What iOS 7 Means To Me

[jazzfish]

(Not that anyone asked.)

0) Upgrading went smoothly on my 4S. Had some minor connectivity problems with trying to download the required iTunes update, but those went away when I tried again a few hours later.

1) Control Center. I feel like I have been waiting nearly five years for this. Things you do semifrequently-- Do Not Disturb, use the LED camera flash as a flashlight, timer, calculator, enable or disable wi-fi or Airplane Mode-- are no longer buried in settings, but are instead accessible with a quick swipe up from the bottom of the screen, even when the phone is locked. Result: Settings app no longer takes up space on my first home screen.

2) I still can't delete useless system apps (Stocks wtf?), but folders are no longer artificially limited to twelve items, so I can dump more junk into a single folder. (Also, Newsstand can now be placed in a folder. ABOUT TIME.) All the apps that are accessible from Control Center are now on the second page of my Rarely Used folder.

3) I can't get to the Music (formerly iPod) app by double-tapping the Home button and swiping left anymore. Instead it's been poorly integrated into Control Center. If there's no music playing I have to hit Play, wait for it to start playing a random song, and then tap the song title to open the Music app. Result: the Music app must now take up space on my dock. I wouldn't mind except that its deep red app icon looks awful next to the subdued blue Mail and the vibrant green Phone and Messages.

4) Also, Music seems to forget what it was playing five minutes ago even more often now than it used to.

5) Speaking of broken workflows, deleting items from a list now requires a right-to-left swipe. Previously either left-to-right or right-to-left would enable a Delete button. Annoying.

6) Everything just feels a bit less responsive than I'm used to. Not sure if that's actually the case, or if I'm missing tap/swipe targets due to the thin-line appearance updates, and thus it'll get better as I get used to it.

7) The appearance updates themselves are a wash. For the OS itself: I like the thinner system font and I don't mind the new 'flatter' look in general. In specific apps: I don't care for Mail's spartan lines and I don't like the changes to Maps or Safari. Edit: and Calendar is a big pile of DO NOT WANT. Ugh.

8) I am one of the last holdouts against the combo search/URL box, and am irritated that they've finally forced me to start using it in Safari.

9) Okay, that parallax effect where the icons appear to be floating above the background is actually pretty neat.

10) In another month I will not care about any of this. After three months I will take it all for granted.

Comments

[rbandrews]

I haven't updated my iPad yet. I might get around to it this weekend but I hardly ever use it any more.

5. Wow, that's kind of a harsh fuck-you to left-handed people. :(

6. This will almost certainly get better in a couple updates. Pretty much every new release of any software ever has felt like that to me.

8. What's wrong with the URL / search box? I love it.

[jazzfish]

5: I guess? Worse for tablet-users, I suppose, on phone it's just a "oh right have to go the other way" regardless of what hand I'm using.

6: I hope so.

8: On the Device, it's that I want to type the important part of the URL and hit "go" and have it autofill www. and .com . No longer an option. On Firefox I like having the search bar so I can switch between three or four specific search engines (mostly Wiki, GoogleMaps, Youtube, and DDG).

[rbandrews]

I usually hold the phone in my right hand (so I can tap with my left), and use my thumb to swipe. I imagine if I were right-handed this would be reversed.

[jazzfish]

I do a decent amount of one-handed phone operating, and I'm pretty much ambidextrous there. It's easier in my right hand but it comes out of my left pocket, so it ends up in my left hand by default a good bit of the time.

[rbandrews]

Makes sense.

[thanate]

Heh-- I have a "curse you people, what happened to the days when you could stick icons in folders to change your systems sounds?" rant brewing for the next time I have to upgrade my laptop.

[jazzfish]

*blink* If I'm not mistaken those days were quite awhile ago...

[thanate]

This is the problem when you grow up with a technology that starts out being about custom user design and turns into dictatorial "you will want this!"

[zargon.livejournal.com]

And in 6 months there'll be another update and you'll have to get used to a whole NEW set of broken workflows.

[jazzfish]

Well, in a year. iOS updates = iPhone updates = 1/yr, pretty consistently.

And this is the first time I've really felt like they've broken things I was using. (I may be the only person who didn't mind the Maps change last year.) Not that my complaints will have much effect if they do decide to break more things, so, hey.

[zargon.livejournal.com]

As systems get bigger and you use more stuff more, you'll find that breaking your favourites is just something they seem to like to do. Windows XP to Windows 7 is a HUGE case of WTF Microsoft? Windows 8 I don't even want to talk about, what a nightmare.

What do you mean by the combo search/URL box? You mean being able to type your search into the URL box and the browser being smart enough to tell that it's NOT a URL and running a search instead? I've always thought that was kinda a cool feature since I never remembered to use the search box. In fact, for a long while, I had a Windows registry hack where I could type "g " into the URL box and it would run a search in Google for me. Cool little trick that I don't need to use any more.