Could it be true that Apple really can't function without Steve Jobs? It would appear that way.
I've had iOS 7 for a couple days. I honestly wish I had not upgraded. It's a major disappointment, for the reasons below - so much so that I'm reconsidering staying with the iPhone/iPad platform unless there's an update forthcoming.
Feature/Functionality:
There are no doubt some nice, useful new features in this release. And every tech site on the Web will give you full coverage, there's no point in me repeating here. But IMO at best the good changes are evolutionary - by-and-large nothing life-changing. The bad ones however ARE live-changing, in the wrong direction. Less convenient. Less intuitive, less efficient.
The two changes most apparent at first are the color scheme/icon design, and a ton of new "animation". I'd put both of these in the category of "bloatware". Having screens zoom in and out does nothing but burn CPU cycles and battery life, and contributes NOTHING to the usability of the device. In fact quite the opposite since on older phones iOS7 is noticeably slower than was iOS 6. Some of this stuff can be turned off or at least flattened a little - but you can't eliminate it (which is what I want to do).
Second is the horrible new "color scheme" which consists of very light gray or blue text on a glaring white background, or dark gray/light blue text on a light gray background. This is unbelievable - it makes the device nearly impossible to use outside, and is headache-producing inside. There are a few accessibility settings to make the text more bold, larger, etc. but they're band-aids at best. And c'mon... my eyes aren't great but I don't have macular degeneration (although this phone might trigger that ;-) - should I have to turn on "accessibility" settings? The old iOS interface was pretty close to perfect - the new one works only in the TV ads.
New Swipes:
There are also some new "swipe" patterns that you'll have to get used to - none are an improvement. Swipe down from the very top to get your "notification center" ... an swipe down from "almost the top" to get to "Spotlight Search" - a very important feature for iOS users. Spotlight was always "one home screen to the left" - Click home button once, scroll left once - you were there. No more - now you have to swipe DOWN and not just down anywhere. It takes practice to not load "notification" instead- Spotlight is no longer do it one-handed operation while on the move.
No Web Search - Spotlight used to search everything at once - phone, (apps,mail, messages - everything) and the web. Now, once you do get it loaded, you'll notice you can no longer search the web from here. W..T..F.. ?
RESOURCE HOG:
Any time you do animation you burn up CPU cycles and battery life, and you increase the size of the software that has to be installed in the first place. In iOS 6, when you went from screen to screen, they simply appeared. Now new screens "Swoop in" like a bad newbie PowerPoint presentation. There is absolutely no benefit in this behavior.
Why would someone using a phone with one hand while walking around on a jobsite (or driving...shame on us) need or want screen animation? Worse, it kills performance of older phones, and it burned up nearly 3 GB of storage space (iOS7 required 2.9 GB additional space to install, and as far as I can tell it did not release a single byte after installation was complete...researching..) There are a few ways to modify this behavior in settings, but I want it GONE.
COLOR SCHEME:
Likewise the light-on-lighter color scheme. Here's hoping iOS 7.001 has a "color theme" tool or similar where we can at least set up some contrast that will work out-of-doors.
100s OF NEW FEATURES - NONE THAT MATTER - AND NO NEW MAIL:
Not to be a total downer, where are some nice new features in iOS7, and there are million words written about them in the various tech sites so I won't repeat - except to complain about the ONE thing we all desperately needed in iOS and still do not have - a productive e-mail client. Yes "Mail" allows you to read and respond to your mail - so from that perspective it works. But here is a short list of the things it cannot do that Microsoft Outlook has handled nicely since its very first release.
- Can't sort the inbox (or any folder) by sender, recipient, date, subject -nothing. Message arrive and are listed last-in on top, and that's that. If you want to find a message from three months ago from a sender who you can't quite remember - happy loading and scrolling. The only work-around is using Spotlight Search (which does work well) but you need to know more of what you're looking for.
- Can't Easily set up recipient "Groups" on-the-fly. Sure, you can create "groups" in your contacts app with 2-3 people in them (or whatever) and send a new message to that group, but what I'm talking about is more organic, a way to whip up that group on-the-fly and use it for that one mail string without having to formalize it. There are plenty of times I need to send project info to a client plus their brother and their kid... but I don't need that combo taking up permanent "list" space.
- In general, you need third-party apps to manage projects productively- The mail/calendar/contacts apps are simply not integrated tightly enough. That's not really a complaint - Trello or ToodleDo or BuilderTREND mobile work better anyway - but if you're going to pour development dollars into your operating system with all these core apps - shouldn't the apps evolve along with everything else? Otherwise all you have are the new colors and animations.
Of course, as I've mentioned before - the real purpose for the operating system is as a framework/platform for developers - and with the advent of 64-bit computing on iPhones, no doubt a large % of the development effort in iOS7 was behind-the-scenes, necessary to support what's coming down the road as 3rd-party developers create new 64-bit apps. But that could have been a minor update without upsetting the entire UI/UX apple cart.
Bottom line- I'm no more impressed with iOS7 than I was with Windows 8. Both are huge misses that need major re-work and a quick ".1" release to fix them and restore credibility to their developers. We expect those "third time is the charm" shenanigans from Microsoft - we don't expect it from Apple. If this is the best "Sir" Jony Ives and Tim Cook can "cook up" without Steve Jobs, they have a big problem on their hands. The iPhone 5S went on sale today - my plan was to go get one but after seeing iOS7 I'm putting that on hold. I'm betting millions of others are doing the same.
Thoughts? Agree or have at me - but remember to (please)keep it civil.
JLS
I've had iOS 7 for a couple days. I honestly wish I had not upgraded. It's a major disappointment, for the reasons below - so much so that I'm reconsidering staying with the iPhone/iPad platform unless there's an update forthcoming.
Feature/Functionality:
There are no doubt some nice, useful new features in this release. And every tech site on the Web will give you full coverage, there's no point in me repeating here. But IMO at best the good changes are evolutionary - by-and-large nothing life-changing. The bad ones however ARE live-changing, in the wrong direction. Less convenient. Less intuitive, less efficient.
The two changes most apparent at first are the color scheme/icon design, and a ton of new "animation". I'd put both of these in the category of "bloatware". Having screens zoom in and out does nothing but burn CPU cycles and battery life, and contributes NOTHING to the usability of the device. In fact quite the opposite since on older phones iOS7 is noticeably slower than was iOS 6. Some of this stuff can be turned off or at least flattened a little - but you can't eliminate it (which is what I want to do).
Second is the horrible new "color scheme" which consists of very light gray or blue text on a glaring white background, or dark gray/light blue text on a light gray background. This is unbelievable - it makes the device nearly impossible to use outside, and is headache-producing inside. There are a few accessibility settings to make the text more bold, larger, etc. but they're band-aids at best. And c'mon... my eyes aren't great but I don't have macular degeneration (although this phone might trigger that ;-) - should I have to turn on "accessibility" settings? The old iOS interface was pretty close to perfect - the new one works only in the TV ads.
New Swipes:
There are also some new "swipe" patterns that you'll have to get used to - none are an improvement. Swipe down from the very top to get your "notification center" ... an swipe down from "almost the top" to get to "Spotlight Search" - a very important feature for iOS users. Spotlight was always "one home screen to the left" - Click home button once, scroll left once - you were there. No more - now you have to swipe DOWN and not just down anywhere. It takes practice to not load "notification" instead- Spotlight is no longer do it one-handed operation while on the move.
No Web Search - Spotlight used to search everything at once - phone, (apps,mail, messages - everything) and the web. Now, once you do get it loaded, you'll notice you can no longer search the web from here. W..T..F.. ?
RESOURCE HOG:
Any time you do animation you burn up CPU cycles and battery life, and you increase the size of the software that has to be installed in the first place. In iOS 6, when you went from screen to screen, they simply appeared. Now new screens "Swoop in" like a bad newbie PowerPoint presentation. There is absolutely no benefit in this behavior.
Why would someone using a phone with one hand while walking around on a jobsite (or driving...shame on us) need or want screen animation? Worse, it kills performance of older phones, and it burned up nearly 3 GB of storage space (iOS7 required 2.9 GB additional space to install, and as far as I can tell it did not release a single byte after installation was complete...researching..) There are a few ways to modify this behavior in settings, but I want it GONE.
COLOR SCHEME:
Likewise the light-on-lighter color scheme. Here's hoping iOS 7.001 has a "color theme" tool or similar where we can at least set up some contrast that will work out-of-doors.
100s OF NEW FEATURES - NONE THAT MATTER - AND NO NEW MAIL:
Not to be a total downer, where are some nice new features in iOS7, and there are million words written about them in the various tech sites so I won't repeat - except to complain about the ONE thing we all desperately needed in iOS and still do not have - a productive e-mail client. Yes "Mail" allows you to read and respond to your mail - so from that perspective it works. But here is a short list of the things it cannot do that Microsoft Outlook has handled nicely since its very first release.
- Can't sort the inbox (or any folder) by sender, recipient, date, subject -nothing. Message arrive and are listed last-in on top, and that's that. If you want to find a message from three months ago from a sender who you can't quite remember - happy loading and scrolling. The only work-around is using Spotlight Search (which does work well) but you need to know more of what you're looking for.
- Can't Easily set up recipient "Groups" on-the-fly. Sure, you can create "groups" in your contacts app with 2-3 people in them (or whatever) and send a new message to that group, but what I'm talking about is more organic, a way to whip up that group on-the-fly and use it for that one mail string without having to formalize it. There are plenty of times I need to send project info to a client plus their brother and their kid... but I don't need that combo taking up permanent "list" space.
- In general, you need third-party apps to manage projects productively- The mail/calendar/contacts apps are simply not integrated tightly enough. That's not really a complaint - Trello or ToodleDo or BuilderTREND mobile work better anyway - but if you're going to pour development dollars into your operating system with all these core apps - shouldn't the apps evolve along with everything else? Otherwise all you have are the new colors and animations.
Of course, as I've mentioned before - the real purpose for the operating system is as a framework/platform for developers - and with the advent of 64-bit computing on iPhones, no doubt a large % of the development effort in iOS7 was behind-the-scenes, necessary to support what's coming down the road as 3rd-party developers create new 64-bit apps. But that could have been a minor update without upsetting the entire UI/UX apple cart.
Bottom line- I'm no more impressed with iOS7 than I was with Windows 8. Both are huge misses that need major re-work and a quick ".1" release to fix them and restore credibility to their developers. We expect those "third time is the charm" shenanigans from Microsoft - we don't expect it from Apple. If this is the best "Sir" Jony Ives and Tim Cook can "cook up" without Steve Jobs, they have a big problem on their hands. The iPhone 5S went on sale today - my plan was to go get one but after seeing iOS7 I'm putting that on hold. I'm betting millions of others are doing the same.
Thoughts? Agree or have at me - but remember to (please)keep it civil.
JLS
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