Everything you need to know about iOS 7

 

 

So, like bunches and bunches of fellow Apple product owners around the globe, you downloaded iOS 7 onto your iDevice and are a little unsure about some of the features… or you’re thinking about updating but are a bit scared too because of how different it’s supposed to be.

 

Please don’t fret our pretties! We’re here to guide you through every little part of iOS 7 and to convince you why you should update, even if it is a little bit scary.

 

 

There has been, apparently, a few people for whom the download hasn’t worked properly. That sucks, and is solely because so many people have been trying to download it at the same time. If this is happening or has happened to you, all we can suggest is to try to be patient. It will download.

 

At this stage download errors probably shouldn’t be occurring, as the speed bump of super keen iOS 7ers should have died down. We’ve heard reports of the download taking hours, but this too should no longer be happening. Our download took 36 minutes, and it was super easy.

 

 

Our first impression was BLAM BRIGHT AND BLOCKY. Our second impression was a thoroughly great one. Everything is simplified in a way that some part of you deep inside you knew you wanted, but most of you you had no idea until you saw it come to life in front of you.

 

It looks fantastic, and everything seems to work organically and smoothly and flawlessly together.

 

For the first couple of minutes after we downloaded iOS 7, the phone was responding a little slowly, particularly in the Photos app, but that only lasted a few minutes, and then everything was working at regular speed.

 

So. What’s new? What’s different? How do I find the whatsamacallit now?

 

 

Follow us into the iOS 7 rabbithole!

 

 

 

Alrighty, so we’re looking at a completely new design with over 200 changes, and yeah, it looks pretty different. But don’t freak out too much. First things first. Now you can slide to unlock on any part of the screen.

 

 

 

 

Take a deep breath, and take it all in. Look at the icons independently, if you want. Each one is in line with each other, in grid formation, and borderless. They seem bigger than before. The designs on them are simplified, with less detail and fuss.

 

 

 

Jony Ive redesigned the iOS so that each icon looked less like it was a real thing. The note pad no longer looks like a fake representation of a notepad, for instance.

 

 

Everything has a white backed interface, which also might take some getting used to, but makes everything look a hell of a lot more simple and and refined and ….unflippety. Yeah. Unflippety.

 

 

There is a new color palette. Basically, the new colors are bright, they’re boppy and distinctive.

 

 

Each app uses black lettering on a white background and each one has a different accent color. For example in the messages app  it’s red, for notes it’s pale gold, for photos it’s blue. The font is, well, Apple calls it more refined- it’s better looking, basically. It’s neater, rounder, tidier.

 

 

 

 

There’s a few apps that have changes which are mostly aesthetic, so we’ll show you these first, and let you know if there are any small upgrades.

 

 

Calendar

 

 

 

 

 

We LOVE the new Calendar. It’s red accented, and allows downward scrolling through the months, the ability to see declined events, and an inbox tab for invitations to events. As with most of iOS 7 it’s super simple and easy to navigate between seeing today as a whole with events hourly and seeing it as part of a month.

 

 

 

Clock 

 

 

Also red accented, the Clock icon now displays the correct time. Sounds funny when you read that first, makes sense the second time around.

 

As you can see above, some of the clock faces are black, and some are white- simple really, black denotes somewhere where the sun has set, and white for where it is still daylight.

 

Times can also be swapped from digital to analog by tapping on the city name.

 

 

 

Calculator 

 

 

The calculator pretty much works the same as it did before, and as we believe it always will, because it’s a calculator. it calculates, and it’s good at it. Stop putting pressure on it to do more with it’s life already. It’s orange accented, cos it wants to be dammit.

 

 

 Notes

 

 

 

 

 

Notes! The app that tech writers everywhere used as an example as Apple moving away from skeuomorphic design! It’s here and it’s definitley not skeuomorphic. It’s the simplest representation of a piece of paper we’ve ever seen, really.

 

 

With this version you also have the ability to look at notes separately according to account – gmail, iPhone, or all.

 

 

Maps 

 

 

 

 

Maps now offers turn-by-turn walking directions and automatic night mode. Walking directions is cool, because we like to walk. Automatic night mode uses the current time in your location and an ambient light sensor to judge which mode, day or night, is more suitable. That’s some future stuff, there.

 

 

 

Music 

 

 

 

Within the updated, red accented, music app, you can now play music purchases from iCloud.

 

 

Phone App 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No functional upgrades, because it’s the simplest function of all, really, on your iPhone. But now it looks simple, round, and kinda old fashioned crossed with futuristic? Can that be a thing? Like the old rotary phones that had circular finger dialing bits, crossed with the simplistic representation of awesome technology. Yeah, it’s a thing now.

 

 

Movies 

 

 

 

 

You can now play movie and TV show purchases from the iCloud. that’s… Kickass….

 

 

And now a photo of iPhone Antidote’s cat, because why not? His name is Oscarpants. He’s staring into your soul.

 

 

 

Let’s see.. what else is there? oh yeah-

 

 

Control Center.

 

 

The new Control Center can be accessed by swiping upwards from the bottom of the screen. It includes quick access buttons for AirPlane mode, toggling Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Orientation Lock, and the Do Not Disturb mode.

 

 

It can also be used to adjust volume, brightness and open apps like Calculator, Clock, and Camera. Here is also where you’ll find the much talked about flashlight. ( Interesting fact we just learned- Australians call Flashlights torches. Weird.)

 

 

The control center also holds the music player widget, where you can control your music- FF, RW, etc. And yes, we did have skrillex playing when we took this photo because we wanted you to think we were cool. Did it work?

 

 

If you don’t want this option because of your gaming preferences or if you just like swiping a lot and don’t want anything to come of it, you have the option to turn it on/off both within apps and on the lock screen via Settings > Control Center.

 

 

Notification Center.

 

 

Improved both visually and functionally, the notifications center is like a little man inside your phone. This guy gives you all the important information you need to know about your day. Messages, calendar events, stocks information, reminders, weather.

 

You can choose specifically what you want to be displayed here in settings and you still access it by swiping down from the top of the screen.

 

Now however you get the new ‘today’ tab, and if you dismiss a notification on one device, it will be dismissed on all of your devices. Something new that’s really cool is if you have an appointment in the calendar, the notifications screen will provide location based information like weather and driving times for where your appointment is.

 

 

AirDrop:

 

 

K guys- This is just for those lucky enough to have an iPhone 5 or later, the 4th Gen iPad, the Mini and the 5th Gen iPod Touch. Sorry everyone else.

 

Similar to a feature popular with Samsung features where users bump their phones together to exchange files and photos- except you don’t have to bump phones together with this feature. Because we’re cooler than that.

 

Basically – turn it on, tap share in an app and it will tell you nearby iOS users in the vicinity. Tap on the person you want to share contacts, websites, photos, etc with and that person has the option to accept or reject the information. If they accept it, it’s immediately sent over WiFi.

 

 

You do have the option to turn this feature off, and to only have people within your address book requesting to send you information. Just in case you were really strict on getting random people on the bus sending you stuff. Not to say that stuff wouldn’t be awesome. It might be.

 

 

 

Multitasking

 

 

Yay! Multitasking improvements!

 

Double tap the home button to run through all the apps that you have running, and now you can see a preview of that app in a ‘card’. Switch between them super easily by flicking through the cards, and clicking on the one you want to go to.

 

This also permits any app to keep content up-to-date in the background.

 

What is sweet and a little bit oddly addictive is that to close an app that’s running, you just flick the open image upwards. You can close multiple running apps by using multiple fingers. Try not and say ‘Whee’ when you do it, we dare you.

 

 

 

Camera

 

 

The camera improvements are really noticeable and really nice.

 

Instead of toggling with a often super amazingly frustratingly hard to move in a hurry button, you now have the option to swipe to choose a camera mode.

 

You have the option of shooting in video, still photo, parnoramic and a newbie- square aspect, which is basically cropped and instagram sized. Hipsters and positive outlook memer’s rejoice – there is also the choice of 8 real-time photo filters with iPhone 4S or later, and 5th Gen iPod touch.

 

To apply the real time filters, simply tap on the colored dots at the bottom of the screen. These can be removed or swapped out at any time, even after you’ve taken the photo.

 

 

 

Photo App

 

 

The photos app has been improved  by the addition of a new organizational system and new ways of sharing. You also have the ability to edit the photo and add filters.

 

Now you can select multiple photos and share them to the photo stream, share them on Facebook, iCloud, mail, message Flickr airplay or print.

 

Your photos are now organized really neatly into Moments, Collections and Years, with every compartment having location and date information. Tapping on a Year, and then a Collection within a Year will display photos taken throughout the course of the year, which are divided into Moments.

 

Entire Moments, which are essentially different events, can be shared all at once (via AirDrop, Messages Mail, Facebook and Flickr) rather than on an individual basis.

 

 

 

Spotlight Search.

 

 

Spotlight, used for searching and opening files etc on your iPhone, and previously found on a screen to the left on iOS 6, is now found by swiping down from any screen. Not all the way from the top, cos then you might find yourself looking at the notification center and getting all kind of confused.

 

Try a medium swipe down the middle. There, you go, that’s it. What? We can’t really see you….

 

 

 

Passbook

 

 

 

You can now scan tickets and coupons etc using the camera function on your iPhone, for use within the Passbook App. If you click on ‘Apps for Passbooks, it’ll take you to Disneyland. Just kidding, it’ll take you to the app store and show you the apps you can get to use in the passbook app.

 

 

 

Weather

 

 

We have, so far, loved playing around with the weather app. It’s very pretty and includes representations of what it looks like outside at that precise moment, so cloudy or rainy or starry or what have you. For every location it also gives you the Sunset time and a 5 day forecast with minimum and maximum temperatures.

 

 

Other weathery type information it gives you is humidity, chance of rain and wind speed. Handy.

 

 

Compass

 

 

 

Compasses are pretty cool. And that’s not just because the girl we have a crush on has one tattooed on her arm. Erm… anyway. This one has the red accent on north.

 

 

 

It looks really nice, and now includes a built in level that you swipe to the right to access. If you double tap on the level screen you’ll zero it out at any angle.

 

 

( A level is used to see if surfaces are… level… )

 

 

 

Game Center

 

 

The Game center got a pretty nice makeover. No more fake green felt and wood, now there’s only colorful bubbles of glee on a white background.

 

 

 

Siri:

 

Siri can now be a dude or a chick, depending on whatever reason you have for having a preference.

 

She/he can also now pull up restaurant reviews, change settings, it has integrated Wikipedia, Twitter search, and Bing web search results, it can post to Facebook, and play Voicemail.

 

Also, if you have a hard to pronounce name, like Gargumel, Siri will attempt to learn to pronounce it. How nice.

 

 

Folder Size:

 

 

We googled ‘really big folder’ and this was one of the first hits. we’re going with it. Now you can fit as many apps as you want within a folder, with multiple pages.

 

 

Activation Lock

WHAT IF I LOSE MY PHONE?

iOS 7’s got your back, that’s what.

My iPhone Activation lock means that if you lose your phone, or it gets stolen, then it’s incredibly hard for those awful robbers or the people who find it to use it. Basically, no matter what they try and do in order to use it – erase the device, reactivate it, etc, they won’t be able to do anything without your iTunes password.

 

 

 

Messages.

 

 

Now you can see when a text or an iMessage was sent/received! Pull message bubbles to the left, and you can see exactly when it was you sent/ received that awesomely awesome text.

 

You also have the option to change how names are displayed within messages. Go to Settings > Mail ,Contacts, and Calendars > Short Name ( down the bottom under Contacts). Choices include first name and last initial, first name and last initial, first name or last name only.

 

 

App Store improvements.

 

 

With the App store upgrade, you can see apps that other people in your area are using in the ‘popular near me’ option’.

 

Apple has also added a new “Designed for iOS 7” section to the store. It highlights apps that have been updated or released with an iOS 7-style design, including notable offerings like Evernote.

 

 

Safari.

 

 

Safari looks really nice, and that’s coming from folk who generally prefer Chrome. Safari has itself a new tabbed layout. Tabbed pages can be closed quickly by swiping the page to the left.

 

For those looking for a more private browsing session, you now only have to click the ‘private’ button when a new window is created. Do Not Track can be enabled within Settings > Safari. 

 

 Scrolling now hides the app’s controls like in Chrome . You can OPEN AN UNLIMITED NUMBER OF TABS, and scroll through them using a vertical card-like view.

Now there is also a tab in the bookmarks panel that shows links shared by your friends on Twitter and other social media sites.

 

 

EXTRA BITS

 

 

iOS 7 brings new ringtones, alarms, alerts and system sounds. Although for the traditional at heart, unless it makes you feel too old, you can still access the old one’s filed under classic.

 

Personally, we kinda like a phone to sound like a phone, but then we saw that this is what happens if you google the word classic.

 

 

 

 

FaceTime audio calling. Everyone loves FaceTime. Bringing friends together no matter where in the world they’re taking shots/having grandchildren.

 

 

Block Phone Numbers: You have the ability to block phone calls/messages/FaceTime requests on iOS 7. Simply go to Settings > Phone > Blocked to add contacts that will be prevented from contacting you (Their attempts will be sent to voicemail). Take that, Stalker Mc Stalkersons.

 

Automatic App Updates: You can have all your apps download their updates automatically, if going to the app store and doing it manually troubles your soul too much. If you go to Settings > iTunes & App Store, the default setting is off for all automatic downloads, but turning them on means you’ll never have to trouble your soul with it ever again. Warning: this can use battery when you don’t want it to and you can’t pick and choose in between apps.

 

 

iTunes Radio:

iTunes Radio can be accessed from within the Music app! Go here to learn more. We’ll be writing a review of iTunes Radio shortly, so keep your eyes peeled and your ears pricked.

 

 

 

All in all, what a fantastic update, and super nice that we get kinda a new phone, even if we’re not actually getting a new phone. Doubly sweet for those who are getting a new phone tomorrow or in the next few weeks and are getting a double whammy new hardware new software BLING BLAM!

 

We feel like we’ve given you a pretty comprehensive run down of iOS 7 and the changes hidden within, but if you feel like delving a bit more into the ins and outs, Apple has made available free iOS 7 user guides on the iBookstore. At the moment, guides are only available for the iPad and iPod touch but a book targeted at the iPhone will likely follow.

 

 

Our final opinion in one sentence? Looks like iOS 7 kicked a Goal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images courtesy of Macworld, Funnyjunk, All4humour, tumblr, cultofmac, imore, idownloadblog.

 

New Apple ad for iPhone 5C with iOS 7

 

 

Here’s Apple’s new ad, cementing how well they’ve designed the iPhone 5C specifically to work organically and flawlessly with iOS 7.

 

 

 

 

Today we’ve seen iOS 7 for ourselves, so all we need to is to countdown to the release of the 5C! (And the 5S…)

 

 

16 hours people.

 

 

 

 

Don’t forget!

 

 

GUYS GUYS GUYS

 

Just in case you’re not one of the lucky few who will be buying a shiny new iPhone, you can still get a lot of shiny new features by downloading iOS 7.

 

And you can do that! Today! Today today!

 

Going on release times from previous years, you should expect to be able to download it from 10AM PST. You will probably even get a push notification reminding you as well, as this happened about mid-afternoon last year Californian time.

 

iOS 7 is FREE and will work on the following Apple products: iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5. The iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S will come with iOS 7 already loaded. iOS 7 is also compatible with iPad Mini, iPad 2, iPad 3, iPad 4 and iPod Touch 5G.

 

You should  DEFINITELY make sure your phone is backed up first, so go here and follow the instructions.

 

You can download iOS 7 by plugging your device into your computer and using iTunes or directly on your phone. Make sure you have the latest versions of both iTunes and iOS – these should be 6.1.4 for iOS and 11.1 for iTunes.

 

For iTunes, once your iPhone or iPad is plugged into your computer, select it under Devices in iTunes and then click Check for Update. Choose download or download and update. The second is what we would suggest.

If you choose to do it directly on your phone, and you don’t want to use up data on your phone plan, then you should probably be somewhere where you can use Wi-FI.

 

THEN;

 

Go to settings on your phone, and there should be a number 1 next to the word General. If you click on that, you should see the same number 1 sitting pretty next to the words Software update.

 

Click that, and you will have the option to install now. Do that.

 

 

Dance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image courtesy of maclife.com

See Burberry showcasing the iPhone 5S camera capabilities

 

 

We’ve heard that the camera on the new iPhone 5S combined with the camera software that comes with iOS 7 is supposed to be, well, really  straight up awesome for taking photos.

 

You guys wanna see for yourselves what you can do with it? Pleased to accommodate, as always.

 

High fashion house Burberry has partnered with Apple for their Spring/Summer 2014 runway show, which will take place on September the 16th. Burberry will use the 5S equipped with iOS 7  to take videos and photos before, during and after the event.

 

Beginning yesterday, Burberry began showcasing some of the photos and videos using the 5S on it’s social media channels and on it’s website.

 

Here is a preview:

 

 

 

 

Pretty slick, huh.

 

 

 

 

Image courtesy of desk123.com

 

The Next iPhone

 

Let’s talk about The Next iPhone.

 

We’ve already told you about the September announcement, (YAY- we’re still spinning) so here’s the short and sweet lowdown about what people are expecting to expect for The Next iPhone.

 

The Next iPhone will almost 100% be called the iPhone 5S, rather than the iPhone 6.

 

Above is a photo released into the world of an apparent prototype iPhone 5S next to an iPhone 5, said to have been taken by manufacturing sources of Macrumors. If it’s not fake, then we can go ahead and say that there will not be any super giant size or design changes coming up for The Next iPhone.

 

The phone will more than likely be released a few weeks after the Sept 10th announcement, around the 23rd, also coinciding with the public release of iOS 7.

 

It will have a higher resolution camera, purportedly 12 megapixel with possible slow motion video capabilities.

 

It will probably have duel LED flash capabilities on the rear camera, which according to the pictures sourced by Macrumors.com, look like they’re separated for Tungsten color balance and Daylight color balance. All round better low-light, basically. This is the picture from their source in one of the manufacturing companies:

 

 

 

The 5S will very likely have bigger battery capacity. Yay!

 

It is rumored to have an A7 chip, built by either Apple themselves or by Taiwan-based chip foundry TSMC. This lets them move away from previous contract chip manufacturers and rivals, Samsung.

 

It might have NFC Capabilities.

 

It will supposedly have an updated convex home button with an integrated fingerprint sensor. The home button will be made of scratch resistant sapphire glass. Sapphire? Fancy!

 

It will possibly come in a third color- Gold, or champagne.

 

 

 

Champagne, gold, double the flash and sapphires. We can deal with that…

 

Not long now until we’ll know everything for sure about The Next iPhone! Until then we’ll keep you updated with all the rumors, guesstimates, financial expert statements and stolen pictures taken from manufacturing plants! Like spies! Kinda. Not really.

 

 

 

 

Images courtesy of Macrumors and Cultofmac

 

 

 

WWDC lowdown!

 

Alright guys, so yesterday was THE BIG DAY!

 

The four day annual world wide developers conference for Apple began yesterday morning, kicking off at the Mascone Centre in San Francisco at 10am.

 

As per usual, WWDC began with a perfectly orchestrated keynote speech given by Tim Cook, featuring a few other key Apple guys AND more importantly, featuring some new Apple software and hardware announcements and previews.

 

 

DOUBLE RAINBOW EXCITING!

 

 

For the first time, the keynote was broadcast live from the Apple website and on Apple TV.

 

The two hour address was, as expected, super stylishly presented, with multiple media presentations, some jokes, and a few fantastic and even surprising new Apple products and updates.

 

The top things you should know about that were announced today are:

 

 

– The new Mac Pro. Stellar, revolutionary and round.

 

– iOS 7, the biggest change to iOS since the iPhone came out.

 

– OS  X Mavericks – the new operating system named after a California beach break.

 

– New Macbook airs with super extended battery life.

 

– iTunes Radio – the much talked about radio product that actually sounds better than we expected!

 

 

Super double rainbow exciting, right!?

 

 

We’ll have even more from WWDC coming up this week!!

 

 

iOS 7

 

 

Yesterday we were given a preview of iOS 7, and apart from the fact that we only saw a teensy snippet of one of our personal favs and the man mainly responsible for iOS 7, Jony Ive, the new iOS announcement exceeded even our expectations. And we had high hopes!

 

Now, this system update will not change your life drastically, it will not do your job for you or make you a more beautiful person, but what it does is promise to enhance your life, with it’s combination of a pared down and simplified beauty and increased functionality.

 

This seventh system update is the biggest change to iOS since the iPhone came out with the user interface changing pretty drastically as well as the addition of a number of new features.

 

As was predicted ( or leaked in a timely manner by Apple), the new iOS has none of the skeumorphic, life like graphics or icons as seen in the previous versions.There is a whole new color palette, completely new icons and the overall impression is a much cleaner, flatter, brighter and simpler user interface.

 

There is a translucent feel to the screen, which gives depth to the phone, even down to the wallpaper, which you can now see behind app icons, and that moves intuitively in relation to the motion in your hands.The typography, also, has been redesigned to be bigger, spacier and cleaner.

 

Apple has said that this is the future of iOS, that as well as being the biggest change to iOS since the original iPhone, it is a new beginning.And, well, we haven’t tested it out yet, but we like the way it looks. We like the new features, and we like the direction Apple is going with it.

 

Here are some new features that make iOS 7 super, double rainbow exciting.

 

Control center
Swiping up from the bottom of the device, you can find the all-new control center. This innovation provides quick access to preferences and settings. You will find switches for wifi, Airplay, a flashlight, do not disturb, brightness, airplane mode, and quick music buttons.

 

 

 

Weather, Messages, Calendar

Messages and the Calendar app have both been cleaned up and simplified. The updated weather app has animation representing live weather, (the lightening looked particularly cool) with the ability to see more details such as humidity, and scrunch all your favorite places together to see not only the weather in each, but the time in world clock format.

 

Multitasking

Pressing the power button twice will now give previews of apps that are open, rather than the small app icons that we see right now on iOS 6.

 

The phone will intuitively learn which apps you use most often and at what time. Background processing will then provide updated content, ready and waiting for the time that you use them.

 

This also applies with apps that send push notifications- when that happens, the phone will start processing updates because it knows that you will more than likely be opening that app soon.

 

The phone will recognize and take advantage of power efficient times, such as when it is connected to Wi-Fi, to update apps.

 

 

 

Airdrop
This is a new function, sadly only available on the most recent devices ( iPhone 5, iPad etc).

 

Airdrop makes it super easy to share photos, videos, contacts and other stuff between friends with iPhones. Connecting via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, you can simply click the share button and choose the recipient from those around you.

 

You can send whatever you want ( from apps that support Airdrop) and the person receiving can choose to save the item- it will then be located in the appropriate app. Photos in iPhoto, etc.

 

 

Safari

Safari is updated with a new full screen look and smart search tab, one tap access to favorites and better parental controls.

 

You also have the ability to see and browse your tabs from other devices.

 

Also… and this is kind of a biggie… no more eight tab limit! Oh my god apple, why did that take so long, but thank you, thank you.

 

Tabs are also now organized differently- vertically in 3D instead of horizontally, with the ability to reorder the tabs. To get rid of one tab you just swipe it to the left.

 

 

Photos and camera

The camera app now includes 4 camera options- Normal, square cropped, video and panoramic. You also have the option of a number of live filters to apply to photos.

 

The photos app has a brilliant way of organizing your photos using time and location to bundle your photos into ‘moments’, which are photos from the same time and/or place. These ‘moments’ can then be organized into ‘collections’, which are groupings of moments using that same organizational information.

 

You can also view your whole collection via year, see what locations you were in for each year, and scrub to find a specific photo.

 

 

Siri

Siri now has not one but two new voices, a more human like female and male voice!

 

A new interface, with sound waves to represent Siri when he/she’s processing, French and German capabilities and a whole whack load of higher intelligence makes Siri exciting again.

 

The results can now include photos within the app and has the ability to answer more questions more intelligently, with Twitter, Wikipedia and web search results from Bing integrated into the app. Interesting choice with Bing, but we’ll ride with it for a while…

 

Siri itself has also become more integrated into your device, and can perform functions such as turning the brightness down, turning Bluetooth on etc.

 

 

New app store
For starters, the new app store looks way better. Secondly, all of your apps will now update automatically, (down with those little red numbers!) and thirdly, we now have some new search options.

 

You will be able to search for apps based on your location, or or an event or festival you’re at. You can also now search for and find apps using age range, which is designed with kids in mind.

 

 

Itunes Radio
We have a whole other section on iTunes Radio, go here to read it ☺

 

 

Ios in the car
iOS will soon be integrated into your car by having your device display through the in-car monitors. A bunch of cars will begin to be integrated with Siri, Maps, messages and more in 2014.

 

The introduction to this was pretty broad, however there will be more details to come. The car manufactuors who will be including iOS in at least one of their models include Honda, Mercedes- Benz, Nissan, Volvo, Kia, Acura, Ferrari, Hyundai, Infiniti, Jaguar, Opel, and Chevrolet.

 

 

OK, so those are the big features. There are also a ton of different, smaller features in iOS 7, like the updated notification centre that can now be accessed from the lock screen, and synced across all of your devices, and the activation lock to try to prevent theft ( no-one can use your iphone unless they know your iCloud username & password.)

 

 

We think that iOS 7 is really pretty cool, especially considering that we’ll be getting at least a few more cool features in the hardware component around the same time (Fall this year). What do you guys think?

 

 

iOS 7 will be available to the public in the Fall. Demos for iOS 7 are available on Apple’s site- here.

 

 

First image courtesy of techradar.com, all others courtesy of Apple.com

iTunes Radio/ i wish they’d called it iRadio cos it’s easier to type

 

Yay! We really like this one.

 

iTunes radio is the Pandora-like radio streaming app we’ve all been anticipating from Apple, except it’s not standalone, it’s stuck inside iTunes. Which is actually a lot better, because it makes it easier for you to intertwine your own music and what you stream.

 

iTunes Radio provides a bunch of featured radio stations like ‘Summer songs’, around 200 genre based stations, as well as whatever songs/stations that are trending on twitter, and stations that your friends are listening to ( using Airdrop).

 

You can create your own station ( and share it with friends) based on genre, song name or artist. You can also start a station from a song in your own iTunes library.

 

When listening to a station, you can tell iTunes Radio to ‘play more like this’, ‘never play this song again’, or to add the song to your wish list. Like Pandora and Spotify, the app will learn from these actions and will intuitively play songs and artists more and more to your liking, whilst at the same time letting you discover new music.

 

You can look over your entire history on the app, as well as your wish list, giving you a super easy way to buy the songs you like from the store, straight into your itunes.

 

iTunes Radio is free, but it is supported by ads. If you are an iTunes Match subscriber than you get it free, with no ads.

 

Now, people have been freaking out a little bit since iTunes Radio was announced yesterday, saying RIP Pandora ( and Spotify and iHeart Radio etc) and other such way-ahead-of-yourselves-stuff, which we think is a little hasty. We love Pandora.

 

But here’s the thing. A yearly Ad-free subscription to Pandora is $36. A yearly subscription to iTunes Match, and hence ad-free iTunes Radio is $24.99. Some people will care about that $11 a year if the service and experience is comparable.We just don’t know that it is yet.

 

On the other hand, if you are like a lot of people and can just put up with ads, even if it’s the same damn one over and over and over again, then we can’t compare iTunes radio with any other radio streaming service yet, because the only hint to how many ads you’ll get is the word ‘occasional’.

 

One thing that Apple has over the other services is a whole other system built into some of the devices iTunes Radio will be used on. Siri wil be integrated into the service so that you can ask her to change the song, skip a song, ask who it’s by, ask her to play more songs like it, etc.

 

Apple promises first releases of new tracks and has apparently made deals with Universal, Warner and Sony in an effort to get access to a huge range of artists and songs. We can’t wait to try it, but until then, and maybe after, we still love you Pandora!

 

iTunes Radio is built into iTunes and will be available in the Fall with iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks across all devices, Apple TV and  iTunes on PC.

 

 

Image courtesy of Apple.

More iOS speculation

 

 

 

More speculation yesterday about Apple’s upcoming iOS 7!

 

So far, we all ( think we) know that the system update will be flatter and less skeuomorphic than the iOS we all know.

 

This means that some such features originating under Steve Jobs, such as the Notes app looking like a real notepad and other real world aesthetic replication will be gone under the leadership of Mr Jony Ive who took over in October last year. Gone also will be the shine and gloss of app icons.

 

Now, according to website 9to5mac, as well as being flatter, iOS 7 will have a monochromatic design and according to their sources, each app will have a white back with a splash of color individually assigned to that app.

 

Jony Ive is said to have made his mark throughout the whole of the updated version of iOS 7, which is due to be announced and previewed at the keynote address of WWDC on June 10th in San Francisco.

 

Looking forward to it Jony!

 

 

image courtesy of Redmondpie.com

iOS 7 Testing

 

In the lead up to WWDC, beginning June 10th in San Francisco, the guys over at Apple have been working their little butts off to get OSX 10.9 and in particular iOS 7 software updates ready and perfect before announcing them both at the conference.

 

After the debacle of Maps last year (press inflated or not), the dude in charge, Jony Ive, is stealing people from the OS X team to work on iOS 7 instead, and making everyone work double time if all reports are true.

 

What is also happening is a large amount of real time testing using the updated software- both on iPhones and iPads.

 

Companies in the tech industry, such as Macrumors and Onswipe have both noticed that since the beginning of May, there have been spikes in visits to both their sites and their partner sites from devices with Apple’s block of IP addresses; devices using iOS 7.

 

The devices are being tested in Cupertino and San Francisco, with 75% visiting from iPhones.

 

This means that Apple is in the final testing phases for the software update, which is proposed to have a major redesign with a flatter, non-skeuomorphic interface. Good news us, not so much for those predicting that Jony Ive wouldn’t make it to WWDC with a previewable product!

 

WWDC, is only a few days away! ( 24 totally counts as a few. Yessir.)

 

 

 

Image courtesy of  igeeksblog.com