The New iOS 7 Features for your iPhone and iPad

Apple has taken to the stage in San Francisco at its annual WWDC event to announce the next iteration of its mobile platform dubbed iOS 7.

Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, branded iOS 7 “the biggest change to iOS since the iPhone”, which shows you just how important this update is to the company.

Taking over from iOS 6, the new software will find its way onto iPod, iPhone and iPad devices bringing with it the biggest design overhaul since its conception in 2007 – a change which has been led by Apple stalwart Sir Jony Ive.

It overhauls the icons, as we saw earlier today, but also offers new elements like transparency throughout the apps, meaning you can see images slide up behind heading and keyboards, giving a more unified feel.

It may be a shock to the system for dedicated Apple users who have become accustomed to the way iOS looks and works, but it’s a revamp that the aging system desperately needed.

The new platform brings not only a visual makeover, but also offers a host of new features too.

Control Center

Control Center is one of the big ones; swiping up from anywhere on your iPhone or iPad will bring up the new hub for loads of control throughout the device. This means you can control music, screen brightness, turning off the radios and even flicking on the flashlight for when you need to stalk around a house in the dark.

Airdrop is also now available, allowing you to share anything from an app that supports Share Sheet, with a quick tap showing up the friends that are nearby – with Apple claiming that there’s ‘No need to wander around the room bumping your phone with others.’

Safari

Safari has gained something of an update, with the same visual overhaul coming to the browser to allow dynamic resizing of the URL bar, giving you more space to see what’s on the screen, as well as allowing you to slide back and forth through your browser history.

One cool feature is the updated bookmarks element, which sits on the start screen of the iDevice, and collates links posted through your Twitter friends in one place for easier information discovery.

The Tab system has been updated visually too – you no longer are limited to eight tabs open, as the new 3D rendering will allow you practically limitless tabs open at once, which will massively upset those that just love neatness.

It will allow iOS 7 to compete with Android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry in the coming years.

Camera

The camera app has been given a little bit of an overhaul with a simpler, swipe-friendly interface which has a few more options than on iOS 6.

With iOS 7 you can choose from various lens shapes including square, circle and panorama, while live photo filters let you see what your subject will look like in a multitude of effects before you even hit the shutter key.

Viewing your photos has also been given a Jonny Ive finish, with iOS 7 automatically arranging pictures by location into groups, which Apple is calling “moments”.

Pinch to zoom out and the Photo app will re-draw your photo library into collections, which will recognize a day trip or recent holiday and group all the pictures from that event into one block.

Zoom out once more and you get a year overview off all the images in your album, with locations tags to remind you where you were each year.

Hold your finger over the thumbnails to see an exploded view of each individual image, and release your finger on the one you wish to view full screen.

Apple has also added an easier photo editor to the Photo app in iOS 7 with a range of filters and color effects, such as black and white, which can be applied to a snap.

Siri 

Fan-boy favorite Siri hasn’t been left out with a fancy new interface and, wait for it, new voices! Huzzah!

You can now choose from male or female while the French and German languages have also been added, with more promised “over time”.

There are a range of new commands for Siri in iOS 7 too, such as “play my last voicemail”, “turn on Bluetooth” and “increase my brightness”.

The likes of Twitter, Wikipedia and Bing search results have all been integrated into Siri, and Apple promises there’s even more to come from our personal assistance in iOS 7 – it just ran out of time to show us at WWDC.

iOS 7 allows car manufacturers to integrate the operating system with built-in screens in vehicles, as well as full Siri support for eyes-free usage.

Cars will be able to read your iMessages to you and allow you to dictate a response, as well as use other features such as Maps and the music player.

If you have a hankering to get hold of one of these iOS 7 enabled cars then you’ll have to wait until next year when 12 manufacturers will produce compatible vehicles.

App Store

There’s an all new look for the famous App Store, which we found out earlier now has over 900,000 apps, making it easier to find apps.

You can search for apps based on age range in iOS 7 which Apple is pushing as a great feature for parents, while the ‘Apps near me’ feature will show you the most popular apps based on your current location.

Finally, and this is something which will probably please a huge amount of the Apple fan-base, is the feature that apps will now update automatically in the background.

Music

Music is obviously a big thing over at Apple and the Cupertino-based firm reckons the player it’s stuck in iOS 7 is “the best music player we have ever done”.

Instead of showing just the music stored on your iDevice, the Music app on iOS 7 also adds in your library stored on iCloud, allowing you to view all your tracks in one place.

Turn your iPhone to landscape mode and a wall of album art tiles appear which you can slide sideways through, and tapping on one will zoom you into that album.

These are just a few changes that will be in the new iOS7 when it is released in the fall, and MacInspires will have a class for you to learn all of the new features and benefits to help get you off and running.