First Impressions on Apple iOS 7

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

What a long, strange trip it's been for iOS. The operating system, which powers 700 million iPhones, iPod Touches and iPads, started as a series modified web applications on the original iPhone and then steadily developed into a full-blown developer supported ecosystem that became the blueprint for distributing software on smartphones.

With iOS 7, which is available for free right now via a software update, Apple has gone from having the oldest mobile operating system to having the newest. Let's see what it is all about.

iOS 7, which will be made available for free, is compatible with most devices that come after the iPhone 3GS and the original iPad. Following the less is more approach of Apple's Senior VP of Design, Jony Ive, the entire OS and experience has been pared down, the bevels and gradients of the previous iOS icons have been reduced to sleek but thoughtful line drawings and the use of colour is evident everywhere.

Gone is the much maligned skeumorphism that used representations of stitched leather and felt to represent actual miniatures of what the icons corresponded with.

There was a purpose for that early iconography, to introduce touch computing to the masses. Now that most people can understand or at least figure out how to work these devices, obvious iconography seems unecessary.

"We understood that people had already become comfortable with touching glass ... So there was an incredible liberty in not having to reference the physical world so literally." said Jony Ive in an interview with USA Today, "We were trying to create an environment that was less specific. It got design out of the way."

For iOS 7 fonts are more linear, lighter and seem to float on the screen and there are now transparencies and actual layers of animation to signify movement from the home screen to a specific app and back. 

The overall effect is an airier, some would say, more ethereal.

Apple's added a new parallax effect on the homescreen that uses the digital gyroscope to create an airy floating effect.

There are visible layers for the icons, the wallpaper and the device itself, with subtle movements and variances  when you move the device.

iOS 7 is definitely more user focused than previous versions and can now compate with other smartphone platforms that boast being build around the user. Sharing to services like Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and others happens out of the box and can be accessed on a system level.

App updates, which have long been an annoying yet necessary part of iOS, now happen in the background without needing too much babysitting. 

The new Control Centre, which is a window shade you pull up from the bottom of any screen, brings up all the easy buttons for turning on WiFi, Airplane Mode, Bluetooth, Do not Disturb mode and the Orientation Lock.

It also has quick access to the brightness control, audio player controls as well as buttons to access the LED flash in flashlight mode, timer, calculator and camera. There's also a small window to control the new AirDrop feature that allows iOS 7 devices to share files within WiFi range, better than NFC since it doesn't require tapping to share.

The window shade you pull down from the top of the screen gives notifications, calendar reminders, stocks as well as alerts from various apps who have been granted access to the notification centre.

It is neat and convenient way to triage incoming information and offers the best at-a-glance implementation we've seen on iOS so far.

Siri, Apple's personal assistant, has also received a makeover for iOS 7. There are now new male and female voices to choose from and Siri is a lot smarter.

Siri can search Wikipedia, define words, be used to control various aspects of the operating system. The best thing is that these features will work in Canada. 

The first version of Siri was geographically limited to the US for a number of months and it's great that Apple's had time to flesh out the new Siri functionality for many countries. 

The result is a more sophisticated, more plugged in and less robotic personal assistant experience. 

You can ask questions how many calories are there in a bagel, you can search for nearby movies or what is showing right now, you can now search what is trending on Twitter (don't bother unless you're crazy about Justin Bieber), you can search for specific sports teams, breaking news and the default search is now Bing instead of Google.

Multitasking is much better and more fluid. Double clicking the home button brings up all the open apps and these can be easily invoked with one touch or flicked away to be closed. Reminiscent of Palm's webOS and BlackBerry's PlayBook 'cards' style of dealing with open apps, it is easier than ever to move from one open app to another.

All in all, updating to iOS 7 is a no brainer for most users that have compatible devices. It is truly the refinement of the most enduring mobile OS and really tosses out a lot of old features while pushing new boundaries and improvements.

iOS 7 will bring a bit of a learning curve and some adjustment, but this is still one of the most intuitive and multifunctional mobile operating systems in the market today.