Source - http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/
By - Press Release
Category - Hampton Hotels Santa Clarita
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita
The big Apple news this week might seem to be the new iPhones. But truth be told, the bigger news is iOS 7.
This is the free software update for iPhones (iPhone 4 and later),
iPads (iPad 2 and later) and iPod Touches (fifth generation). It’s a
radical, huge redesign. Its master architect was Jonathan Ive, the Apple
designer who has brought us astonishing hardware designs for many
years; now, for the first time, he’s been put in charge of a whole
software universe.
The look of iOS 7 is sparse, white — almost plain in spots. No more
fake leather, fake woodgrain, fake green felt, fake yellow note paper.
It’s all blue Helvetica Neue against white.
The complete absence of graphic embellishments makes it especially
utilitarian — in both senses of the word. That’s good, because whatever
button or function you need is easier to find; it’s bad, because, well,
it can look a little boring.
Then again, the new look is primarily visible at the Home screen,
where a jarringly different color palette greets you on the Apple app
icons, and on the options screen. The rest of the time, you’ll be using
your regular apps, many of which will look no different than before.
The look of iOS 7 may grab you or not. But once the fuss about the
visuals dies down, something even more important comes into focus: the
work that’s been done on making iOS better. The longer you spend with
the new OS, the more you’re grateful for the fixing and de-annoyifying
on display.
For example, you no longer have to burrow into infinitely nested
Settings screens to adjust your control panels. Now you can just speak
what you want, using Siri: “Open Wi-Fi settings,” for example, or “Open
brightness settings.”
Or, when speaking to your phone isn’t socially appropriate, you can
swipe upward from the bottom of the screen to open the Control Center: a
compact, visual palette of controls for the settings and functions
you’re most likely to need: brightness, volume, Bluetooth, WiFi,
Airplane Mode, Play/Pause Music, calculator, camera, and — my favorite —
Flashlight. This panel slides in over whatever app you’re using, so you
don’t lose your place.
This idea — swiping in from the margins of the phone — also plays out
in the new Back gesture. The iPhone doesn’t have a Back button, as
Android phones do. But now you can swipe in from the left margin of the
phone to go back one screen. It works in Mail, Settings, Notes,
Messages, Safari, Facebook and some other apps. It’d be great if worked
in every app.
The iPhone has never had a system-wide Search button, either, but
here again, Apple has made some strides. The Search screen is no longer
off to the left of the Home screens; now it’s above them — all of them.
From any Home screen, you can swipe downward from the phone’s top margin
to open the Spotlight search screen.
Reducing steps seems to be a running theme in this release.
To turn on Private Browsing in Safari, for example, you used to have
to open the Settings app, burrow around, find the on-off switch, then
return to the browser. Now the Private button is right in Safari, where
it belongs.
The Camera app has gained a better design. Now you swipe across the
preview screen to switch among modes: Video, Slow-motion video (on the
iPhone 5s), still photos, Square photos with Instagram-type filters, and
Panorama. It’s easy to learn and use, but it does mean that it’s harder
to open a photo you’ve just taken for inspection. (Swiping to the right
used to make it appear; now you have to tap the tiny thumbnail button
in the corner.)
There was supposed to be a password- and credit-card memorizing
feature that would make it much easier to buy stuff and fill in forms on
the Web, like the LastPass, 1Password or Dashlane apps. And this
information would sync across all your Apple gadgets. But it
mysteriously disappeared in the release version; Apple says it will
reappear in a few weeks, at about the same time as OS X “Mavericks.”
The new iTunes Radio is here, though, and it’s very good. The idea is
exactly like Pandora; you choose a “seed” song, performer or musical
genre, and it plays nonstop songs in that style. But it’s not as
sophisticated as Pandora, and not nearly as powerful as Spotify; on
iTunes Radio, you can’t explicitly request a certain song or album by
name.
Still, having it built in is nice. For example, you can say, “Play
Soft Guitar radio,” or whatever you’ve named your “seed”-based station,
to start it up.
As with Pandora, the free version subjects you to a brief audio ad
every now and then; also as with Pandora, you can pay for an ad-free
version. It’s $25 a year — part of Apple’s existing iTunes Match
service.
Siri, over all, is much better. The voice sounds more natural, and
you have a choice of male or female. Apple did a lot of work “on the
back end,” so that Siri responds much faster to commands. The Siri
screens are redesigned to look nicer. And Siri can do more things.
More stuff:
• Internet phone calls. Now free, high-quality voice
calls (to other Apple phones, tablets and Macs) are built right in.
Apple calls it Audio-Only FaceTime.
• Carpenter’s Level. The Compass app now has a three-dimensional level in it!
• Auto-app updates. You can opt to have new versions
of your apps downloaded and installed automatically, in the background.
The App Store app keeps a list of everything you’ve received.
• Today screen. As on Android, there’s a single
screen that lists everything that’s happening today: your next
appointment, today’s weather, reminders due, whose birthday it is and so
on. (Right now, mine says: “It looks busy right now. There are 8 events
scheduled, and the first one starts at 8:30 am.”)
• Smarter Wi-Fi network alerts. If you’re driving,
iOS 7 on the new iPhone 5s no longer keeps announcing that it’s
discovered new Wi-Fi networks. Obviously, you’re moving too fast to hop
onto any of them, so this is a smart little tweak.
• Photos. The app that displays all your photos used
to be a single endless scroll of tiny thumbnails. Navigationally
speaking, it was really pretty useless. Now it self-assembles into
clusters by year, by month and by occasion (based on time and location
data). Sooooo much better.
• Maps. Apple still has work to do before its Maps
app has anywhere near the quality of Google’s Maps app. Apple’s Maps
still can’t give you directions using public transportation, but at
least it now has walking directions. And when you’re driving at night,
Maps automatically enters Night Mode, in which the map itself is dark
gray instead of very bright.
• Global Type Size control. For the first time,
there’s a slider that controls the font size in all your apps. Well, all
of them that have been rewritten to hook into this feature, anyway. So
far, it’s mostly just Apple’s built-in apps.
• Activation Lock. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.
If some thug steals your phone, it’s worthless to him unless he enters
your Apple password. Even if he tries to erase it, even if he jailbreaks
it, even if he force-reinstalls the operating system. Thousands of
iPhones will not be stolen now, because thieves will learn that they’ll
be “bricked” without your password. (To make this work, you have to turn
on the “Find My iPhone” feature. Which you should do anyway.)
There are a zillion other nips and tucks, many of which make you
smack your forehead and say, “Yes! Why didn’t they think of this
sooner?”
The software is available to download on your existing iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch tomorrow, Sept. 18.
If you decide to install iOS 7, as you learn your way around the new
system you’ll stumble across all kinds of handy features and techniques.
But without any further delay, at least make these two features part of
your new routine: Control Center (swipe upward from below the screen)
and Siri’s new settings-changing commands.
I think you should install it. The structure, layout and features
represent some of Apple’s best work. The look of iOS 7 — well, that
judgment is up to you.
