Tag Archives: ios 7

iOS 7 Brings Some Small, But Significant, Improvements

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The first iOS 7 update for the iPhone 4 or newer was released on March 10th in the form of iOS 7.1, bringing several needed fixes and enhancements.

iPhone 4 Performace

Many people with an iPhone 4 experienced massive performance issues once iOS 7 was released.  In some cases the phone was entirely unusable, while in others it was just irritating, which fueled existing rumors that iOS 7 had built in obsolescence for older devices.  iOS 7.1 brings significant performance boosts to the iPhone 4, giving some credibility back to Apple for providing continued support for their legacy devices instead of merely focusing on the newest generations.

HDR Settings

The camera app has gained a brilliant new HDR toggle, making it far quicker and easier to activate HDR mode.  High Dynamic Range photography has caught on heavily with smartphones due to the lack of dynamic range in the physical sensor, so many people use HDR mode quite frequently.  Apple iOS 7.1 also adds the ability for the camera to auto-detect lighting conditions to determine if an HDR photo would be a benefit on a shot by shot basis.  This allows the picture taking to worry about framing the shot instead of having to fiddle with settings prior to each picture.

CarPlay Support

An entirely new addition is support for Apple’s CarPlay.  Although it’s not the most prevalent in-car system to date, this will allow supported in-car systems to connect to the iPhone and use Siri integration to manage calls, messaging, music, navigation, and any other CarPlay enabled features.

Siri Functionality

In addition to the Siri functionality enhancements through CarPlay, Siri is also gaining push to talk support, meaning Siri will wait until you release the home button before assuming you’re finished with her.  This makes verbal pauses–which are especially common when composing text messages–much less of a stumbling block to hands free use.

Facetime Notifications

Many Apple users have more than just one Apple device, meaning they get Facetime notifications on each one every time they get a call.  In 7.1, the notification will now be dismissed on any devices you don’t answer the call with, meaning no more lingering phantom notifications from Facetime.

iTunes Features

All Apple’s music services are now integrated, allowing you to listen to music, make purchases, or open a themed radio station directly from your currently playing song.  This update brings iTunes into closer alignment with other music services, such as Google Play Music, which has offered similar features for some time.

Calendar Views

Additional viewing options are now available for the calendar, such as “monthly view” or “list view.”  Allowing users to to better sort through their agenda.  The old view options were a little restrictive and required too much scrolling and tapping to view items from different days or months.

UI Tweaks

Several UI tweaks were included, many of them under the accessibility menu.  This includes the most significant of which is the option to add shapes to buttons to assist in differentiating actionable text from everything else.  The response to the look of the buttons is mixed, but those that wanted them are grateful for the additional visual cues.

The slide to unlock bar and the call screen also got some visual tweaks, making them look a little more sleek, but basically the same layout and functionality as before.

Touch ID

Apple’s new fingerprint password option has gained popularity with many people due to the ease of access it provided, but errors with the scanning process often made the feature unusable for some people.  The code it uses to scan and process the fingerprint has been improved, resulting in an improved print recognition rate.

There are also several other minor UI and performance tweaks in addition to the closing of some exploits used by Jailbreakers, but nothing else most people will notice with a casual glance.

All in all, iOS 7.1 provides fixes some of the biggest frustrations people had with each iteration of iOS 7 up to this point.  It’s no major overhaul, but definitely worth the 5-10 minutes it will take to install.

 

Source: The Guardian

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Read more on Walyou, Tizen’s Role in the Mobile OS Race, The Soap Smart Router Fixes Home Networking

The New iWatch With iOS 7 And No Siri

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Being practical is the main reason behind shunning Siri, speakers and mobile connectivity in this new iWatch concept. As a typical SmartWatch, this concept hosts some very non-typical features. For example, to save on battery consumption, the design includes solar energy and wireless recharging. Siri and cellular connectivity are not included because of their power draining capabilities.

The designer hopes that the imaginative iOS 7 will have off-line Maps integration. Design-wise buttons and holes are not a part of the deal. This is because watches are used to rough usage; fewer buttons and slots mean lesser damages and more room for the battery. A notification via vibrations is perhaps its best feature and something most SmartWatches should consider. Overall a near representation of time!

Designer: Cristian Tomas Moyano

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(The New iWatch With iOS 7 And No Siri was originally posted on Yanko Design)

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Facebook Highlights Puts the Most Important Moments on the Same Page

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Facebook Highlights

Sometimes the amount of news you get from your friends is simply overwhelming, so Facebook gives you the option of seeing only the most significant events from someone’s life.

After rolling out “A Look Back” and testing Trending Topics (which between you and me, look a lot like Twitter’s), Facebook is looking to introduce Highlights, firstly to mobile platforms and later to desktop. Unfortunately, the new feature is only available on devices running iOS. The latest update for this mobile operating system brought a major change to the table for some lucky iPhone and iPad users: the Requests section went away to make room for People. Within this section, there are 3 tabs, History, Everyone and probably the most important of them all, Highlights.

Facebook Highlights is an experimental feature that points out the event from your friends’ lives that really matter. News of births, weddings and funerals (like it or not, death is still part of our lives, at least until Google finds the answer to eternal life) will most probably appear here, so you no longer have to scroll through endless lists of invitations to Farmville (is that one still around?).

Highlights still shows the new Friend Requests, while hiding the older ones under a See More button. Furthermore, there is the Friends With Birthdays Today panel, in case you’re too lazy to check the Events section of the app. Anyway, this panel gives you no excuse not to call people you’re no longer talking to, but that you haven’t unfriended yet, on their birthdays. After this panel, there’s probably the most interesting part of Facebook Highlights: Life Events. Here’s where you will get to see the things that are truly worth writing home about. More specifically, this panel includes events related to work and education, family and relationships, home and living, health and wellness, travel and experiences – in other words, everything that people submit to the social network through the Life Event feature.

The History tab combines the latest conversations you’ve had with a simplified Activity Log. In other words, Facebook put everything belonging to the past in a single place. The Everyone tab, on the other hand, features all of your connections, listed alphabetically so you can retrieve them easily.

While Facebook Highlights makes things a little easier to browse, I don’t really think that this feature is a major step forward for this social network, let alone something revolutionary. People will tell whether this is interesting or not when and if the features launches on all platforms.

Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories about Facebook’s Trending Topics and the new Twitter profiles.

SteelSeries Stratus Controller Price Not as Bad as First Thought

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If you are an avid gamer on your iPhone or iPad that runs the iOS 7 operating system, you may be in the need of a controller. I think any serious iOS 7 gamer will want one, as touch-based controls suck. We got a bit excited at the prospects of the SteelSeries Stratus wireless gaming controller that we talked about earlier this month. We were excited right up until SteelSeries smashed our testicles with a boot when the price was tipped to be $100.

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That is a lot of green for a tiny little controller. The Stratus controller has now officially launched for you to pre-order and the good news is your testes (and your wallet) won’t feel the pain quite as badly. The official pre-order price for the controller in the US is $79.99 (USD).

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That price certainly isn’t cheap, but it’s better than $100. Now for the catch, you need to pre-order the Stratus to get it at that price so I suggest you run along and do it right now. Seriously, go do it now. You can pre-order via SteelSeries.

SteelSeries Stratus hits pre-order for $79.99

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If you are the owner of an iPhone or iPad on iOS 7 looking for a game controller, SteelSeries is now taking pre-orders on one. The controller is called the SteelSeries Stratus wireless gaming...

Dropbox iOS App Updated with Refreshed Design for iOS 7, AirDrop Support and More Features

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Dropbox has revamped iOS app with an all-new design and a slew of new features and tweaks. The new Dropbox app for iPhone and iPad features a refreshed design for Apple's new iOS 7. Other features...

Livescribe 3 Smartpen is a $150 Note-Taking Companion for Mobile Devices

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Go back a year in time and the Sky Wi-Fi pen was quite a sensation. And yet there were issues that it faced. These obstacles begged to be resolved.  The biggest hurdle in its way was the Wi-Fi...

Go On, Be Annoying: Infinite Text-in-Progress Prank for iOS 7

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Text in Progress Icon Prank

You know how you’re texting with someone, and it’s just taking forever for them to respond? It especially sucks when you’ve just asked a question you’re dying to know the answer to. It almost seems like those little dots on the text-in-progress icon are mocking you… Well, I hate to break it to you, but if you’ve been staring at that message thread for an hour and the icon indicated that the person on the other end is still typing, then I think you’ve just been pranked.

How? With this clever animated GIF that pranksters Miscellaneous Mischief have made available here: Infinite Text-In-Progress. The site hosts the GIF that looks like the legit one for the iPhone, and all people have to do is download that and send it to their victim of choice.

Now that you know, the only thing left to do is return the favor (but those people will probably catch on pretty fast, since they already know about it) and pass it on (but have some pity and compassion, and don’t do it to the elderly.)

VIA [ Gizmodo ]

Apple to Offer iOS 7 GarageBand as Freemium Model

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Apple’s applications, especially the iLife and iWork ones, could be getting a major update soon. The real transformation will be in the adoption of a freemium model for GarageBand. While at present...

iOS 7 Adoption Rate is Slower than iOS 6

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Although the new and spanking iOS 7 saw a growth rate of 185% on a daily basis for the first week of its launch, it is nothing in comparison to the by now jaded iOS 6. When the iOS 6 came out in...