Rumor: iOS 7 to see significant overhaul, development running behind schedule

Rumor: iOS 7 to see significant overhaul, development running behind schedule


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So, Ive is going to get rid of skeuomorphic design principles and is actually refreshing the design of iOS? It's about time (skeuomorphic designs needs to be subjected to a blow torch). Getting rid of Forstall might have been an excellent decision after all.

I see this as a good thing for the iPhone, BUT since i have had my iPad Mini i actually really like the iOS on that and it works well from distracting me from what im doing on it and using it for at the time. The tile system/icons works well on the iPad/Mini, but i believe a refresh for the iPhone is in order.

I agree with you Van as in the skeuomorphic design is not needed at all, and i would be happy to not see it on my iPad, but honestly, i think its a preferential thing to people, because i use the Calendar as a Calendar and once im in there working on adding events and such, the skeuomorphic design becomes not noticeable to me. I do HATE Game Centre though. If there was one App i would like to rid of completely is Game Centre. If i could do a Hack on it and get rid of it like DashBoard in OS X that would be my first thing with every update i did.

vansmith said:

So, Ive is going to get rid of skeuomorphic design principles and is actually refreshing the design of iOS? It's about time (skeuomorphic designs needs to be subjected to a blow torch). Getting rid of Forstall might have been an excellent decision after all.

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Amen to that. I'm really looking forward to the overhaul. iOS is getting stale and some of the artificial limitations are really starting to annoy me. I ended up jailbreaking it a few weeks ago chiefly for SBSettings, but now I've completely modded it to closely mimic my desktop features in OS X. It's great this way.

lifeisabeach said:

Amen to that. I'm really looking forward to the overhaul. iOS is getting stale and some of the artificial limitations are really starting to annoy me. I ended up jailbreaking it a few weeks ago chiefly for SBSettings, but now I've completely modded it to closely mimic my desktop features in OS X. It's great this way.

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I've been pretty tempted to jail break some of my iOS devices for the same reason. I think I'll hold off for a little while longer. I still enjoy Apple products, but yes it is starting to get quite stale.

CrimsonRequiem said:

I've been pretty tempted to jail break some of my iOS devices for the same reason. I think I'll hold off for a little while longer. I still enjoy Apple products, but yes it is starting to get quite stale.

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If it's on 6.1.3, then it can't be jailbroken anyway. One of the nice things about jailbreaking is that, if you get to it soon enough, you can save the SHSH blob before Apple closes the window on signing off on iOS downgrades. With that saved, you can revert back to that version of iOS if need be. I wish I had done this with my first-gen iPad. It's a slug on iOS 5 and I wish I could roll back to iOS 4.

Worth mentioning... jailbroken iOS devices are worth more on the secondhand market.

TattooedMac said:

I agree with you Van as in the skeuomorphic design is not needed at all, and i would be happy to not see it on my iPad, but honestly, i think its a preferential thing to people, because i use the Calendar as a Calendar and once im in there working on adding events and such, the skeuomorphic design becomes not noticeable to me.

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I tend to be the opposite here. I can't get the look out of my mind when I'm using a product. It adds no pragmatic value and as a purely aesthetic technique, it looks just terrible. The mimicry of real world devices (such as a calendar or address book) doesn't need to include the visual appeal. Seriously, someone needs to take a blunt digital tool and break down every single instance of skeuomorphic design in Apple's code version control repositories.

lifeisabeach said:

iOS is getting stale and some of the artificial limitations are really starting to annoy me.

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As someone working with both Android and iOS devices, this contrast is crystal clear (this is not to suggest that Android isn't limited). I think the biggest one for me (and I realize that this is a limited example) is application design. I've been dabbling in mobile development using Flex mobile and the process of installation and testing is so drastically different. For my Android devices, I create a certificate, package it and send it to my devices which will happily install it. On my iPod Touch, I'd have to either pay $99/yr to enjoy my own apps on my own devices or I'd have to download a fake certificate that has been signed by Apple (quite shady and maybe illegal?), sign it and then somehow magically install it on my device using a third party app (such as iFunbox). The other big limitation is access to the filesystem which I seem to interact with more often than not. However, I don't expect either of those to be open to me with iOS 7.

That said, some of those limits to insulate my device from certain nefarious people/apps so it's a bit of a win/win situation depending on who you are.

I do wish they would implement an app to close all open apps yes I know you can double click the home button and start closing them out one at a time but it would be nice to batch close them since my wife never remembers then wonders why it slows down only to find 20 or more apps open.

I'd love to have some sort of gesture to close open apps instead of clicking the red close button each time. I can't tell you how slow it feels closing apps by clicking that tiny little close icon for each app (I admit to having fatter fingers than most).

While we're wishing upon a star... I'd like the option to "mark all as read" and "delete all" in Mail.

vansmith said:

I'd love to have some sort of gesture to close open apps instead of clicking the red close button each time. I can't tell you how slow it feels closing apps by clicking that tiny little close icon for each app (I admit to having fatter fingers than most).

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MYmacROX said:

While we're wishing upon a star... I'd like the option to "mark all as read" and "delete all" in Mail.

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2 nice wishes here. In the JB community there is a great tweak that does the Close All Apps and its a great thing. I had it on my last JB, but have stopped now because when i JB it last and had the Dev Beta 6.1.3 when Apple bought it out to the world it did some silly things with my iP5 and bricked it and the only fix was to take it into Apple and get them to reinstall the OS for me.
Im not taking that risk again just yet as im not far enough into my Development to be needing to test on the Latest iOS. Still it good I'm still a registered Dev because i do have a couple of basic Apps i have written and its nice to see them running on my phone…. Anyone need a Tip Calculator ?? lol

I really don't care that much about the UI, though I agree the icon grid is getting stale. I'd really like a main home screen that has a customizable array of pertinent information (i.e. latest emails, weather info, calendar, etc). Something similar to the pull-down (and forgotten about) notifications list, but front and center.

What I find extremely frustrating at this point is the fact that I can't change default apps. I'd like to choose my own browser, first and foremost - and now that Apple Maps has replaced Google's Maps (which I thought wasn't that great back in the day, but is now outstanding), I'd like to change my default mapping application too. Also, while Mail is just OK, some of the other mail clients are better.

If it wasn't for the seamless ease of integration with iCloud and iTunes, I would be giving Android a whirl again.

osxx said:

I do wish they would implement an app to close all open apps yes I know you can double click the home button and start closing them out one at a time but it would be nice to batch close them since my wife never remembers then wonders why it slows down only to find 20 or more apps open.

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The App Switcher doesn't do what you think it does. It is not a list of running apps, though all running apps will be there. It is a comprehensive list of any apps you've used, in order of when last used. Some of those apps may be actively running in the background, others in a "paused" state, and others fully unloaded and not running in any shape or form. I'll post a link explaining it, but iOS does a great job of automatically closing apps as needed if the resources they are using is needed. There is no benefit to closing all the apps in the Switcher since most of them, especially in larger lists, are not actually running. Of course it's easy to see why one would think they are running, and I think the whole concept of showing all apps like that is borderline useless. One of the many things Apple really needs to fix.

That said... by jailbreaking, I have a switch in my Notification Center that will clear the Switcher for me. That tool has an optional white list that I can add apps of my choosing to if I never want them cleared off there.

iOS: Understanding multitasking
TiPb Answers: No, you don't need to kill all the apps in your multitasking dock | iMore.com

vansmith said:

That said, some of those limits to insulate my device from certain nefarious people/apps so it's a bit of a win/win situation depending on who you are.

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Agreed. I appreciate and prefer Apple's dedication to protecting my information and privacy, but they have gotten overzealous with it. I'll still take it over Android, which I just can't convince myself to get interested in due in part to it being the polar opposite of what I want. The Windows Phone sounds, in principle, to be exactly what I want, but MS seems to be fumbling around, not sure what to do with their platforms. I am keenly interested in the Ubuntu phone and will be following that very closely.

lifeisabeach said:

Agreed. I appreciate and prefer Apple's dedication to protecting my information and privacy, but they have gotten overzealous with it.

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Have they?

lifeisabeach said:

I'll still take it over Android, which I just can't convince myself to get interested in due in part to it being the polar opposite of what I want.

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As much as I might support Android, it certainly isn't for everyone. I find that I tell myself once in a while as I'm using my Nexus 4 that, really, it's complicated enough in enough things to be frustrating for the average user. It could certainly benefit from a trip through the usability department at Apple in certain respects.

lifeisabeach said:

The Windows Phone sounds, in principle, to be exactly what I want, but MS seems to be fumbling around, not sure what to do with their platforms. I am keenly interested in the Ubuntu phone and will be following that very closely.

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You and me both. Oh how I wish WP8 actually offered what I need because I really want to like it. I think Nokia builds a solid phone and, if WP8 synced with what I needed it to and had the 3rd party support, I'd no doubt be using it.

The Ubuntu phone will be interesting. They're very late to the game and I wonder if this will dampen their entrance (I hope not though).

vansmith said:

Have they?

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Well I never said they were perfect about it. And that hole was fixed a few hours after discovery. It's probably better said that they focus too hard on the wrong things. There may be an obscure reason in the name of security for not letting 3rd party browsers use the Nitro Javascript engine, or for not letting me set Mercury to be my default browser, but I'm hard pressed to understand why. Especially since they have other processes in place to vet apps off the App Store. I've already started avoiding apps off the Mac App Store for these reasons. As an example, the MAS version of Unarchiver can't auto-extract to a default folder anymore thanks to sandboxing rules. I get a popup every single time asking me where to extract the archive to. Or I used to until I rolled back to the older non-MAS version. It's just annoying, and needlessly so.

lifeisabeach said:

There may be an obscure reason in the name of security for not letting 3rd party browsers use the Nitro Javascript engine, or for not letting me set Mercury to be my default browser, but I'm hard pressed to understand why.

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I don't purport to have the answer but I imagine that it's in part to ensure some semblance of quality (ensuring that the default application is always present, one that ostensibly lives up to Apple's standard) or it's about control (a bit of a conspiratorial claim but who knows).

lifeisabeach said:

Especially since they have other processes in place to vet apps off the App Store. I've already started avoiding apps off the Mac App Store for these reasons. As an example, the MAS version of Unarchiver can't auto-extract to a default folder anymore thanks to sandboxing rules.

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I actually ran into that the other day (with the Unarchiver) as well. I was trying to decompress one of Modern IE VMs offered by MS (source for anyone interested) and I tried with the Unarchiver. Well, the number of "permission denied" style errors I ran into was unbearable even when trying to decompress to folder that I clearly had rights to.

vansmith said:

I don't purport to have the answer but I imagine that it's in part to ensure some semblance of quality (ensuring that the default application is always present, one that ostensibly lives up to Apple's standard) or it's about control (a bit of a conspiratorial claim but who knows).

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I decided to install a jailbreak tool (Nitrous) that enables the Nitro Javascript engine for all apps on my iPhone 4S. I thought this was something strictly used by web browsers but actually a lot of apps use WebKit and are locked out from using Nitro. It's ridiculous how much snappier the couple apps I've tried have gotten. Seriously... it's actually that obvious, and I never thought they performed badly. I even went ahead and jailbroke my iPad 1 just for this tweak and it seems to have breathed a bit of extra life into it.

lifeisabeach said:

I decided to install a jailbreak tool (Nitrous) that enables the Nitro Javascript engine for all apps on my iPhone 4S….. Seriously... it's actually that obvious, and I never thought they performed badly. I even went ahead and jailbroke my iPad 1 just for this tweak and it seems to have breathed a bit of extra life into it.

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Interesting….. Have flown and crashed my Helicopter in Sim quite often today, i might play around and do this to my iPad Mini and see if it makes a difference, but looking online even in the Chrome Browser it gives a 300% boost. I do a lot of reading now on my iPad Mini, this could be just what I'm looking for Thanks for headsup LIAB . . .

I can't wait for ios 7 to be released. I already jailbroken my iphone 4 on 6.1.3 with redsn0w. I just like to customize it more. But yeah I really hope they add toggles to the notification center like from sb settings and other features like the tap to widget thing would be cool. They should also just get rid of game center cause it is just pointless you are never going to get to the top unless you play all day long and I can't do that since I have a life.