IN WHICH: Joel kvetches about iOS7

And now for something completely different...

I got that wonderful notification last night that "A new iOS update is available," so I decided to go ahead and do the right thing: upgrade.  When that nice little Apple logo popped up on my phone and the install bar finally passed 100%, imagine my surprise, as - bad geek that I am who didn't follow every new development on the new OS - what looked like a completely different phone popped up with a welcome and lock screen.

For those playing the home game, a friend of mine posted an Ars Technica rundown on the new GUI for the iOS.  You can find it here and a more in-depth review here.  It covers pretty much all you could want to know about what's changed and what's new.  And if I'd looked at either of those yesterday before that little notification popped up on my phone, I'd probably have been more prepared.

But, seeing as I did not... let me just say this: wow.

Why don't I just take it from the top and work my way in?

From the very first boot-up, the OS felt different - all of the skeuomorphic "realism" that I had come to expect from Apple products is pretty much gone.  Instead, there's a very glassy, almost minimalistic approach.  A bright, white menu popped up and asked for my initial set up options: location services, find my iPhone settings, sign into my Apple account, etc.  There was no more brushed steel background texture, no more feeling like I was toggling little levers to turn things on or off, not even the usual keyboard graphics that made you at least feel like you were pushing actual keyboard buttons.

And then the lock screen came up - again, no more specific button to slide over.  Just swipe the screen to the right from anywhere and your phone opens up (or asks for your passcode).  But then I saw the little nodes at the top and bottom of the screen - above my clock and below the "slide to unlock" notification.  Now, here's where the new iOS 7 upgrade really shines, in my book:

When I swiped up on my screen from the bottom node, I found a whole new slew of options that made me very excited.  On the top row of this new menu, I saw options for Airplane mode, toggling wi-fi and bluetooth, DND mode, and rotation lock.  There's a brightness slider, then the familiar media player controller.  And then another row at the bottom of the menu with a flashlight button and access to the stopwatch, calculator, and camera apps.  That's right, folks - Apple finally integrated a flashlight into the iOS so we can stop taking up real estate with flashlight apps.  And there was much rejoicing... (yaaaaayyyy)  It's incredibly awesome to have all those things right there with just one swipe of a finger - especially when you'd have to go to the settings menu to do several of those things.  I change my brightness at night so I don't blind myself checking the time in the middle of the night (and since I don't like the automatic brightness function) - so having that right there is phenomenal.  So is having airplane mode even more readily available, as I've discovered in my last few times traveling.

Add to this the top node, which now lets you hit your notifications menu without unlocking your phone, and it's a pretty spiffy start.

So now the main phone menu pops up - and if you looked at the links above, you'll see what I mean - it looks completely different from the apps menus I'm used to as an Apple user.  Everything looks pretty glassy and flat.  Apps are redesigning their icons to fit this new aesthetic, so I'm getting frequent updates today, so now all the app badges are starting to look more minimalistic.  There are no more drop shadows, not a lot of borders on badge frames anymore, and a high usage of a "smoked glass" style of translucency behind app folders and the bottom icon dock.  Now, this wouldn't be a big deal for many people, since the most things they see using that translucency effect are in the dock.  But look at the screenshot to the side here and you can see that, since I'm a little bit of an "app junkie," that translucency shows up A LOT.  And frankly, it didn't jive at all with the wallpaper I used to have.  It doesn't jive with the new wallpaper I'm using.  And it seems to not jive with just about any wallpaper I try, though I haven't done an exhaustive attempt to find a good wallpaper yet.  #firstworldproblems - I know.  But it makes a difference.

On the plus side, the icons really pop visually - there's a much higher contrast in the design of this OS and the minimalist approach that it has adopted makes for a much different look and feel that's not entirely off-putting, but still takes some getting used to.  As Ars Technica said, it feels very flat - and I'm not entirely excited about that flat feel.  It's especially noticeable in the calendar, iMessage, the calculator, the notepad and the newsstand.  It's just... flat.  That Pandora icon on the screenshot above is more like a P Switch from Super Mario Brothers 3 than an app badge, and the settings badge only barely resembles the gears from previous iOS iterations.

But other than the flat-ness and the move away from skeuomorphism, it's a nice upgrade to the OS.  Nearly everything is animated, from the moment you unlock your phone to the new way that the UI zooms into folders and isolates them from the rest of the menu.  They've also finally made it so you can have one folder with multiple pages (like I said - I'm an app junkie).  So if you have 20 games/kids apps/etc. installed on your phone and want them all in one place for you/your toddler to be able to play with them... you no longer need to have the "Games," "Games 2," and "Games 3" folders.  Now you just have to reorganize your pages so you have your most used apps up front.  I swear I don't have OCD, but when it comes to organizing files and apps, I get a bit ridiculous.

So the verdict for me is that I definitely like the new OS upgrade - I'm not making any plans to downgrade back to iOS 6 or to switch to an Android phone and swear off of Apple phones.  Frankly, I think that the new OS is a really smart move for Apple, especially with the more "plastic" aesthetic of the iPhone 5c that I'm sure plenty of people will end up adopting over the brushed metal/chrome (and more expensive) look of the 5s.  I really like the added features and the extra convenience they create.  But it'll take some adjustment to get used to the graphics and the flatness.  It was a part of the Apple experience that I didn't even realize I liked so much until it was gone.  It also brings up some significant questions for me about what the next iteration of OS X will end up looking like.  Will OS X follow in the folly of Windows 8 and make an OS that looks and acts even more like an iOS instead of the standard GUI we've come to be comfortable with?  Will my MacBook end up having the same flat graphical qualities, the reflections and skeuomorphed icons in my dock given the same facelift and made into flat, minimalist representations of what they already are?  Will I have to do a lot more through gestures on my touchpad and find the little nooks and crannies that have been hidden away while simultaneously being made more accessible?  I hope not - because I don't see this being a good OS for a laptop.  Just like Windows 8 isn't a good one for a laptop.  Time will have to tell, I guess.

EDIT: I've been reading up on that Ars Technica review I linked above - one thing I didn't even notice in the new iOS7 is that it uses a "parallax effect" (on every device except the iPhone 4, that is) to quite literally make the text, icons, etc. look like they're "floating" over your background wallpaper.  It's also what allows the control center and notification center features, etc. to look like they're coming up above all your other stuff.  It's a very subtle feature, but when you realize it's happening, it's suddenly very cool.