iOS7 Beta

The first point to make is this version of iOS 7 is in beta, it sounds obvious, but it's worth stating. It's like the preview nights at the theatre, designed to iron out the kinks, the first time for the audience to interact with it. So iOS 7 currently isn't the finished article. 

Strikingly and obviously iOS 7 is very different, Apple's CEO Tim Cook remarked, it's was the biggest change to iOS (iPhones operating system) since iPhone was launched just 6 years ago. 

Following Scott Forstall's departure as senior vice president of iOS, Apple has made improvements. 

Firstly Jonathan Ive, Apples design ledgend was appointed the leadership role of Apple's Human Interface with Craig Federighi of becoming the head of iOS software engineering. At WWDC it was Craig who was invited onstage to present to the world the first official glance of iOS 7. 

What's it like? 

It's different, a flatter, more modern, cleaner, simpler look and feel, with added functionality. 

It was Mr. Ive, who previously stated that we (Apple) take changing iOS very seriously because it's at the very heart of every iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. So to make a change and still keep it farmilar is magical. From hitting the power button the design ques are apparent. Insead of swiping across the bottom of your iOS device, in a finger width sized bar, you can now swipe left to right across pretty much the whole screen to unlock. 

 My first instinct, maybe because of the upwards pointing arrow, was indeed to swipe to unlock, but upwards. This of course is not what Apple users are used to, and therefor the upward swipe is not for this. 

Instead swiping upwards reveals the control centre, where some of the most popular and useful shortcuts are now available.

Super quick access to the likes of Alarms, Bluetooth, WiFi, Calculator, music controls and more. Having used iOS 7 from the off, I can say I love control centre. I future builds will users be able to configure its contents? 

Did you notice the down arrow at the top of the home screen, centre, to the right of the new signal strength guide? Swiping down from the top of the home screen or again almost any screen allows access to your updated notifications. 

Notifications are now split into today, all and missed, along with a preview message of what tomorrow looks like. Cheekily it can say stuff like ..."looks like you have a busy today tomorrow, not might be a good to get some rest."

Improvements to the stock camera app, brings live filters, reminiscent of those found on the iPad, but better. A square option for posting to your Sunday pub lunch snaps to your social media app of choice. 

The features of iOS7 listed here are by no means exclusive, and serve as an appetiser to the public release penned for this fall. Found a better feature, disagree or have your own take on iOS7, leave a comment for me.