iOS 7 Beta - Insights and Experiences

[Melfster]

I

The panorama feature on the lockscreen is mildly pointless but pretty damn cool

I would say actually makes panorama usefull so its not that pointless :D

[Stetson]

Something else I just noticed is that when you're using iTunes Radio you can get to the "star" menu (equivalent of Pandora thumbs up / thumbs down) from anywhere that the audio controls show up, like the lockscreen or Control Center. Nice touch and gives it a little edge over the competition for iOS users.

Also I've noticed myself trying to swipe the lockscreen the wrong direction a couple of times (right to left) because it feels like either way should work. It really should just let you drag either direction to unlock instead of rubber banding back to the lockscreen.

[threetonesun]

Something else I just noticed is that when you're using iTunes Radio you can get to the "star" menu (equivalent of Pandora thumbs up / thumbs down) from anywhere that the audio controls show up, like the lockscreen or Control Center. Nice touch and gives it a little edge over the competition for iOS users.

Radio is completely random right? There's no Spotify on-demand feature to it, is there?

[Stetson]

Radio is completely random right? There's no Spotify on-demand feature to it, is there?

Correct, it's pretty much just Pandora but built in to iOS and with direct iTunes purchase integration.

[philcruicks]

Yeah from what I understand.

But you can vote songs up and down (and say never play this again), so probably using the genius engine in the background to work out what songs you want. Should learn quite quickly and will be a nice way to discovering new music along with your existing library.

[Muhammad Farrukh]

[+virtorio MVC]

Some of the UI changes are great, but I think the new icons look awful.

[Stetson]

Some of the UI changes are great, but I think the new icons look awful.

Agreed. The main app UI overhaul is very nice. Most of the single color icons are nice looking too, like in Control Center. The app icons could use some work though.

The camera icon doesn't look so bad when you're actually looking at it on your phone, it has a couple of crisp details to it, but Settings, Safari, and Reminders are pretty rough.

[Shiranui]

My son will have to wait till he gets an iPad mini 2.

[The_Observer]

https://vine.co/v/blOUxUtaKzE

This I did not know, and is very cool!

trying to work out how?

[McKay]

Im running it on my iPhone 5 and let me tell you, its simply fantastic to use. So far the only thing that is buggy is the scrolling of youre contacts (it lags a bit) but the new features are just beautiful to use. When it does become widely available, you will all love it.

Feel free to ask me anything specific about it.

Mine lagged on contacts on all the iOS versions on all phones, probably because I have a tonne of contacts. How badly does it lag? Im talking the occasional jitter when fast scrolling.

[psyko_x]

The Bad:

- slow/laggy

- apps crash a lot

- my volume down button doesn't work (iphone 5)

- the icons look like a kid drew and colored them

- itunes radio song selection sucks. it gave me an old school hiphop station but then kept playing 50 cent and other garbage (btw how do I tell it I don't like a song???)

The Good:

- control center is great

- love safari's tab system

- glad we finally have multitasking windows

- font and color scheme is pleasing to the eye

- really love that if you go to Photos, you can "zoom" out/in to view photos organized by month, year, etc

Most of the negative points are things I expect in a beta. Overall I like iOS7 but it's not mind blowing compared to Win Phone 8

[Bizkit]

I have been using it since Monday night, and its pretty nice. The changes take some getting used to, like having the control panel.

I have it on a Verizon iPhone 5. I feel I am pretty knowledgable about the iPhone, I used to have my phone jailbroken and have had a few Android phones in the past. I am also running the OSX 10.9 beta on my Air right now.

Overall, I really like it. I hear a lot of people wondering if other apps icons will make it look crappy, and it honestly doesn't look any better or worse to me.

My home screen:

I REALLY like the overall uniformity. Everything looks like it was made by the same team, and the same time. in iOS 6, some things looks great and slick, other things looked terrible and 5 years old. That was a big plus to me.

Lockscreen:

The lock screen looks great to me, I like minimalistic things. Having the notification drop down on the lock screen is very nice. Works smooth and looks good.

Multitasking is really smooth and fast. Its great to have it. A lot better to me then tweaks like Auxo for jailbroken phones. it also works in landscape mode, which I thought was a nice touch.

Having infinite folder sizes is a blessing, as well as being able to dumb newsstand in there.

HOWEVER it is very much a beta. Not all apps work (Skype doesn't even load), and some have graphical issues:

Battery life is not as good as iOS 6. I would say about 75% as good as before. I listen to podcasts all day, which a few hours of talk time (maybe 3), and light web browsing. I cannot make it to 5pm on iOS 7. But it is expected in the beta.

There are some slowdown on some of the animations, but I'm talking like half a second, if that. It is noticeable, and not Apple's polish.

Overall, I would say if you are the type of person that loves to try new things, and are not afraid of a few bugs, it is save to install, baring you can deal with the battery life.

Ask me anything about iOS 7, I'll try to get either pictures here, or some Vine shots. I have no way of recording video unless you want a crappy video on YouTube from an iPhone 4S!

[Stetson]

(btw how do I tell it I don't like a song???)

Tap the star button (next to play/pause) to open a menu which has basically the equivalent of thumbs up and thumbs down choices.

[psyko_x]

Tap the star button (next to play/pause) to open a menu which has basically the equivalent of thumbs up and thumbs down choices.

ahh ok thanks. That wasn't intuitive to me. When I see the star I think it means 'favoriting' it or saying I really like it

[Pootis Spencer]

On my iPhone 4 I dont get any transparency on the dock background and I also dont have any wallpapers installed either static or dynamic. Overall OS is very laggy and many apps crash.

Is the 4 supposed to have transparency?

[Brian Miller]

The "Today" view in Notifications should shown the date for today too.

[Stetson]

I noticed today while driving that iTunes Radio has pretty good Siri integration. Things like "I like this song" or "I don't like this song" work, and you can ask it to switch stations as well.

The "Today" view in Notifications should shown the date for today too.

It does for me.

[+Warwagon MVC]

iOS 6 struggles a slight bit on the iPod touch 4. I suspect it *may* have to do with the touch having only 256 MB of RAM.

Well i'll be ****faced on a sunday .... I had no idea the 4th Gen only had 256 megs of ram.

Hm.... is the swear filter working? I totally just had to * out my own swear word.

[Jaybot]

I love that you can finally put Newsstand in a folder!

[.Neo]

I noticed that turning off Settings > General > Background App Refresh dramatically increases battery life on my iPhone 5 running iOS 7 beta 1. I was wondering why location services were constantly turned on. Apparently it was Weather app updating my current location in the background using GPS.

[Melfster]

Does any one of you know if you can use air drop to send items to OS X?

[tmaxxtigger]

Does any one of you know if you can use air drop to send items to OS X?

Not yet, even with 10.9 DP1, AirDrop only seems to work between similar devices. Hopefully this will be updated to work across devices as the beta progresses, else it's generally useless.

[The_Observer]

I noticed that turning off Settings > General > Background App Refresh dramatically increases battery life on my iPhone 5 running iOS 7 beta 1. I was wondering why location services were constantly turned on. Apparently it was Weather app updating my current location in the background using GPS.

Cheers for the tip. I dont ever use the weather app.

[Mohitster]

Screen by Screen differentiation between iOS6 & iOS7 shown here:

http://phoceis.com/tmp/phoceis-iOS6-vs-7.html