - corresation 13y ago
        And? What is your point?
        officemonkey 13y ago
        Apple did not give the 5C a "small screen" to save money. Saying that a "small screen" is evidence that the 5C is cheap is misleading.
        corresation 13y ago
        I said it was built cheap. That has literally nothing to do with any other Apple phone, and your counterpoints are not counterpoints at all. Many competitor phones are coming with much more expensive 5"+ 1080p IPS screens.
saturdaysaint 13y ago
Unless you're really into 'design inside baseball', these kind of comparisons are pretty moot. Sure, Nexus phones have been riding an interesting line between flat and 3 dimensional for a little while, but they've also had quite a few insecure 're-imaginings' getting there, and the Android phones %95 of people have been using are a hodge-podge of Android and Samsung/HTC/Moto too ill considered to even be worth criticism. When I say 'Android UI', absolutely nothing comes to mind because almost everyone I know uses a fairly distinct Android skin. And I don't know anyone with a Windows Phone that doesn't have a Visual Studio license. All that to say, for all intensive purposes, iOS 7 will be the mainstream's introduction to flat UI elements. My guess is that Samsung will actually drag Android kicking and screaming further into iOS 7's "flat 3-d" model than Matthias Duarte would like.
- JoelAnair 13y ago
  Lol at "And I don't know anyone with a Windows Phone that doesn't have a Visual Studio license."
123jay7 13y ago
Apple's weakest points as a company is its taste in software UI That might be the stupidest thing anyone has every said.

nakedrobot2 13y ago

Does anyone else think that ios7 and windows phone look really similar? I don't think it is only the "flat design" aesthetic, it's something more. I think they are both less than ideal for this reason, because it is no longer obvious what is a button and what is not. But it's pretty.

harrytuttle 13y ago
I use windows phone 8. No they are not the same. The style is similar but the actual functionality is nothing like iOS 7 from what I can see. It's really obvious on Windows Phone what is a button and what is not apart from a few shitty 3rd party apps. This is regurgitating one of the many fables about WP.
- untog 13y ago
  Agreed. I've heard multiple people say that iOS7 looks bad in screenshots, but you really need to use it to understand it. I'd say the exact same has always applied to WP.
  - harrytuttle 13y ago
    Yes but rationality and experience doesn't get you any upvotes in the tech communities. Raging fanboyism and denouncing the competition does. Thanks for being rational - you are spot on.
  - thirdsun 13y ago
    Agreed - I never get those people saying that in a flat environment the user can't distinguish different elements. Both iOS 7 and Windows Phone are well done and appeal to me. And Microsoft deserves some credit for developing their own design language and UX ideas with Metro.
- danieldk 13y ago
  The style is similar but the actual functionality is nothing like iOS 7 from what I can see. I have two Windows Phone 8 devices and an iPad. And indeed, they are nothing alike. Live tiles are a central concept in WP and does not really have an equivalent in iOS 7. Another use difference (although it's a bit undermined by Microsoft's Facebook app) is that iOS is app centered ("There's an app for that."), while Windows Phone centers around hubs. E.g. you wouldn't go to the Facebook app to look up e.g. the latest Facebook status updates for a person. You go to that person in the people list (or that person's live tile) where you have information of different social networks integrated.

Yaggo 13y ago

Honestly I cannot avoid a feel that Apple has lost its sense of taste and iOS UI was redone just because of outside pressure and nobody with enough authority having the final word.

threeseed 13y ago
Well your feelings are horribly misplaced. Jonathan Ive has more authority than anyone at Apple (Tim Cook included).
- devx 13y ago
  Then maybe Jon Ive is just not very good at software design. His changes to the iOS UI seem like what an amateur designer would do (brighter colors, lots of random ugly icons, inconsistency throughout the UI, and so on). It's like this is his first ride in software design.
  - simonh 13y ago
    I installed iOS7 for the first time this morning, and it's way too early for me to tell. The colour scheme is a bit jarring, but it's also very unfamiliar so time will tell how well I get used to it. Some of the setting and new functionality seem a bit odd or confusing, but no more so than I'd expect with a new interface. The huge configurability in the camera app was a bit of a surprise. Right now I have absolutely no idea how much I like or dislike the new design. I've been able to do everything (very few things so far to be fair) I wanted to do, and encountered some small frustrations and nice surprises. I'll see how I feel in a week or two. How long have you been using iOS 7 for?
    - guilhermetk 13y ago
      I've been using iOS 7 since beta 1. My first reaction was: "wtf are these colors?". Now, after some months using it daily I'm used to it and even started to like it.
- Yaggo 13y ago

devx 13y ago

> The only issue is that after a while some animations start being a lot to sit through each time, especially the multitasking interface animations and app fly-in This is what annoyed me a lot about WP7, too. Long "cool" animations that slow you down with each action you perfor, get boring very quickly, and eventually become frustrating. On my Android phone, I've even set the animations to be faster than they normally are, precisely because I want stuff to be done fast, not watch a 1-second long animation each time I tap on the screen.

erso 13y ago
Setting animation speed is also available for jailbroken iOS devices, if anyone's interested. The Cydia app is called FakeClockUp. I like setting it to 1.4x.
- r00fus 13y ago
  Is there a recent jailbreak? I googled and am getting lots of paid options, but not sure I trust those...
  - erso 13y ago
    I've used only evasi0n on iOS 6.

partyanimal 13y ago

Siri's search result UI is a game changer and has a real chance of disrupting Google imo. Siri's UI is customized for a mobile device, no ads, and it uses search results from Bing, Twitter, Wikipedia, Yelp and Wolfram Alpha. Missing from the list is Google. All they need to do is somehow figure out how to add web search to Spotlight, use the exact same UI and Google's in big trouble.

normloman 13y ago

I don't get the hype over flat design. The original iPhone UI was gaudy and overbearing, but the solution ain't a complete 180. Android strikes the right balance between clean looks with just the right amount of shading to lend affordance to the UI. Also: Helvetica Neue? What were they thinking?

blinkingled 13y ago

I posted my experience installing ios7 on my ipad 3 yesterday but deleted it thinking I should give it more time in order to be fair. I continue to feel it's not an overall positive - glitchy, stuttery and slow animations, degraded battery life, UI inconsistencies, touch lag and inaccuracies ( never thought I would say that about iOS ) are all significant downsides for what is essentially a paint job and a one that I happen to not like very much. But then maybe it works better on newer hardware. This would be the second time in Apple's update history that older devices got a poor update experience. Curious what new features people like enough to offset the downsides.

partyanimal 13y ago
> Curious what new features people like enough to offset the downsides. i have iOS 7 on an iPhone 5, iPad 2, iPad 3 and iPad mini. no touch lag, "slow animation" or "inaccuracies" so far.
- corresation 13y ago
  I have iOS 7 on an iPod Touch 5th generation and a iPad 3rd generation, and I will say that it absolutely brought a little bit of Android (well, to be fair earlier generations of Android as this isn't really an issue anymore) to iOS -- touch lag all over the place, often a second+ before the keyboard starts accepting inputs, etc.
kmfrk 13y ago
My iPad 3 works fine. That said, it's still unacceptable that yours doesn't run well, but at least the experience of others with a similar device suggests that there's a chance you can fix it. Spotlight indexing could be the culprit.
- blinkingled 13y ago
  It's gotten little better overnight but the keyboard input lag is still there - I type a bit fast in any text area and characters appears slowly - some time after multiple key presses. So are the slower animations. Lot of people are saying to DFU and reinstall to fix it - I am reluctant as I have to restore a bunch of things - PDFs, iTunesU stuff, music and videos manually.

rimantas 13y ago

So much talk about the flat design. People, if the only experience you had with iOS7 is looking at screenshots, then you are not really in position to say anything.

ocean12 13y ago

As a tech enthusiast, I've spent the last several months watching the iOS7 design arguments play out online, and I've read a few reviews with interest this week. So it was with interest that I observed my wife and MIL's reactions to the upgrade on their iPads, which was really no big deal at all. A cogent reminder to me that there's a vast difference between us and them.