Originally published on The Pastry Box Project.
I love the new iOS 7.
I installed iOS 7 on my iPhone immediately after it was released to developers. My co-workers thought I was crazy.
“Your primary phone?!” they all asked.
Yup. I like to live on the edge.
But seriously, I have a few good reasons to love iOS 7. First, it fixes my number one gripe — that it’s such a hassle to update iPhone applications.
I wrote a whole post on the topic a couple months ago for the Pastry Box Project. I wasn’t too optimistic about ever seeing the problem fixed.
I think ideally your iPhone would download the latest versions of your apps (and iOS) in the background, maybe at times when you’re connected to wifi. However, I don’t see this happening any time soon.
Well, it happened!!
(If only I could wish features into existence more often…)
My iPhone now gets the latest versions of my apps automatically. John McCain seems pretty excited about this feature too.
Thanks to Tim Cook for the automatic iphone app updates! #apple#wwdc
— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) June 10, 2013
Woot.
Automatic updates seem like such a great idea… but then I worried about the consequences. What if an app updates at a really inconvenient time?
Today I was waiting in the subway tunnel for my Muni train. No Wi-Fi. I was all ready to start reading a book on my Kindle app when I noticed the Kindle app was stuck in the middle of an update. Oh no! Code red! Hypothetical situation has become reality!!
I checked the status of the update in the App Store app and noticed there was an option to “pause” the download. I clicked the button and my Kindle app returned to normal. Phew.
In addition to automatic updates, there are a couple other nice features of iOS 7 such as the Control Center and the camera improvements. However, the thing that’s got most people talking is the new design.
I’m not a designer so I’m not going to get into the layout of the icons or the lack of shadows and bevels. I just wanted to note that I think the design is a huge improvement for developers.
I downloaded Xcode 5 at the same time as iOS 7 so that I could start developing iOS 7 applications. I was really impressed by how much better all the default styling and components look.
I’m super happy to see those ugly blue navigations bars and rounded rect buttons bite the dust. I’m ready for change and I’m re-energized to build better looking iPhone apps with iOS 7.
It’s also just fun to ask, “so what’s your tintColor?”