-With iOS 7, Apple Leads By Following- Apple has shown the world the future of its iOS software — and it’s gorgeous

-With iOS 7, Apple Leads By Following-

Apple has shown the world the future of its iOS software — and it’s gorgeous

 

As Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice-president of software engineering, took us through slides during the WWDC keynote that revealed beautiful translucent layers and genuinely useful features such the Control Center, I’m sure I wasn’t the only iPhone user thinking, “Take my money now.”

Now that we’re moving further away from the reality distortion field that accompanies every Apple event, however, it’s worth asking: What did Apple really unveil at WWDC 2013? Is iOS 7 truly innovative in mobile?

 
Stop Me if You’ve Seen This…

As useful as Control Center is — including a gesture that calls up some of the phone’s most-used settings — it’s something that several Android phones (such as the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the Droid RAZR HD) have been doing for a while. In fact, in BlackBerry 10, it’s one of the fundamental features, as is gesturing in general. 

The improvements to Safari sound great: unlimited tabs, a unified search/address omnibox and “chrome” that goes away when you start interacting with the content. It might sound even better when you realize you can get all those features right now in Google Chrome for iOS.

The new flat design, which ditches the old “skeuomorphic” aesthetic of iOS, is truly a wonder. Jony Ive has outdone himself by creating translucent design layers, so when your onscreen keyboard appears, you can still get a feel for the content it’s covering up. 

Multitasking in iOS 7 gets a complete revamp, and now displays the active screen that each app was last using, in addition to the app icon; Apple says it works with “all apps.” Of course, other platforms (notably BlackBerry 10) have been doing true multitasking for some time.

Still, Apple can hardly be credited with inventing flat design or even being the first to bring it to mobile (that goes to Microsoft and its Windows Phone platform). Apple is simply following a design trend, and a few of Federighi’s asides (“We ran completely out of green felt”) show that Apple knows it was on the wrong side of that trend for a long time.

Really, if you examine any feature that Apple unveiled — from the audio-only FaceTime to grouping photos by “moment” — you’d be hard-pressed to find a company or service that hasn’t already done it. Even the AirDrop feature that lets you share photos with contacts near you is a little like Samsung’s Share Shot.                       

Emotional Innovation 
I know, I know. I sound like every critic who ever said “Apple doesn’t innovate anything.” But iOS 7 is indeed noteworthy, and that’s because Apple is bringing those features to the most popular phone on the planet, and wrapping it all in a gorgeous design. In short, it’s pulling an Apple. 

Being the first to have a feature doesn’t guarantee a good user experience — and it’s the experience that Apple has always prioritized. That philosophy was front and center in the video that Tim Cook used to kick off his keynote: The first thing Apple asks in designing products is not what they can do, but how they make the user feel. As much as I like many of the features I often see in various Android phones, respect Microsoft for doing something truly different with Windows Phone and admire BlackBerry for creating a truly state-of-the-art mobile OS, none of them does the whole package quite like Apple. 

And that’s the thing Apple gets better than anyone: You don’t differentiate through your product’s feature set, its battery life or any other spec. The difference is emotional: Don’t just do something for me, but make me happy while doing it.

When iOS 7 arrives in the fall, I predict the world’s 600 million iOS users will forgive Apple for being late to the game with many features. No matter what those other phones offer, to them, the iPhone is still the only phone that will make them happy.

Apple has shown the world the future of its iOS software — and it’s gorgeous. - See more at: http://zowchow.com/gadgets/with-ios-7-apple-leads-by-following/#sthash.BEXUa1bE.dpuf

Apple has shown the world the future of its iOS software — and it’s gorgeous. - See more at: http://zowchow.com/gadgets/with-ios-7-apple-leads-by-following/#sthash.BEXUa1bE.dpuf

Apple has shown the world the future of its iOS software — and it’s gorgeous. - See more at: http://zowchow.com/gadgets/with-ios-7-apple-leads-by-following/#sthash.BEXUa1bE.dpuf