It’s less than 24 hours which Apple finally showed itself to the world again in WWDC, only this time with a lot of changes in department leadership. Jonathan Ives, the famous product designer for Apple who contributed to the iMac’s sunflower design, took over the team for iOS design and ready for prime time.
Apple showed us how the new iOS 7 will be much better than the previous ones – in terms of efficiency, beauty and design. To sum it up, I quote Steve Jobs with his famous word, “amazing”.
Here I have a list of what major changes Apple did to its iOS, courtesy of Apple, and we’ll go and talk about it one by one, from top to bottom, left to right. If I ever did mention about Android, I’m referring to the vanilla Android, the Nexus one, where there are no customizations by any manufacturers. Pure Google experience, if I may.
Control Center
Oooooh! Finally Apple knew the problem with their iOS in terms of switching on and off WiFi, controlling volume and songs with the fastest speed. Truth to be told, it looks awfully lot like Android’s quick settings panel! Though only now, you get to control brightness, track seeking and also your volume with a slider. Also, you get quick buttons access for flashlight, timer, calculator and also camera.
I see this is actually a big plus, coming from an aged Android users.
Notification Center
Oh Apple, you cheeky little Apple. Do you really have to copy Android when it comes to this? I have to admit, the entire notification menu looks clean and sleek, though tabs for chronological sorting of notifications seems useless, at least in my opinion. I have to agree, this redesign is much more than crucial as their previous one was a total failure.
Multitasking
Say hello to WebOS! Matias Duarte’s Flash Cards design for WebOS when it came to multitasking is now redesigned to be a little HTC Sense-ish too. Another plus here though, is how a shortcut toolbar is present at the bottom of the multitasking screen. Making good use out of free space, aren’t they?
iTunes Radio
Nothing much to say here, it’s just another Spotify.
Photos
Finally, no more black background. A beautiful gallery app what looks like Apple’s famous photo management software, iPhoto. Also, they have multiple photo filters like Android does for your Instagram goodness (or horrifying your beautiful photos).
AirDrop
I guess this is a permanent solution by Apple for Android’s WiFi Direct? To share things after connecting to each other. One thing that I’m sure about Apple is how they’ll redesign the connection procedure AFTER the iPhone gets NFC, where you can just tap and connect. It’s a lot more faster than taping on AirDrop, right?
Camera
I’m actually impressed with their new interface. Clean, brightly coloured and distinctive. It looks as if the entire interface is on the photo itself! Then again, in terms of efficiency, we really can’t say anything for now yet.
Safari
Full screen browsing. Who doesn’t love it? I’m still in awe of the new, simple icon design where it just comprises of certain shapes under a single colour. There is a problem though, some icons are so confusing and incomprehensible that it takes quite a long time to figure out what it does.
Siri
A new, clean, white interface for Siri where it’s a little more user friendly by having animations of waves to indicate that Siri can hear you – or maybe the background noise. Results are shown in nearly full screen, making the content you want really bump out and distraction-free, at least on your phone.
Mail
Another one like Safari, clean icons with certain shapes and colour to indicate what it does. It looks clean, and indeed works well. There is nothing much to say here, but then again it’s really just beauty all over.
Weather
Here comes the great part – remember HTC’s Sense 3? You have the fancy weather animation when you unlock your phone, and if you enter the Weather app, you can see even more and fancier animations about the weather, like a wiper wiping your screen while it’s raining, or a bright sun with few clouds to show you it’s sunny. This is what Apple copied exactly. Well, except for the fancy phone unlock animation.
Messages
A very nice graphical revamp with the message bubble shadowing, lighting and 3D effect gone. Other than that, nothing much.
There, we have the entire list of what are the major changes in iOS 7. I’m still amazed by how beautiful the entire new iOS is, given that they finally put transparency to good use. The control bars at the bottom are transparent. Notification Center’s background is transparent. Control Center’s background is transparent. Heck, even the keyboard’s background is transparent, and I say it’s good! Really pops out on showing where my content ends, and what I’m missing out without even scrolling while typing halfway through.
Apple’s entirely new approach to icon design, dubbed the “flat icon design”, really dumped all the confusing shadowing and 3D effect of the icons which previous made the design a little too fancy. They also used a lot more whites than ever before – making a shift from their iOS silver/grey to transparencies and whites, and a little bit of flashy colour to really spice things up.
As I said, I,an Android user since Android 1.6 Éclair and still am one, thinks that the iOS 7 did a little mix and match of the best from all the available mobile systems in the market now. Stealing off Android’s efficiency, Windows Phone 8’s animations and Apple’s very own design beauty, with a touch of sleekness and integrity really made the iOS 7 stand out. In fact, I’m jealous of their new Control Center and Multitasking menu because of the row of shortcuts at the bottom. Oh, I forgot to mention how great it is to finally have a transparent control bar at the bottom and a transparent keyboard so that I won’t stop whining about how ugly the themes of SwiftKey X are.
I still think, iOS 7 is a great step forward for Apple, but competitors are already far ahead. It still lacks widgets, which is Android niche, so Android users won’t jump ship anytime soon. Custom ROMs on Android now offers customizable quick settings panel shortcuts, offering you tonnes of options to fulfil a complete 100% for user satisfaction. Then again – the clutter-less home screen on iOS makes sure that there are absolutely no repetition of apps and its shortcuts under the same screen.
iOS 7 will be released fall of 2013, which means you have to wait until then. Be patient. In my final conclusion, here’s what everyone thinks of the new Google Androi – oh, I mean Apple’s iOS 7.
Image credits – SAYS.my
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