What’s Up With iOS 7?

We covered the new iPhones last week and since many of us have iPhones and/or iPads, iOS 7 is our next update and will be released in a few days on September 18. If you have the iPhone 4 (and later) or iPad 2 (and later) your device will be compatible with the new software. You’ll receive a notification on your phone or iTunes to upgrade… make sure you do because many app features won’t be supported on the old operating system.

The look of iOS 7 will be different, more flat and simplistic, otherwise it’s still very similar to iOS 6. But to save you the time and frustration of figuring it out, I’ve explained a few things that are new.

Control Center
You can now ‘swipe up’ to reveal a notification center, which gives you access to a lot of features that iOS 6 made you go into the settings for. A few of them are brightness, do-not-disturb, and bluetooth. You can also air drop right from the control center. This addition was one of the major changes from the old system.

Notification Center
The notification center is still there and you still ‘swipe down’ to get there. It’s a little different since it categorizes notifications by ‘today’, ‘all’, and ‘missed’. And in the ‘today’ section it syncs with iCal to give you a preview of your upcoming events.

Spotlight (Search)
Spotlight is still there, but you have to ‘swipe down’ from the CENTER of any home screen.

Multitasking & Force Closing
You still need to double click the home button, and then you can ‘side swipe’ through the apps that are open. To force close you need to ‘swipe up’ the apps as you side scroll through them.

Siri
Siri can be a boy now. And she/he can launch apps. Also if you’ve had Siri on your old phone, she was ‘beta’. Siri is now a full-fledged, official version!

Your iPhone will still be as easy to use as ever, but many people say the old operating system was still teaching people how to use smart phones. iOS7 isn’t quite as instinctual if you haven’t had an iPhone for a while, but it is more minimalist and has very low click-to-get-where-you-need-to numbers. I think that after just a few days of using it, iOS 7 will be second nature to us all. iOS 7 has a lot of new features so check out Apple’s website to learn more.

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