Today, Apple kicked off their developer conference with their keynote. Very similar to Google I/O and Microsoft’s BUILD conference. Ironically, they are all held in the same place, Moscone West in San Francisco. Tim Cook and crew took to the stage to announce 900,000 iOS apps, they’ve paid out over $10 billion to developers since 2008, new Macbook Air’s, Mac OS X 10.9 Grumpy Cat Mavericks, iOS 7, iTunes Radio and a few other things. Much like the Google I/O keynote, it was pretty overwhelming. But as an Android fan I was kinda bored. Since we are in the mobile industry, we’ll just check out the iOS 7 and see what’s changed.
Apple announced that they’ve sold 600 million iOS devices. That includes iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch’s. They also say “Over 90% of iOS users are on the latest version of iOS. “More than a third of Android users are using an operating system that was released in 2010.” Those were Tim Cook’s words. While they are true, it’s still a stab in the heart of every Android fan out there.
iOS 7 was announced and has a completely new UI. It has a new ‘Flat’ design, thanks to Jony Ives. They’ve completely reworked the entire OS. It looks completely different than it did before. To me, it looks like an OS developed over in China, but that might just be me. iOS 7 also brought changes to Notification Center (“borrowed” from Android) and multitasking. They also brought a ton of changes to mobile Safari, which I doubt many power users use nowadays. iOS 7 brings file sharing with AirDrop which has been on OS X for a while now. Also some changes to Photos and the camera and some huge changes to Siri. But it still doesn’t seem all that useful.
The one feature that I liked and so did a few of our other writers is the changes to find my iPhone. The changes to the app allow you to lock out your device. So if a thief takes your device, wipes and tries to reactivate it, it won’t work. That is a major problem that Google has yet to pinpoint. I hope they’ll do something similar to Find my iPhone for Android real soon.
That’s about it. Apple announced some new stuff that we’ve had for a while, along with taking stabs at the competition. Since most of Apple’s iOS users are not huge fans and power users like us, I have a feeling we’ll see a lot of complaints about the design changes for iOS 7.