The iOS 7 Update is LIVE. I am not looking forward to stupid "OMG WHAT HAPPENED TO MY PHONE" responses, so I'm going to be part of the solution with a guide.
This is a quick and easy "things that will make your life easier" guide.
What's all this then?
Overall, iOS 7 is about layers. Flatness sort of goes hand-in-hand with that new language. Everything "sits" on top of the background. The Control Center and Notification Center consist of translucent glass that sit on a layer above the screen. When you unlock your phone, the icons sit and land on a plane.
The most obvious indication of this is the parallax effect (for iPhone 4S and newer devices). If you hold your phone and view it from an oblique angle, you'll notice that the icons look like they're floating over the background. It really looks like you're looking "in" to the phone. This is just a cute graphical flourish (that's more apparent on some backgrounds than others).
Yadda Yadda, who cares, Talon? Anyways, over to the useful stuff.
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Control Center – Slide up from the bottom of the screen. You now have quick actions. This is accessible from the lock screen and anywhere else on the phone. Read email and want to change the song? Just slide up.
(In order from Left to Right:
Airplane Mode | Wifi On/Off | Bluetooth On/Off | Do Not Disturb | Portrait Orientation Lock
Brightness control
Audio controls
Airdrop*
Flashlight | Timer | Calculator | Camera)
*Airdrop is pretty neat. It creates an ad-hoc wireless network with other nearby iOS 7 devices, so you can share photos or files with them. Instead of texting photos from, you can just use AirDrop to send it from one person to another. So Bill will AirDrop it. Hillary will get a notification that will allows her to accept or reject it.
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Notification Center - Same as before, just slide down from the top of the screen. You can also view this from the lock screen. The newest thing here (besides the look) is the Today view.
The Today view includes a summary of today’s weather at the top and upcoming morning meetings. The Calendar is immediately below it, along with Stock or whatever else you want to turn on.
At the bottom of this screen is Tomorrow which tells you about all that’s going down on the morrow.
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Global Back Interaction – Slide in from the left of the screen in the browser. This is the quickest way to go back a page in any Apple apps (Safari, Mail, iTunes Store, App Store, Music, etc.). It's an interaction that you can expect to be used in most of the apps that you use today - many of the newly updated iOS 7 apps have this interaction built-in. In the case of Safari, you can also slide in from the right to go forward.
Again, there's this "layer" metaphor used here. The current screen sits on top of the previous screen.
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Multitasking – My favorite part of the update. There’s a whole new multi-tasking view that is still accessed by double-tapping the home button. You have a screenshot of the app and the app icon moving on separate “bands.” You can scroll through them at either the screenshot (slower) or the app icon (faster).
Want to delete an app from running? Just swipe up on the app, and it'll go flying off into the ether.
Going forward, iOS 7 will provide more multitasking features for third-party developers. What this means is that applications will learn your behavior and run in the background on a select basis. Use case: Twitter would update the feed in the background without it having to load when you launch the application.
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App Auto-Update – No more Red numbers glaring at you from the App Store icon. Apps will update on their own if you turn it on under Settings.
Go to Settings -> iTunes & App Store -> Scroll down to Automatic Downloads and turn it On.
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Photos – All your photos you’ve ever taken have metadata associated with them that tag the time and location. Think of it as the next iteration of the ugly orange datestamps that were on your dad’s 35mm cameras. Anyways, hopefully you're not too creeped out.
Apple tapped into that (already saved) data for the new Photo view.
The hierarchy here is Year -> Event by Location (e.g. you’re in Chicago for a week) -> Day -> Individual Photo
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Camera – The icon is hideous, but this is the best camera app they’ve put out by a country mile. You have four “cameras” you can choose by swiping left or right on the screen:
• Video
• Photo
• Square
• Panorama
You’ll also notice a tri-tone in the bottom right corner, and those are photo filters – not dissimilar from the old Mac Photobooth app or the Instagram filters.
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iTunes Radio – Just go to your Music app and Radio is one of the options.
So what is it? It’s Pandora.
What makes this better? Well, it has a substantially larger library of music (as opposed to Pandora’s 800,000 tracks).
Pretty sweet. Also, smart for Apple to have the Buy button on the top right at all times.
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Weather – This app no longer sucks. If you tap on today’s temperature, you get Humidity, Chance of Rain, Wind and Feels Like information. No idea why they hid that interaction without any indication.
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Also New:
Calendar – It’s prettier. Function is essentially unchanged.
Safari – The tabs view is very different. Sort of calls back to the new Multi-tasking view. Also, you can now have more than 8 tabs open. Swipe to the left (or click the x) to dismiss the tab.
Siri – New voices and new features. You can choose a male voice now.
Hope that helps. Don't freak out. Please.
