iOS 7

[Grall]

iPad3 has an underpowered GPU for its screen rez, rather like my iPhone4. It's not surprising animations don't feel smooth, especially as you probably get all the blurring and parallax stuff that I don't get on my phone. It's clear that iOS7 was primarily designed for Apple's modern line of gadgets, not the older stuff...

Still, the control center in particular and also the new app switcher makes me want to never go back to how things used to be. Plus, I simply never liked the old skeumorphic look of the OS, felt and leather and linen texture backgrounds looked shite IMO, and all the greyscale buttons and widgets were just dull and boring.

iOS7 looks far more modern and appealing, although I'm sure you're right Helmore that the 'feel' of the OS will get improved in iOS8. This update has been done extremely rapidly, Forstall got canned less than a year ago and it's doubtful it was started before he was let go. So there's undoubtedly some rough edges, and they will get smoothed out as time goes by...

 

[Helmore]

Well, I just tested on someone's iPad 4 to see what it's like on that and even there the animation for going from something as simple as Safari to the homescreen isn't quite smooth. Very noticeable actually and it makes it appear unpolished. It's not as bad as on my iPad 3, the homescreen wallpaper for example doesn't pop in later in the animation but is already there from the beginning on the iPad 4, but the way the homescreen icons flow in is jumpy. Not what I'm used to from Apple.

 

[ltcommander.data]

The iPad builds were supposed to be behind the iPhone builds in development and were less stable during the beta process. People were even speculating they might delay the iPad release. Hopefully now that the new iPhones are out, development will refocus on the iPad for iOS 7.1 in anticipation of the upcoming iPads and those optimizations will improve things for older models.

 

[milk]

Is apple getting sloppy?

 

[wco81]

Saw this elsewhere:

http://appglimpse.com/blog/touchmarks-i-smart-phone-touch-screen-latencies/

 

[Lazy8s]

I recently came across that article, too (or maybe it was last year's article when they tested the then-new iPhone 5.)

I've always felt that responsiveness is one of the core ways in which Apple just "gets it" when it comes to product experience where other companies don't even seem to know to be concerned. There have been a few elements in iOS7 that have worried me a little with regard to whether they still understand that responsiveness is the priority, but my overall impression, like that of some of the others here, is that iOS7 is fundamentally solid yet just surprisingly unpolished at this stage.

Diagonal scrolling as well as pinch-zoom in the iOS7 browser is as responsive and smooth as ever (even on iPhone 4), so Apple is still nailing some of the critical points that sell me on their devices (along with top-end graphics).

 

[Miksu]

I think iOS 7 is a mixed bag: some things look good, some don't. For example, I really like the look and feel of the settings page. And I dislike the new home screen. The problem with the home scrren is that the icon grid doesn't look good. It looks like some of the icons are bigger than the others, even though I know that they are equally sized. It just looks noisy. I think the reason for this is that the icons are just too big: making them smaller would reduce the noisiness.

 

[Arwin]

After using it for several days now, I definitely don't want to go back.

 

[Lazy8s]

Wow... until using Android again after iOS 7.x for a while, I didn't realize that some of the seemingly subtle changes Apple made to the user interface for navigating the OS actually represent a whole new paradigm for controlling the device. iOS 7.x enables navigation of the OS through gestures or tactile response without having to look at the display to pick out an on-screen control button, so the user can act immediately on their impulse to navigate.

While Apple's new template for control hasn't been adopted by a lot of third-party apps yet, many of the main bundled apps now let you go back with just an eyes-free swipe inward from the left edge of the display and then go forward again by swiping in from the right edge, like turning pages in a book. Of course, going home, bringing up the recent app switcher, or calling up voice control, just requires feeling for the indent of the physical button.

While iOS's lack of customizable widgets used to slow a user's access to frequently checked info, iOS 7.x's inclusion of widgets for calendar, weather, and stocks among the panel for notifications from all other apps, accessed with just a swipe downward from the top of the display, gives access to most of the critical info for which I frequently check, using just that one eyes-free gesture from anywhere in the OS. And getting access to the main system settings and functions with just a swipe upward from the bottom of the display, including flashlight, camera, and calculator functions, even straight from the lock screen, makes them accessible while also making the phone indispensable for such real, significant use cases.

Also, all of these gestures and controls play to the strength of the compact form factor of the existing iPhone models and their ability to be operated easily with one hand. Along with the addressing of some long-standing software deficiencies, like Safari finally retaining the info typed into text fields when swiping back to the last, cached page, being able to navigate the OS eyes-free in iOS 7.x is a whole lot more efficient and at least as intuitive as ever.

 

[Egmon83]

As weird as iOS7 once looked, try looking at iOS6 now... feels like 100 years ago

 

[Grall]

Weird? I love iOS7. This is what iOS should have looked from the very start, the shit they had before was a total dichotomy to the post-Jobs Apple aesthetics; wood and felt imitation textures, skeumorphic microphones, compasses and whatnot... It looked dumb, and it was dumb. Good fucking riddance!

 

[orangpelupa]

does ios now have improved their visibility/readability? last time i used ios version... dunno. its the one that the first time apple use the "flat but glassy look" with lots of white and thin fonts everywhere and confusing icons (like multi coloured ovals = gallery, or dark grey icon picture on grey icon background).

 

[Egmon83]

They increased readability a lot: a friend whom I gave my old iPhone 4 to asked me if a setting from the bottom drawer was enabled or disabled; it was hard to see because only the lines changed color. In iOS9 the whole thing changes color so it's more clear which is which. Same with some fonts. All in all it changed for the better. I also hated the old look; glossy icons and the icons itself were pretty stupid, as you explained

 

[Grall]

@ pelupa:
You can increase visibility in iOS through the settings applet, make fonts bolder and increase contrast and so on. Pictures icon, wasn't that basically unchanged since iOS6? I don't recall what it looked like, but AFAIR, they just changed the theme of icons, making them "flatter" with less skeumorphy, without actually altering any of the main designs. Or that's what I seem to recall anyhow.

 

[orangpelupa]

nice, i never know you can customize in iOS to make it more readable. i though it was "here, whether you liked it or not. this is your experience".

i dont remember what the iOS version is. but since they changed the icon from "fake-object" to "digital flat with gradient", they choose some un-contrast colours. like green on green, or grey on grey.
dont remember what icon though. i think it was SMS/messaging and camera?

 

[Grall]

Can't remember what these icons looked like in iOS 7, but in 9, messaging is white on green, and camera is black on light/medium grey. These are okay contrasts for my eye, I personally can easily see what the icons look like. YMMV of course, as usual...