Apple Announces iOS 7, Releasing in Fall
Today at WWDC, Apple has announced iOS 7, the latest version of the company's mobile operating system. As expected, the overall look has changed as a result of Jony Ive, Apple Senior Vice President of Industrial Design, who was long-rumored to be giving iOS a major face lift after expanding his duties beyond hardware design.
As previously rumored, the overall look of iOS 7 evokes a significantly more "flat" appearance, in contrast to previous iterations of Apple's mobile OS. The new typography is exceptionally crisp throughout, and the interface has an almost frosted-glass look with translucent menus. Amazingly, tilting your device with iOS 7 offers a 3D perspective, essentially allowing you to look behind open panes.
Swiping up from the bottom of the device screen opens Control Center, a translucent menu filled with a number of settings buttons. From the menu, you can control brightness, play music, and even access a flashlight. New multitasking features will work with "every app," and simplifies the process by backing the apps out as panes, then allowing simple swipes between apps.
Safari has also received a redesign, including some of the features--like iCloud Keychain--found in the upcoming OS X Mavericks. Swiping left and right will move through your browsing history, and more of the screen is dedicated to displaying content, as opposed to menu bars. Air Drop has also made its way to iOS 7, and sharing pictures and other files with nearby friends looks as simple as tapping their avatar.
Photography has grown into an important factor with mobile devies, and as you mgiht have imagined, iOS 7 includes some changes to Camera and Photos. Filters are available right within the Camera app, and switching shooting modes only requires a swipe. Apple admitted organizing photos in iOS could be a real pain, but new data filters like date and location should cut down on those long columns of images.
Another big feature announced during today's keynote: iOS in the car. According to Apple, a large selection of manufacturers will start integrating iOS into their vehicles in 2014. Essentially, iOS will appear on the car's dash screen, and Siri will allow you to check messages, get directions, and make cals without taking your eyes off the road.
The long-rumored iTunes Radio app will be free for all iOS users. The Pandora-like streaming music service will utilize ads, but iTunes Match subscribers will get an ad-free experience. The service attempts to analyze your musical tastes to serve up recommended tracks, taking advantage of the full iTunes music library.
Lastly, there's no need to go in and manually update your apps any longer. The new App Store will automatically update all apps (finally). iOS 7 will be available this fall for iPhone 4 and later, iPad 2 and later, iPad mini, and fifth-gen iPod Touch.
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Originally Posted by Lothy
