September 18 saw the bright, orgasmic future of the digital evolution with the unveiling of Apple’s new mobile operating system, iOS 7. Despite the usual hiccups, it looks sweeter than the first girl who ever loved you … and smarter than her, too. With so many features, it’s easy to miss some of the best ones. That is where we come in.
Flat, Colorful Format
The first thing one will notice upon discovery of the great new flagship operating system is its colorful new layout. Adorned with flat yet floating icons and a pearly white page layout, the fit of Apple is less sleek and more soft, less sophisticated and more playful.
The blue bubbles surrounding its folders, the lightness its applications put off and the simplicity in its form give the new layout breath like fresh spring air after a sturdy month of rain. Although only Apple’s icons have this freshness, whereas others still hold their sleek personality, it’s probably a matter of time for the others to join their ship.
Control Center
Probably the most innovative and most likely to-be-used feature is its Control Center, a once swipe-left simple idea has been expanded into another weightless screen with all the convenience right at once. With it, the need to go anywhere else for fundamental tasks has diminished almost completely, giving you the alarm, volume, sleep mode, brightness, Bluetooth, camera and a new but very useful flashlight option, among others, within one swipe of the thumb. (Photo credit: AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
Camera
Forget for a moment that the latest Apple announcement has a number of inviting camera improvements on board, but so does the new – yet free of charge – operating system. The camera is now set to shoot any shape or shade your little photo-happy heart desires. The camera app itself offers video, photo, square (for those sexy Instagrams) and panoramic modes all conveniently placed options on the same simply designed screen, and it’s as easy as swiping to move from one to the next. The filters tab in the lower right corner allows you to shoot with the filter on with eight to choose from. Now you can add a vintage filter to your already vintage digital photos, still without knowing how to use a camera. It’s about goddamn time!
If you’re rocking the new line of iPhones, then you have another slew of hip features including the true tone flash and bigger aperture coming your way, but you already knew that because you read all my articles. Right!?
Smooth Moves
If there is one word we can use to sum up the iOS 7 update, it would be “swipe-happy.” With plenty of new and improved features, everything seems to just be a swipe away, which is unfortunate for the uncoordinated swipers of the world. Now closing down your apps is as easy as swiping up after double clicking to pull up open apps and heading back to the previous page is as quick as swiping left. A new name (Spotlight) for an old feature, using a search field to find anything on your phone, is now just a swipe down motion, and of course, swiping up from bottom pulls up Control Center. There is something for swipes of all directions, it seems.
iTunes Radio
One of the biggest features announced several months back was the impending arrival of Apple’s new music service, iTunes Radio. The long awaited invention by the people who brought you iTunes is finally here, and it’s giving the kiddies at Spotify and Pandora a run for their money. The streaming service, which works much like the Genius tab on the computer’s iTunes, pulls music it thinks you’ll dig from records you don’t own. Ran by a team of actual human beings and offering the purchase option of individual songs while syncing to all your mobile devices, iTunes Radio puts Pandora to shame, and rightfully so, since they have made little advances in the past. In time, the service will likely run Spotify out of town, too.
Offered free to iTunes Match customers ad-free, the service is just another great perk, but you can also get it for free without the subscription, if you don’t mind your slow head-banging being interrupted by a commercial. For less than a quarter what you pay for a yearly Spotify subscription, you’d be doing a disservice to yourself if you didn’t get it, music fiend.
Sexchanging Siri
We got a little taste of what Siri was up to when they announced iOS 7, but it turns out, Siri is a man! Well, at least she can be, if you want her to. Siri hasn’t just been having sex changes though; she’s been going to school apparently, because this is a much brighter, articulate Siri than the tramp we’ve yelled bloody murder at while calmly scooting across town in our Priuses.
Not only does Siri have a lovely singing voice, but the search and pronunciation is top notch, not to mention more Twitter savvy. Hell, Siri might even remember your birthday this year, if your lack of family phone calls on your special day has you down. If Siri couldn’t pronounce your name right before, there’s an option to say “you didn’t pronounce that right,” and you can teach Siri how to speak correctly. Looks like Siri might be your new best/only friend.
Auto Updates
We’ve all grown sick of our champagne problem, the constant updating of applications. Constantly putting in your password to upgrade apps you don’t use just to avoid seeing that haunting, big red bubble reminder is like slave labor that should be outlawed, thus the Auto Update option brought to you by iOS 7. If you heard about the feature and wonder why it isn’t happening for you, here’s a little hint: You have to turn it on.
Under the “iTunes & App Store” tab in your Settings application, you can scroll down to “Automatic Downloads” section and turn on your App Store updates with a quick swipe to the right. Goodbye, illegal child labor.
Number Blocks
With plenty of noteworthy features like bigger app folders, text timestamps and private browsing for your filthy, X-rated little eyes, there’s one feature we all dreamt nightly about while gripping the life out of our phones as a constant stream of unwanted group texts come in: Number blocking. After years of receiving messages from people we don’t know, don’t care about or would prefer just didn’t walk the Earth, we finally have the option to remove them from our iPhones, and thus, our lives. You can block calls, texts and just about any communication from those pesky coworkers, bitter ex-girlfriends and Tinder stalkers all with one slip of the finger. Found in your Settings application under the Phone, Messages and FaceTime tabs, it’s everything you could have dreamed of in a mobile operating system. Doesn’t that make life worth living again?
Safari
In addition to better organization with your photos across timelines and locations, the iOS 7 update also brought a smart revamp to Safari, but it’s one of the trickiest updates of the new operating system. With the new Smart Search feature added to the address book in the same bar at the top, Apple just surpassed Google Chrome. Furthermore, the new facelift stacks Safari tabs all in one screen so you can get to them more quickly than swiping several times, and there’s no longer a limit to the number of tabs you can have. So go nuts!
A couple other small, but worthwhile, features include Private Browsing, a playboy’s wet dream for discrete searching, which is now built into Safari more conveniently, along with the Do Not Track option, which keeps ad-savvy crooks from keeping tabs on your search history.
FaceTime Audio
If you’re sick of wasting your precious phone minutes on friends, preferring to save those for solicitors and the hour-long waits with the cable company, you can audio FaceTime without the annoying task of holding the phone up for a half hour. Just like iMessage paved the way for you to send 5,000 texts when you have a plan for 500, now you can do the same with phone calls using your FaceTime. Ah, loopholes. From now on, if you get a phone bill that says you’ve gone over your limit, you’re officially a putz.
AirDrop
Only a feature to iPhone 5 models and other newer tablets, AirDrop is a convenient but not perfected file-sharing service that allows you to share from device to device within close proximity. It’s worth a mention, but it’s not the biggest mind-blower, as it basically saves little time and energy by keeping users from having to message or email links, videos, photos and files to one another. If you’ve got a iPhone 5 or newer, there you have it. If not, the sun will rise again tomorrow, you poor sons of bitches. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
