The iOS 7 Review
by Brian Klug & Saumitra Bhagwat on September 19, 2013 1:25 AM ESTLike any major design change, iOS 7 definitely takes getting used to. My initial reaction to a lot of iOS 7 was honestly more surprise and aversion than I thought it would be, but over time the changes have grown on me. I like to think that we're pretty open to change, especially as enthusiasts, but it's a natural human response to want things to be familiar and closer to what came before. Considerable time spent running the beta and watching parts of the platform change over time in response to feedback from developers and other third parties makes me optimistic that the new iOS 7 UI will continue to change and evolve the same way previous versions did.
The flip side is that I can't shake the feeling that some of the iOS 7 design is reactionary. Pundits lambasted Apple with iOS 6 and the iPhone 5 release for being pretty much the same OS with minor tweaks and very few stylistic changes. Those vocal members wanted dramatic change in visual appearance just for the sake of having it, and like the idiom goes, be careful what you wish for because sometimes it actually does come true. No matter how you sugar coat it, iOS 7 is a dramatic departure from the visual style that came before.
I like the use of translucency and transparency, and the new eye candy and visual effects in iOS 7 did initially solicit a bit of the same "wow" reaction that I had the first time looking at iOS on the original iPhone. The use of parallax and the translucency really does convey a sense of depth and order without being as garish as drop shadows or the shiny faux-3d buttons of yesterday's iOS.
The downside is that after a few weeks of it, some animations are really just a lot more gratuitous than they need to be – after the thousandth time watching the tiles fly in or application zoom out into the multitasking interface you want it to just happen instantly. I have no doubt that iOS will go the route of OS X and Windows Phone and gradually increase the speed of these animations to make the platform feel faster. They're also bound to have a power penalty at some point.
I guess that's the ironic part – the flagship devices don't drop frames during the transitions, they just feel long. I can speak to iOS 7 performance which is good on the iPhone 4S and above and newest generation of iPads, performance however on the iPhone 4 and iPad 3 leaves a lot to be desired. The iPhone 4 stutters through all of its animations, has sparse use of transparency, and generally feels like it's on its last legs. The iPad 3 unfortunately is much of the same – sparse transparency, occasional stuttery parts throughout, although a lot more usable than the iPhone 4. I guess I'm just surprised to see the iPad 3 get to that point of feeling slow so fast.
Although a lot of iOS 7 is visual, the functional changes and new features that are standouts really do make a difference. Control center is a long overdue functional improvement that makes controlling a subset of commonly used settings very fast. There's still more Apple could do here to smooth over a few more friction points, but it's a welcome addition. Notification center also feels a lot more well thought out, with logical separation of information that's useful and notifications themselves, even if there's still no "clear all" button.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
144 Comments
View All Comments
bplewis24 - Thursday, September 19, 2013 - link
And Apple has been suing Android handset manufacturers on the premise of those very analogies. Now they have the audacity (well, they always have, really) to do the same thing they sued for.KoolAidMan1 - Thursday, September 19, 2013 - link
And Android was nothing but a Blackberry clone until iOS came along.The circle of life, yada yada...
Sufo - Thursday, September 19, 2013 - link
Look, they're both turds so what does it matter. IOS is still a waste of good hardware and Android is still risibly unstable.If this level of quality was served to the desktop market it would not last long. I can't remember the last time my PC crashed and I run many more "apps" on a completely custom hardware configuration for many more hours per day of active use than my smartphone (and I'm not claiming win7 as some bastion of stability).
Were it not for all the privacy issues I'd be creaming myself over the thought of proper windows8 on an x86 smartphone - it would be the first acceptable and generation appropriate mobile OS since symbian :E (ok I admit when iOS was new it was pretty good).
Impulses - Thursday, September 19, 2013 - link
If current and future OS didn't crib from each other we'd be stuck in the dark ages... It's a natural evolution, all desktop OS started off stealing from each other too (or from Xerox's PARC R&D!). Hell OS X and Windows are still copying each other (full maximize took how long to get to OS X? Win 7's new taskbar was in response to what other dock? exactly).Guspaz - Thursday, September 19, 2013 - link
Does OSX even have full maximize? I had to install a utility to add that to my mac. Otherwise the maximize button in OSX doesn't actually make the window take up all the available non-menu/non-dock space.Glindon - Thursday, September 19, 2013 - link
Windows maximize to the size of the content instead of wasting space. If you want full screen, there's a separate button for that.Arbee - Thursday, September 19, 2013 - link
Yes, because Allah forbid anyone implement useful features from other platforms *rolls eyes*.That picture misattributes everything anyway: the multitasking is from WebOS, notification bars have existed in Cydia since before Android shipped, and Google certainly didn't invent streaming music services (I think Pandora was the first in that form, and Winamp's ShoutCast has been around since 1998 or so and is still going).
helloworldv2 - Thursday, September 19, 2013 - link
People keep saying how iOS7 is such a dramatic departure from the previous visual style, but to me it looks like the same old grid of static icons. Granted, the icons have changed, but is that really such a big thing? Also, don't you think that it's piss-poor work from Apple that already a year after it's launch, iPad 3 is basically a huge pain to use thanks to a software update?CBone - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
If the same old grid of static icons is what you have, even a minor change seems huge. "Aww, snap! The background moves!"uhuznaa - Thursday, September 19, 2013 - link
The new functionality is great (although you still can't change the default apps and if you open one app from within another pressing the home button still throws you back to the home screen instead of the former app), but the design is jarring and many apps are hideous.Anyway, for me this removes one thing that made me stick with Apple. Both Android and WP8 now look like great alternatives to that. Probably a good thing, any sentimental attachment to iOS (which was back then in 2007 a true revelation for me as far as UIs on a tiny screen go) is just erased now.
And hey, in the calendar you can't tap-and-hold a day in the month view and go straight into the new event screen for that day anymore.
The Notification Center in iOS 6 was a very concise list of things with great information density and still easy to read. All of this has been fluffed up and spread over three tabs now and events and even the weather are spelled out in huge and bland paragraphs of contrived text.
I don't know the target group for that but me it isn't. I've downgraded again.