After Tim Cook took the stage for the introduction to the new iOS 7 he described it as "the biggest change to iOS since the introduction of iPhone" followed by playing a video.
We have waited long for it to know what was it, whether it was black and white or it was flat but afterall it was going to be a totally different experience. It was a massive six year old change to a popular mobile operating system that was disclosed today at WWDC '13 event at San Francisco.
Not wasting much of the time, i will rather quickly sum up the changes that took place to this operating system. :)
Notification Centre:
Notification centre which debuted up with iOS 5 was a major change that came up with that time but now with iOS 7 it has evolved itself more better,for now users can see all important notifications without actually unlocking. Now it's no more a home screen feature only.
It's no more laced with dark green linen background anymore and now appears to be a very flat look where one could see friends birthdays, upcoming invitations, calendar, stocks, and a quick look at tomorrow.
Control Centre:
Apple guys are investing too much time in studying the tweaks that was around for awhile Notably, the gesture feature was introduced earlier from a jailbreaking tweak which was around for a decade called "Zephyr". One of the major reason why people jailbreak is to get more from this device which Apple does not permit. SBSettings was something similar to this control centre which helped people to toggle on and off certain stuffs like Wifi, bluetooth etc.
So basically this brand new Control centre is a pull up tray that is available in the lock screen where you can adjust brightness, volume, Wifi, Airplane mode, rotation lock, or Bluetooth.
Also offers flashlight toggle button along with music, camera and quick access apps. One of the cool feature that it's integrated with is, it absorbs the environment you are working on. So if you are on the email and you swipe up for the control centre it will take the same blue and white coloring under that translucent panel.
Multi-Tasking:
The new multitasking feature comes in with better performance and promising a better battery life. It will be same like the previous generations like to double tap the home button but the design is much changed with this OS.
In shorter way it provides better multi tasking environment with much better battery health.
AirDrop:
Airdrop existed in Mac earlier for exchanging files smoothly and now its coming to the iOS 7.
Safari:
The new Safari will now open a straight into full screen mode now, with the option to pull down to bring up the search bar at the top. The tabs are in a totally new interface. Switching between multiple window will be totally amazing.
Also, the new Safari is integrated with iCloud keychain from OS X Mavericks, and also comes with parental controls.
Siri:
Siri has got a new voice and with this update you will get an option to choose between male or female voice and you can chose with different languages. The earlier UI has also been replaced with the new one in which the sound wave will travel and displayed. It has also been integrated with feature such as setting in which you can tell her to turn on bluetooth, or lower the screen brightness. Also added support for Twitter, Wikipedia, and shows web search results directly from Bing.
iOS In The Car:
With this feature users will be able to free themselves from the phone with cars supporting this technology. It puts the iOS home screen on the screen of your car, and lets you search for directions, listen to music, etc.
It makes the experience easy while driving and for the driver to respond to any alert on their phone.
App Store:
Now apps with automatically update in the background. You can now search for apps based on location.
iTunes Radio:
Apple has finally introduced iTunes Radio. You can see the full list of songs on each station by clicking history, with purchase and preview buttons built right in to send you to the iTunes store. iTunes Match users will get an ad-free experience, but others will be able to use the app for free with a few audio and text ads.
Activation Lock:
This is interesting security feature inbuilt in the iOS 7. If your phone is stolen and the thief tries to turn off "Find My iPhone" then he may not be able to turn the device back on without the iCloud password. Also users can now block unwanted calls and messages.
Camera and Photos:
The camera will come with inbuilt filter option and no third party apps like instagram will be now necessary.
Compatibility:
iOS 7 will be compatible with the following devices: iPhone 5, 4S, 4; iPad 2, 3, 4 iPad mini and the latest fifth-gen iPod touch.
Availability:
iOS 7 will drop this Fall, and the first beta will be available to developers as of today.