Attractions In Santa Clarita - Apple Beats Android In Smartphone Wars

Source      - http://www.bostonglobe.com/
By             - Hiawatha Bray
Category   - Attractions In Santa Clarita
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Attractions In Santa Clarita

Apple’s timing was perfect. The new iPhone 5s hit the stores two years after I bought an iPhone 4s, entitling me to a $200 trade-in, and a painless upgrade.

But the contract on my other phone had run out a few months earlier. So I picked up an HTC One, powered by Google Inc.’s Android operating system. And I am delighted with it. Android began by aping the iPhone, but it has evolved into software so good that the flow of borrowed ideas runs both ways, with Apple adding a number of Android’s best features.

So which is better? After comparing the way each phone handles several important tasks, it was an easy call. Android’s fine; Apple’s even finer.

This comparison was no cakewalk. Android’s features can vary from phone to phone. It has open-source software, so phone makers like Samsung Corp. and HTC Corp. add their own special tweaks. Phones running Apple’s iOS 7 and its older brother, iOS 6, always work the same way. Still, we can make a few worthwhile side-by-side critiques.

Let’s start with utilities — the tools and controls used to set up the phone and get basic tasks done. Android has long done it better. There is no hunting for the settings control. Just pull down the notifications bar at the top of the screen and there it is. Want to add app shortcuts to a screen? Just touch it to view your options.

The new iOS 7 has caught up in a big way. It now has Control Center, a marvelous menu that pulls up from the bottom of the screen. Control Center allows instant access to a bunch of vital utilities — airplane mode, screen brightness, music volume, a timer, and a calculator. It even has a flashlight mode, so there is no need to download a separate app for that. You can do all these things with an Android, but not quite so easily. Advantage: Apple.

Android came up with the idea of posting notifications of incoming messages on a pull-down menu at the top of the screen, but Apple is perfecting it. The iOS version has always been superior to Android’s and in iOS 7 it has gotten much better. I especially like the today feature, which tells you the day’s appointments, the local weather, and even a preview of what is on tap tomorrow. In this department, Android has lots of catching up to do.

How about device security? The fingerprint scanner on the new iPhone 5s is cool, but a team of German hackers have already figured out how to beat it. Maybe we should stick to the old-school password system that the iPhone uses as a backup. Androids have password protection, too. But what they did not have for a long time was something like Apple’s Find My iPhone feature. This lets users find a lost or stolen phone and remotely wipe the information on it, to protect sensitive data. The new iOS 7 just added a kill switch that can remotely lock the phone to make it permanently useless to thieves.

But Android has closed the gap on security. Last month, it launched Android Device Manager, a website where a user can see their phone’s location on a map. They can order it to blast out a ringtone, or delete stored information. This week, Android added a remote locking feature of its own. With this new tool, my Android phone is as secure as the iPhone.

Both iOS and Android offer excellent speech recognition tools. Android’s Google Now service has actually worked better for me than the iPhone’s vaunted Siri system. Google Now is great for all kinds of online searching, and it even launches the apps on Android phones with a voice command. But the iOS 7 Siri upgrade has pushed Apple back into the lead. It is much faster than the previous edition, with a more pleasant, human-sounding voice (female or male). And it has a heap of features that Androiders can only dream of. You can ask Siri to read your e-mail aloud, play a favorite piece of music, or run a hashtag search on Twitter. I have no doubt that Google will soon pull even, but for now, give it up for Apple.

I still prefer my HTC One. It runs fast as a laser, its screen is much bigger than that of the 5s, and I’m addicted to HTC’s custom-designed screen interface, which displays the latest news headlines and Facebook messages. With help from a few good apps, it can do nearly anything the iPhone 5s can do. Yet the iPhone’s combination of beauty and efficiency is as magical as ever.

Hotel In California - Tackling Fears 'While You Sleep'

Source     - http://www.bbc.co.uk/
By            - Caroline Parkinson
Category  - Hotel In California
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Hotel In California

US researchers suggest smells could be used to calm fears - while people sleep.

People were trained to associate two images, linked to smells, with fear.

During sleep they were exposed to one of those smells - and when they woke they were less frightened of the image linked to that smell.

A UK expert praised the Nature Neuroscience study and said it could help treat phobias and perhaps even post-traumatic stress disorders.

People with phobias are already commonly treated with "gradual exposure" therapy while they are awake, where they are exposed to the thing they are frightened of in incremental degrees.

This study suggests that the theory could be extended to therapy while they are in slow-wave, or deep, sleep.

This is the deepest period of sleep, where memories, particularly those linked to emotions, are thought to be processed.

Brain changes

The researchers showed 15 healthy people pictures of two different faces.

At the same time they were given a mild electric shock. They were also exposed to a specific smell, such as lemon, mint, new trainers, clove or wood.

They were then taken into a sleep lab. While they were in slow-wave sleep they were exposed to a smell linked to one of the faces they had been shown.

Later, when they were awake, they were shown both faces - without the scents or shocks.

They showed less fear when shown the face linked to the scent they had smelt while asleep than when shown the other face.

Their response was measured through the amount of sweat on the skin and fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) brain scans.

These showed changes in the areas linked to memory, such as the hippocampus, and in patterns of brain activity in regions associated with emotion, such as the amygdala. 

People were in slow-wave sleep for between five and 40 minutes, and the effect was strongest for those who slept for longest.

'Just one day'

Dr Katherina Hauner, of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, who led the study, said: "It's a novel finding. We showed a small but significant decrease in fear. 

"If it can be extended to pre-existing fear, the bigger picture is that, perhaps, the treatment of phobias can be enhanced during sleep." 

She said phobias would be the most obvious area to pursue, as cues tended to be relatively simple, compared with the more complex post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

And she said much more research was needed to fully understand the effects this therapy could have.

"This was just one day. We really need to see if it can last weeks, months or years."

'Triggers include smells'

 

Jennifer Wild, consultant clinical psychologist at the King's College London Institute of Psychiatry, said: "The sleep study is excellent and has implications for treating phobias and stress disorders, such as post-traumatic stress, where there are a whole range of cues. 

"Many people who have survived traumatic events, such as fires or road traffic accidents, have a physiological fear response to triggers of their memories. 

"Triggers often include smells, such as smoke, petrol, antiseptic smells and alcohol. Infusing these smells during periods of slow-wave sleep could help to extinguish the fear response."

Dr Wild added that the theory could perhaps be extended by exposing people to subtle sounds linked to phobias or traumatic memories during their sleep.

Santa Clarita Local Colleges - Apple Sells Nine Million iPhones Over Debut Weekend

Source      - http://online.wsj.com/
By            - DON CLARK
Category  - Santa Clarita Local Colleges
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Santa Clarita Local Colleges

Apple Inc. AAPL +4.97% may have a hit with its new iPhone 5S, but prospects for the lower-price iPhone 5C are less clear.

Those conclusions emerged after Apple said Monday that it sold nine million of the two handsets in their first three days on the market—well above what analysts had anticipated. 

The company also said that its quarterly sales and profit margin would likely be at the high end of the company's previous forecast. Apple in July projected revenue between $34 billion and $37 billion and gross margin between 36% and 37%. 

The company's stock jumped $23.23, or 5%, to close at $490.64 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

Apple also said that more than 200 million of its devices already were running iOS 7—a free overhaul released last week of the operating system used on iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch devices.

Apple's record volume for the new iPhones compared with five million iPhone 5 models sold on its opening weekend a year ago. Analyst had predicted that six million to seven million of this year's models would be sold in the debut weekend.

But there are caveats with the Apple figures, among them the decision to sell the phone in China in the opening weekend this year. 

And beyond sales by the company to consumers from its own stores and website, Apple's count includes sales to other retailers. While Apple appears to have exhausted inventory of the iPhone 5S, the nine million units include unsold iPhone 5C models at non-Apple retailers, analysts said.

"If you adjust for the 5C, it's not the blowout that it initially looks like," said Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray. He estimated that three million to four million iPhone 5C models are with retailers and that the number of both handsets in the hands of consumers was 5.5 million.

Apple didn't break down its sales other than to say that demand for the iPhone 5S exceeded supply. "Thanks to all our amazing customers for the fantastic weekend," Chief Executive Tim Cook, a new Twitter user, said in a tweet Monday.

Assessing demand for the phones is particularly difficult because more countries are involved this year: 11, compared with nine for the iPhone 5 release last year. And China, in particular, is a huge smartphone market.

Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, said the original iPhone 5 sold two million units in its first weekend of sales in China. He estimated that China likely contributed a similar amount this year.

The cautions aside, analysts still said the rollout was stronger than they expected, as indicated by longer lines at stores than last year. While some Apple analysts were disappointed that the iPhone 5C wasn't priced low enough to attract a new class of buyers, they said there remained a substantial number of iPhone users who wanted to upgrade their phones and that new trade-in programs made the process less expensive.

"People forget that there is a massive installed base out there," said Brian Marshall, an analyst at ISI International Group. As a result, when "each phone comes out, the launch gets bigger and bigger."

Several signs indicated strong customer preference for the iPhone 5S. Cantor Fitzgerald said its survey of buyers in New York found that 88% bought that model but that Apple's figures suggested that the less-expensive iPhone 5C also sold well.

Boston-based research firm Localytics said data generated from apps downloaded by users over the weekend indicated that the iPhone 5S sold 3.5 times as many units as the 5C. 

Raj Aggarwal, the firm's chief executive, cautioned that the initial data didn't necessarily show the long-term prospects for the iPhone 5C since sales on the opening weekend could have been distorted by hard-core buyers. "The people who are excited enough to stand in line on a Friday morning, these are the early adopters," he said. "They are more likely to want the more sophisticated top-end device."

Hotel In Santa Clarita - Website Offers Bounty For iPhone 5S Hack

Source       - http://edition.cnn.com/
By             - Brandon Griggs
Category   - Hotel In Santa Clarita
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Hotel In Santa Clarita

Nothing tempts hackers quite like a high-profile new target.

A website is offering a bounty of more than $16,000 in cash and other prizes for the first person to successfully hack the Touch ID fingerprint sensor on the new iPhone 5S.

The site, IsTouchIDHackedYet, was created by Nick DePetrillo, an independent computer-security researcher known for demonstrating hacks of smartphones, and Robert David Graham, owner of Errata Security, a cybersecurity firm. It invites donors to contribute to the bounty, which so far includes an assortment of cash, bitcoins (a form of digital currency), several bottles of booze and "a dirty sex book."

"The whole point of #istouchidhackedyet was to put up or shut up with regards to criticisms of Apple's Touch ID security and implementation," DePetrillo said Saturday on Twitter.

"I personally believe (for once) a company has implemented a unique feature (Touch ID) in a reasonably secure way," he added in another tweet.

A successful hack of the phone had not been announced as of Sunday morning.

The iPhone 5S, which went on sale Friday, has a fingerprint sensor in its Home button for added security. Apple calls the new security system Touch ID. Phone owners must "register" their print with the device, after which they can unlock the phone by placing a finger or thumb on the button. Other users' fingerprints will not unlock the phone, which protects it from thieves.

How secure is your iPhone 5S fingerprint?

According to terms DePetrillo posted on Twitter, to collect the bounty a hacker must lift a fingerprint from the phone or elsewhere and reproduce it in such a way that will allow them to unlock an iPhone 5S in less than five tries. All the steps must be documented on video.

The Touch ID system is meant for human fingerprints, of course, but it apparently works with animals, too. A Minnesota man posted a video Friday to CNN iReport that showed him using the paw of his pet Chihuahua to unlock his new iPhone.

DePetrillo and Graham are so-called "white hat" hackers who investigate and expose security holes that have yet to be plugged by makers of new computer systems. Tech companies generally appreciate being alerted to such security issues, which they can then patch before users' personal information is compromised.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request from CNN for comment.

Accommodation In Santa Clarita - Earth Has At Least 1.75 Billion Years To Go, Scientists Say

Source       - http://www.csmonitor.com/
By             -  Elizabeth Barber
Category   - Accommodation In Santa Clarita
Posted By  - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Accommodation In Santa Clarita

Earth has at least 1.75 billion years left, scientists have found. That means that Homo sapiens, in the unlikely event that the species will persist all that time, have used up about 0.01142857142 percent of their time on Earth so far.

A team of British researchers has developed a model for determining how long a planet can expect to be within its sun’s habitable zone – the sweet spot just far enough to the sun so that the planet’s water doesn’t sizzle into vapor but just close enough to the sun so that it doesn’t freeze.

The model, reported in the journal Astrobiology aimed at assessing which planets outside our solar system, called exoplanets, might be in that comfortable zone long enough for intelligent life to make its gradual appearance there. In doing so, it also offers a prediction for Earth’s remaining time.

Most exoplanet research is underpinned by one all-important question: “Is this planet habitable?” To answer that question, scientists often begin by asking if that planet falls within the star’s habitable zone, where liquid water, an ingredient thought to be critical for life, could be available.

But just how the bounds of the habitable zone are calculated and plotted has been the subject of much debate in recent years, as exoplanet research now includes not just hunting those planets, but also classifying them.

Researchers, for example, have debated what effect cloud cover might have on the range in which a planet might be habitable. Perhaps, clouds might keep a planet close to the sun cooler than it otherwise would have been, protecting its surface water reserves from evaporation, researchers have proposed.

Still, as the latest paper’s authors note, what is not controversial is that the habitable zone, however it is defined, fluctuates over time. Over billions of years, a star’s brightness increases, and planets once in that sweet spot begin to broil.

“Toward the end of a planet’s [habitable zone] lifetime, steadily increasing stellar luminosity is likely to result in a runaway greenhouse event, which would represent a catastrophic and terminal extinction event for any surface biosphere present on the planet,” write the authors, in the paper.

So, in the hunt for extraterrestrial life, the question, “is it habitable?” is not meaningful without also answering, “for how long is it habitable?”

That’s because life takes a long time to develop – or at least so it seems based on our experience here on Earth. Here, on this planet formed about 4.5 billion years ago, we didn’t get single-celled organisms, called prokaryotes, until about 3.6 billion years ago, and bacteria that could photosynthesize didn’t pop up until 2 million years after that. Fish then turned up about 500 millions of years ago, then insects about 200 million years ago, and then dinosaurs about 200 million years ago.

Humans, following up on the evolution of mammals, birds, and flowers, have spent just 200,000 years on this planet. We are, essentially, the scrubby, ultra-thin tip of an eraser, topping a long pencil of time that precedes us.

All this suggests that good candidates for life outside our solar system must have enough time in their star’s sweet spot – more than 4.5 billion years, it seems – for that life to burgeon.

In search of those planets on which Earth’s life-hunting resources are best spent, the team modeled the expected habitable zone lifetime for seven confirmed exoplanets and 27 of the Kepler telescope’s exoplanet candidates, as well as the lifetime for Earth.

Hotel Reservations In Santa Clarita - Driverless Car Will Be Street Ready In Three Years

Source       - http://www.itnews.com/

Colin Neagle

By             - Colin Neagle

Colin Neagle

Colin Neagle

Colin Neagle

Colin Neagle

Colin Neagle

Colin Neagle

Colin Neagle

Category   - Hotel Reservations In Santa Clarita
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

 

Hotel Reservations In Santa Clarita

Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk has raised the ante on the rest of the automobile industry, declaring in a recent interview with the Financial Times that his company's self-driving car will be street-ready by 2016.
Google, whose autonomous car has successfully driven more than 500,000 miles and has even accommodated a blind driver, had previously set 2018 as the expected release date for its self-driving car technology. Israeli company Mobileye is the only other to make as bold a claim as Tesla, albeit with a lower-cost system that The New York Times says  "does not offer the autonomy achieved by Google's engineers."
Although Musk has a tendency to talk publicly of far-reaching technological concepts, most notably the Hyperloop, he told the Financial Times that this declaration is "not speculation," but rather an educated guess based on the company's internal development.
There is a catch, however Musk says the car will not be fully autonomous, but will instead offer "a form of auto-pilot' in most situations that would allow the vehicle to take over control," the Financial Times reported.
"My opinion is it's a bridge too far to go to fully autonomous cars," Musk said in the interview. "It's incredibly hard to get the last few percent."
RELATED:Big data roadblocks will slow driverless cars until 20404, analyst says
20 cars that driver themselves
In that sense, Tesla's plans for driverless cars align more with Mobileye's than Google's. Mobileye can automate driving a vehicle that drives "in a single lane at freeway speeds, as well as identifying traffic lights and automatically slowing, stopping and then returning to highway speeds." Its benefit, compared to Google's driverless car, is that it costs just a few hundred dollars to outfit a car with the cameras that make up the Mobileye system.
The Financial Times also notes that Google has had difficulty finding a manufacturing partner willing to adopt its technology, reportedly out of concern for safety and liability.
"Mr Musk's rejection of the idea of a fully autonomous car, however, was the latest sign that Google has had trouble finding partners among established carmakers to bring its technology to the road," the Financial Times reported.
Despite the increasingly competitive race to put the first driverless car on the road, others are less optimistic. Sheila Brennan, IDC's program manager for product lifecycle strategies, said in March that issues involving handling the implicit data and legal issues involved with autonomous cars will keep them largely off the road until about 2040.
- See more at: http://www.itnews.com/configuration-maintenance/67633/elon-musk-teslas-driverless-car-will-be-street-ready-three-years#sthash.RxesZlW2.dpuf

Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk has raised the ante on the rest of the automobile industry, declaring in a recent interview with the Financial Times that his company's self-driving car will be street-ready by 2016.

Google, whose autonomous car has successfully driven more than 500,000 miles and has even accommodated a blind driver, had previously set 2018 as the expected release date for its self-driving car technology. Israeli company Mobileye is the only other to make as bold a claim as Tesla, albeit with a lower-cost system that The New York Times says  "does not offer the autonomy achieved by Google's engineers."

Although Musk has a tendency to talk publicly of far-reaching technological concepts, most notably the Hyperloop, he told the Financial Times that this declaration is "not speculation," but rather an educated guess based on the company's internal development.

There is a catch, however Musk says the car will not be fully autonomous, but will instead offer "a form of auto-pilot' in most situations that would allow the vehicle to take over control," the Financial Times reported.

"My opinion is it's a bridge too far to go to fully autonomous cars," Musk said in the interview. "It's incredibly hard to get the last few percent."

20 cars that driver themselves

In that sense, Tesla's plans for driverless cars align more with Mobileye's than Google's. Mobileye can automate driving a vehicle that drives "in a single lane at freeway speeds, as well as identifying traffic lights and automatically slowing, stopping and then returning to highway speeds." Its benefit, compared to Google's driverless car, is that it costs just a few hundred dollars to outfit a car with the cameras that make up the Mobileye system.

The Financial Times also notes that Google has had difficulty finding a manufacturing partner willing to adopt its technology, reportedly out of concern for safety and liability.

"Mr Musk's rejection of the idea of a fully autonomous car, however, was the latest sign that Google has had trouble finding partners among established carmakers to bring its technology to the road," the Financial Times reported.

Despite the increasingly competitive race to put the first driverless car on the road, others are less optimistic. Sheila Brennan, IDC's program manager for product lifecycle strategies, said in March that issues involving handling the implicit data and legal issues involved with autonomous cars will keep them largely off the road until about 2040.

Colin Neagle

Colin Neagle

Colin Neagle

Hampton Hotels Santa Clarita - Yes, There’s a New iPhone. But That’s Not The Big News

Source      - http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/
By            - Press Release
Category   - Hampton Hotels Santa Clarita
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

 

Hampton Hotels 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.