iOS: A visual history - The Verge
iOS 7 is the first iteration to arrive with a pair of phones in tow: the iPhone 5s and 5c. In addition to shipping iOS 7 with the new handsets, Apple is updating all its devices from the iPhone 4 and iPad 2 onwards to the new OS on September 18th. iPod touch support is limited to the latest, fifth-generation model.
Big changes at Apple. After the botched introduction of the Maps app saw Tim Cook post a personal apology on the Apple homepage, Scott Forstall, who had led iOS design for several years, parted ways with the company. Soon after the departure, Apple's lead industrial designer, Jony Ive, took leadership of the company's "human interface" efforts.
The result of Ive's intervention is Apple's first attempt at a visual overhaul of its mobile OS. Gone are the famous glossy icons, the rich textures, and, for the most part, the skeuomorphic apps, replaced by flattened graphics, colorful gradients, and transparencies. Immediately after its June 10th unveil, iOS 7's redesign was panned by critics for what they called an "overly simplistic" and confusing design.
The key to iOS 7's new look is layering. The home screen and applications run on a bottom layer, while Apple has added transparency and background blurring within apps to make certain interface elements appear to hover over others. The keyboard and navigation bar in Messages is a good example of layering: text bubbles now slide beneath the newly translucent elements. This UI layering also applies to the refreshed Notification Center, which is similarly translucent, and an all-new feature: Control Center.
Control Center. Accessed with a swipe up from the bottom of your screen, Control Center is Apple's version of the quick-settings toggles found on Android phones. The translucent overlay offers one-click access to Airplane mode, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Do Not Disturb, Rotation lock, and sliders for volume and brightness. In addition to settings shortcuts, there are buttons for a flashlight as well as the Clock, Calculator, and Camera apps, and full music controls. Finally, you can turn on and off AirPlay, or initiate an AirDrop (see below). Like Notification Center, it's available from anywhere in the OS, including the lock screen.
AirDrop. First introduced with OS X Mountain Lion, AirDrop is an ad-hoc sharing system that lets you quickly share images, videos, and other files with people around you. Strangely, you can't share files between iOS and OS X yet, but there's a possibility that could change with the release of OS X Mavericks later this year.
All-new core apps and free iWork. Apple has freshened up all of its core apps with a new coat of paint, bringing them in line with the new look of iOS. Most of the apps are white with a simple one-color flourish, and completely devoid of texture, but Notes and Reminders retain a slight papery feel.
While the basic layout of all of the apps remains the same, Apple introduced a new swiping gesture that makes navigating around apps much easier. Swiping in from the left side of the screen in all of the core apps executes the same function as the "back" button in the top-left corner of apps. This gesture also works both ways in Safari, letting you swipe back and forth through your browser history. Safari in general is cleaner, with a new omnibar up top and a UI that fades away as you scroll through a page.
iOS 7 also marks a shift in Apple's approach to additional software on iOS. Apps that cost as much as $9.99 in the past, such as Pages, Numbers, iMovie, Keynote, and iPhoto, will now be free on iOS. Of all of Appleâs big-name apps, only Garageband remains at a premium. The app giveaway mirrors Appleâs approach to its iLife software suite on OS X, which is packaged free with every Mac, although the companyâs iWork apps are still premium for the desktop.
An animated weather app, but still no widgets. Borrowing heavily from Yahoo's successful iOS app, the new Weather app features lush animated backgrounds that change based on time of day and the current weather conditions. It's a fantastic-looking app, but its dynamic backgrounds aren't mirrored by its icon, which remains sunny.
The omission of widgets, a standard feature of Android (and in some ways Windows Phone) for many years, will disappoint many. Apple gave some hope that the static iOS home screen might change with the inclusion of an animated Clock icon that constantly updates to show the correct time to the second, but that's it. The Clock icon now shows the correct time, just as the Calendar icon has always shown the correct date, but every other icon is stoically static. Even Appleâs Notification Center Weather widget, which used to show the weather for the next five days, has been reduced to a line of text in the "Today" screen.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEr5yrn5VjsLC5jmtnamlfZn9wfZJoaW9pYmyAd3vIqKpmoJmowbC%2B2GagqaCfo7Jutc%2Bamw%3D%3D