By the time you read this, millions of people will have already updated their iPhones and iPads to iOS 7, the latest incarnation of Apple's mobile operating system. It's also the most radically different one since the launch of the iPhone back in 2007, bringing with it a brand new look and feel and a host of new features. In yesterday's post, I suggested most people will find that upgrading is a low-risk endeavor, even though many apps don't yet share the graphical design of the new iOS. But what about the reward? Is it worth re-learning how to use your phone for some different-looking fonts, new icons and the myriad of other changes? The answer is a clear yes. Apple hasn't hit it out of the park with iOS 7 primarily because parts of it feel disjointed and some things are still crying out for functional updates, but overall, there are more than enough positives to take the time to download and learn the new software. After a few weeks, iOS 6 will seem dated.
In the following vignettes, I'll take you through some of the updates, noting strong points and weaknesses. The purpose isn't to give you a comprehensive technical software review or to duplicate Apple's very useful summary of the new features. But this post is designed to help get instant value from the upgrade.
For a look at what's not so great, check out: 7 Misses in iOS 7
Sometimes, between all the tweeting, texting and game playing, we forget the "phone" part of iPhone. Fortunately, Apple hasn't this go round. When a call comes in, you can now do more than just accept or decline it. The "Remind Me" button let's you ignore the call but have the phone bother you about it either in an hour, when you leave wherever you are, or when you reach your home. "Message" gives you a two-click way to send a text instead of answering the call, with three built-in replies including "I'll call you later" and "I'm on my way". You can make those texts say whatever you want by changing them in Settings >> Phone >> Respond with Text. Altogether, two small buttons offer a lot more power in call handling for the busy and the forgetful.
Strange plus: The phone dialer now has round buttons instead of the square ones it has had for years. Oddly, my accuracy in dialing numbers with it is much higher.
Never again: You can now easily block annoying callers by picking their number off the call list, hitting the "i" button and scrolling down. You'll never hear from that caller again unless they get a new number
You've been notified
Apple's been playing catch up to Android with notifications for a long while and iOS 7 does a solid job of narrowing the gap. The good news is that now when you get an alert from Facebook or Gmail, you can swipe it and go straight to the app, whichever app it comes from. Prior to iOS 7, you were limited to things like replying to a text message from the lock screen and could do nothing from the pull-down panel you get to by swiping from the top of the screen.
But about that panel: It now brings up a list of notifications as well as providing you two other choices, the Today view and the list of missed notifications. Sadly, none of the three panes is great. Today is a bit like Google Now on Android, an attempt to show you what your appointments are, what the weather is and the state of traffic between you and wherever your next destination is. It also throws in your stock quotes and a brief look at tomorrow. In theory, it's all good. In reality, it's pretty unsatisfying. You can shut off any module you don't want, but you can't add sports scores, for example, instead of stock quotes. You can't customize it at all beyond removing things from it. And the weather information contains no graphics, so it's not much of an at-a-glance tool.
Promising future: This feature could get world's better if Apple delivers even a little of what Google Now tries to do and eventually allows users to customize Today with third-party apps and information. Potentially, it could allow Apple to offer widget-like functionality in a cleanly presented manner.
Pandora's pox?
Apple's entry into streaming music won't kill Pandora for a whole host of reasons, but it might dent its popularity. The service, called iTunes Radio, is free for everyone but $25 annually will get rid of the advertising. Paying will also get you Apple's oddball iTunes Match, a service that's very useful if you still have a lot of MP3 files (but relatively unpopular since launching). The bundling of iTunes Match and commercial-free iTunes Radio actually represents some small-but-real synergy.
First, let's just say iTunes Radio will be instantly familiar to people that use Pandora. There are a bunch of pre-built "stations" to listen to or you can roll your own by selecting any artist or song and then customizing the station. If you make a hip hop station but are just fed up with Jay-Z, you can actually tell iTunes never to play any of his music. By contrast, you can explicitly keep adding songs or artists later on to hone the station to your tastes. It works great and the sound quality is often terrific. I use Spotify and Pandora regularly. Anecdotally, iTunes Radio's music quality is clearly better than the latter and comparable to the former.
Making history: Apple is the world's biggest music retailer and iTunes Radio is designed to extend that dominance at least a little while longer. The History feature allows you to quickly pull up a list of every song you heard and purchase it for your library for $1.29 or less. For the oldie that Radio helps you re-discover or the top-10 hit you just need to hear over and over, this kind of impulse buying is likely to prove quite popular
On the next page: Photos, controls, and even John McCain
The iPhone is the world's most popular camera because it's the picture-taking device that people have with them. In iOS 7, Apple has tried to make it better at organizing those photos so you can find and enjoy them later. Collections will sort pictures automatically by time and place and even works with photos you've previous taken. Those can be shared through a new feature that lets you make private Photo Streams available via Apple's iCloud. This creates a way to allow a few friends and family to exchange pictures without using a more public intermediary like Facebook -- if people actually discover the feature is available.
Apple is also offering a new feature that lets people shoot square photos that are very Instagram-friendly and even offers its own filters like the popular sharing service. Those features are not exactly hidden, but they're not completely obvious either. To shoot in square or panoramic, you need to move a virtual wheel that exists only as a subtle graphical hint and the icon for the filters is not labeled at all.
The more the merrier: If you have thousands of photos, the tiny thumbnail view of an entire year is especially cool. You should be able to zoom in fairly quickly on the Moment (as Apple calls it) you're after thanks to the organizing functions of the new OS. This will be especially pleasing on iPads.
Control freaks
Though you won't need it all the time, the new Control Center is a welcome addition to the new OS. Swipe up from the bottom of the screen and you can quickly gain access to a host of settings and buttons that were heretofore buried in the Settings panel and elsewhere. It's now easy to turn Bluetooth, WiFi and airplane mode on or off. But Apple went a step further, giving you access to a flashlight, the built-in calculator and the alarm app as well.
Quiet nights: If you weren't using Do Not Disturb before either because you didn't know about it or because you had to go into Settings to find it, it's here too, with a moon icon. For folks who use the phone as an alarm, this is a godsend. No calls overnight, unless you allow them. Settings >> Do Not Disturb >> Allow Calls From.
Keep the apps: Though the built-in flashlight works, it has no settings and Apple's calculator is basic. Something like Flashlight (from the App Store) and Digits (an excellent calculator) are worth having on your phone. It's a shame Apple didn't allow you to map the Control Center buttons to your favorite third-party replacements for their included options; perhaps in a future update to iOS.
Appetizing
When Senator John McCain had Apple CEO Tim Cook in front of him for a hearing about taxes, all he wanted to know was why his apps didn't update automatically. Well, the senator got his wish. But Washington isn't the only part of government likely to be happy with Apple. The new iOS has a much better ability to remotely disable lost or stolen devices via Find My iPhone, that law enforcement has been requesting for quite some time. Thefts of iPhones represent one of the fastest-growing crimes across the world and iOS 7's "kill switch" is designed to combat that. There are skeptics who believe it won't help, but time will tell.
In the meantime, another small new addition is the seemingly weird "Near Me" feature in the App Store. Most of the time, it will show you that people around you are using transit apps if you live in a big city. Not especially interesting at home, but quite possibly useful while travelling. Another popular use is going to be when you're at a museum or a conference and you can discover an app that is only relevant in that particular time or place thanks to the new feature.
This is a recording: Even with apps downloading automatically, there are some important notes. First, if you're worried about data usage, you can keep those updates from happening unless you're on WiFi. Settings >> iTunes & App Store >> User Cellular Data. Just turn that off. Second, the App Store app itself keeps a record of all the updates so you can check periodically to see what's been downloaded, what new features are in your updated apps, etc.
Small plates make for a decent meal
In the companion post, I called out 7 negative things about iOS 7. So I'll end here will 7 brief mentions of positives.
1) The app switcher is great. Double-click the home button and you can see all your running apps with a slightly shrunken screen representing each. To close one, just swipe up. To switch to one, click on whichever you want.
2) FaceTime makes voice-only calls as well as video calls. They sound good but be aware that you will use some data if you're not on WiFi. Since most plans these days include unlimited voice calling, you might want to stick with that when on the go.
3) Siri is better than ever. Wikipedia, Twitter and better searches powered by Bing make her more and more useful. Too often she still wants you to try again later. Ignore that and try immediately; it usually works.
4) Safari is good. If you're not addicted to Google Chrome, Safari is now a legitimate browser choice. The separate search and URL boxes are gone; one box rules them all. And there's an easy-to-access privacy mode if you want to keep a particular surfing session out of your web history. (No judgments here.)
5) AirDrop makes sharing simple. Apple took a lot of heat from Samsung in ads where phones were shown bumping one another to share videos. Well, AirDrop from Apple will do that one (or many) better, allowing wireless sharing of whatever's on your phone with anyone nearby. It can even share to multiple people at once. So far, sharing between Macs and iOS devices doesn't work, but perhaps soon. AirDrop only works on iPhones since the 5 and iPads since the 4th generation model.
6) Battery bar. When you plug in, the big green bar pops up on screen and gives you a percentage indicator to tell you how much charge you've got. It's not a lot better than the old one, but having the number is especially nice when you're on a tight time budget and need a real sense of how much better you've got.
7) Enough is the same. With all the changes, the average iPhone user will still be instantly productive on iOS 7. And perhaps that's the most important thing. You can discover the new features slowly and eventually you'll overcome the slight issues with the new gestures. For that alone, Apple deserves a fair amount of credit.
Follow me on Twitter. Find the rest of my Forbes posts here.
