Control Center - page 5

It’s been over three months since iOS 7 got its first unveiling at WWDC, and in just a couple of hours, it will be made available to the public. It’ll be completely free to download — no matter which iOS device you’re using — and Apple’s confident it will quickly become the world’s most popular mobile operating system.

iOS 7 is the biggest change to iOS since the original iPhone, introducing a colorful new design for the first time, and bringing lots of new features — including Control Center, improved multitasking and Notification Center, iTunes Radio, and AirDrop.

So should you be rushing to download and install it on your iOS devices as soon as it becomes available, or can you wait until all the fuss has died down? Well, we’ll be bringing your our review in stages over the course of the coming days, but to help make your decision super simple, we’ve trawled through the biggest and best iOS 7 reviews out this week and put together a helpful roundup.

iOS 7 is much more than a pretty face. Early “news” reporting focussed on the new look provided at the last minute by Jony Ive and team, but the inner workings of the new OS have clearly been under development for a lot longer. So, try to look past the bright colors, blurred popovers and beautiful parallax for a moment, and join us as we take a tour of the best new features of iOS 7.

Every once in a while, I’m listening to a song via the Music app on my iPhone, or (lately) listening to iTunes Radio on my iPad through a bluetooth speaker in the house, when I want to quickly figure out what’s playing, or maybe mess with the controls, skip a song, or something like that.

Typically, I’d double click the Home button to get a basic controller to pause or skip a song, or click into the home screen, find the Music app, launch it, then tap the Now Playing button, and then make any adjustments.

Now, however, with iOS 7 beta’s new Control Center, you can tap right through to the Now Playing song with a swipe and a tap. Here’s how.

Remember that cool iOS 7 Control Center port for Android that hit Google Play earlier this month? Well, Apple obviously didn’t like it, and it has contacted Google to have it pulled. Fortunately for us, developer Hi Tools Studio has already released an updated version to Google Play, so go grab it before it disappears again.

We’ve seen a lot of what iOS 7 will look like on the iPhone, but for the past week there has been little info on the iPad version other than this video. The iOS 7 beta for iPad just came out though so we’ve already dug in and started to explore Jony Ive’s vision for the iPad.

Here is what iOS 7 looks like on an iPad:

It’s our own fault. We all asked Apple to dramatically change the look and feel of the iOS operating system, which, until yesterday, remained largely unchanged since the introduction of the original iPhone back in 2007. And we all complained when it didn’t do that with iOS 6 this time last year.

But I can’t help but feel the Cupertino company is now punishing us for all those requests, and all that complaining we did before about its skeuomorphic designs.

When it comes to design, iOS 7 is vastly different to its predecessors. It still functions in much the same way — though there are some new features you’ll need to get used to — but it looks completely different. As soon as you power it up for the first time the minimalistic feel is staring back at you, but it isn’t until you’ve completed the setup process and arrived at your home screen that you want to vomit in your own lap.

iOS 7 just got announced, and boy is it a doozy. The look is new totally new, and Apple has introduced some really big new features.

Here are some of the main additions: