We've all been conditioned to take keynote pronouncements with a grain of salt. So when Tim Cook said iOS 7 is the biggest change to the iPhone since its introduction, I had my doubts. Once the iOS 7 presentation completed at yesterday's WWDC keynote, my doubts changed to excitement. After installing the beta this morning and playing with it for a couple of hours I became convinced Mr. Cook was being truthful.
In March my iOS developer registration came up for annual renewal. I admit to being hesitant about giving Apple another $107 ($99 + tax) for twelve months access to the full developer resources on Apple's site. Today I was glad I did. One of the benefits of being a registered iOS developer is access to beta builds of iOS. Once Apple's servers became unclogged I downloaded the 1.2 gig file containing the beta and immediately installed it on my iPhone 5. The decision to do so didn't take long even though I would be giving up my jailbreak and a dozen or so apps I paid for in the Cydia Store. Believe me, I didn't come by my decision lightly, but by the time the 2 hour keynote was over I knew that iOS 7 was something I had to have. I suppose some remnant of the "reality distortion field" still exists.
Installing the new operating system was as simple as always. It did require a complete restore, but that is to be expected. After all, it is a beta version. That being said, once my iPhone restore was complete, iOS 7 booted and ran without error. While you expect that from a normal iOS release, betas are a bit of a crap shoot. The new interface is beautiful and like every preceeding iOS version, easy. One of the first things I did was re-arrange my home screen to include all the new pre-installed iOS apps. Restoring from my backup meant keeping all the folders and screen arrangement I had in iOS 6. Consequently, most of the old, dated Apple-supplied apps (Weather, Stocks, Notes, etc.) were relegated to obscure folders two or three pages deep. iOS 7 loses a lot if its lustre without the new icons displayed front and center. Besides, Apple has re-written all these apps and brought them up to date. Not only with the new look, but now they're as feature-rich as almost any third party replacement. My developer status (and its non-disclosure agreement) prevents me from reviewing them at this time, but I will say Apple has done a good job of catching up with third party developers.
There were two main reasons I jailbroke iOS 6. First was the Auxo app. It greatly enhanced iOS multi-tasking by displaying larger tiles of screen grabs from running apps when the home button is double pressed, making it much easier to recognize and select a running app to kill or switch to. The second was Intelliscreen which allowed enhanced notifications and widgets and made them available from the lockscreen along with buttons to toggle system settings like wifi, bluetooth and airplane mode. Apple replicated and enhanced these capabilities with iOS 7's new multitasking architecture, Notification Center and Control Center apps. They're not perfect and not very customizable (yet?), but a great improvement over the iOS 6 offerings. It's obvious Apple pays attention to the jailbreaking community as these features are among the most popular in the Cydia store. Another very popular jailbreak only feature is (was) Live Clock. It turned the clock app's homescreen icon into an actual working clock. Guess what? The Clock icon in iOS 7 is now "live" complete with a working second hand. Another obvious idea taken from the jailbreak world is live wallpaper. Apple calls it "Dynamic" wallpaper and only includes a couple with this beta release, but the ability is there nonetheless. I expect to see a ton of these moving desktop backgrounds available from third parties as soon as iOS 7 is released.
Hearing comments from Tim Cook and his minions yesterday made it obvious that the folks at Apple read what analysts and journalists publish. After using iOS 7 for a few hours its just as obvious they spend some time watching what the jailbreak community likes also.