iOS 7 is a huge departure from iOS 6 which is not necessarily a bad thing. Change is often good. In the case of iOS 7 however, I think Apple has gone in a new direction and left some of what made them unique in the past.
There are several much needed additions to iOS 7, the most crucial being Control Center. It’s ridiculous that the company who reinvented the phone took so long to give users quick access to things like WiFi and Bluetooth controls. Control Center solves the issue, but it is embarrassingly late. AirDrop is another nice feature of the iOS 7, as is slow motion video and iTunes Radio. These are welcome additions to the OS and Apple has done a nice job in finally bringing them to the iPhone.
The problem I have with iOS 7 is the obsession with flattening the OS, and losing all skeumorphism. It was always said that Apple stood at the intersection of technology and the humanities. Skeumorphism in OS X and iOS played a huge part of bringing people into technology because it made the transition comfortable. When you launched the Notepad app and it looked like a Notepad, it made the iPhone fun. The same could be said for the iBooks bookshelf. Granted, most people thought the green felt in Game Center was corny, but there was something about iOS that made the iPhone unique.
Apple decided to dump ALL forms of skeumorphism and flatten the OS. The result looks like a cheap Android imitation. I don’t like the cotton candy colors either, but those things I can get used to. It is the obsession with simplifying and flattening the OS that bothers me. Many of the Back buttons, or Done buttons, have been replaced with plain text. It seems oddly out of place. Look at the Send button in iMessage. It is no longer a button, but just gray text that says “Send.” Really?
In many cases the Back buttons (now simply blue links) almost run into the title of the page. If you’re several levels deep in your email you will notice the title is not always centered. That seems so “un-Apple” to me.
The UI feels new, but not as polished as it was before. It’s hard to describe in real terms, but the iPhone no longer feels elegant. There is some intangible quality that is missing with iOS 7. It feels like Apple is now following instead of leading. Why would they have to go so dramatically flat with the OS so abruptly? I have no idea.
What bothers me most about iOS is the hit it takes on my battery life. Almost every reviewer has admitted that an iPhone 5 running iOS 7 takes about a 30% battery hit, even after turning off background app refreshing and some of the parallaxing. That’s just inexcusable, yet it seems to happen with every major OS update.
We will all have to use iOS 7, then 7.1, and then iOS 8 after that. There’s nothing we can do about it at this point. We have to trust that Apple will fix the things we don’t like, and get used to the rest. All I know is, it sure feels like Apple is moving in a completely new direction and I’m not as enthusiastic about their choices going forward. I’m not dumping my iPhone yet, but Android doesn’t seem so bad compared to iOS 7.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments.
There are several much needed additions to iOS 7, the most crucial being Control Center. It’s ridiculous that the company who reinvented the phone took so long to give users quick access to things like WiFi and Bluetooth controls. Control Center solves the issue, but it is embarrassingly late. AirDrop is another nice feature of the iOS 7, as is slow motion video and iTunes Radio. These are welcome additions to the OS and Apple has done a nice job in finally bringing them to the iPhone.
The problem I have with iOS 7 is the obsession with flattening the OS, and losing all skeumorphism. It was always said that Apple stood at the intersection of technology and the humanities. Skeumorphism in OS X and iOS played a huge part of bringing people into technology because it made the transition comfortable. When you launched the Notepad app and it looked like a Notepad, it made the iPhone fun. The same could be said for the iBooks bookshelf. Granted, most people thought the green felt in Game Center was corny, but there was something about iOS that made the iPhone unique.
Apple decided to dump ALL forms of skeumorphism and flatten the OS. The result looks like a cheap Android imitation. I don’t like the cotton candy colors either, but those things I can get used to. It is the obsession with simplifying and flattening the OS that bothers me. Many of the Back buttons, or Done buttons, have been replaced with plain text. It seems oddly out of place. Look at the Send button in iMessage. It is no longer a button, but just gray text that says “Send.” Really?
In many cases the Back buttons (now simply blue links) almost run into the title of the page. If you’re several levels deep in your email you will notice the title is not always centered. That seems so “un-Apple” to me.
The UI feels new, but not as polished as it was before. It’s hard to describe in real terms, but the iPhone no longer feels elegant. There is some intangible quality that is missing with iOS 7. It feels like Apple is now following instead of leading. Why would they have to go so dramatically flat with the OS so abruptly? I have no idea.
What bothers me most about iOS is the hit it takes on my battery life. Almost every reviewer has admitted that an iPhone 5 running iOS 7 takes about a 30% battery hit, even after turning off background app refreshing and some of the parallaxing. That’s just inexcusable, yet it seems to happen with every major OS update.
We will all have to use iOS 7, then 7.1, and then iOS 8 after that. There’s nothing we can do about it at this point. We have to trust that Apple will fix the things we don’t like, and get used to the rest. All I know is, it sure feels like Apple is moving in a completely new direction and I’m not as enthusiastic about their choices going forward. I’m not dumping my iPhone yet, but Android doesn’t seem so bad compared to iOS 7.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments.