The speed at which Apple's iOS 7 completes its animations has long been a topic of discussion amongst many. Overly-long, labored transitions between apps, screens and even opening or closing folders are no fun at all, and iOS 7 had them in spades. Thankfully iOS 7.1 seems to have fixed the issue to a large extent, but if you're holding off updating to iOS 7.1 then you need some way of making everything feel more fluid and less like it's floundering around in treacle.
iOS 7 has just been released into the wild, and even though it has been a smooth ride for the majority of iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users, it hasn't been without the usual spate of bugs and teething issues. Following on from the earlier reports that the folders-in-folders trick was still in business - something we thought Apple had blocked with iOS 7.1 - it now looks like the very same technique can be utilized to hide certain apps completely.
We've seen an abundance of iPhone 6 concepts in recent months, and with the consensus being that Apple will go considerably larger with its next hardware upgrade, most designers have been experimenting with new form factors. There's no denying that the iPhone's aesthetic hasn't changed a great deal from the iPhone 4, and as such, we've seen concepts based on the likes of the iPad Air, iPod touch, and even the iPhone 5c. Now, though, resident designer Martin Hajek has come up with an intriguing set of renders based upon the oft-forgotten iPod nano.
It seems that we can't go any longer than a few posts without professing our love for the jailbreaking scene. Maybe not always for some of the tweaks that it comes up with, after all, some can be pretty poor indeed, but rather for the kinds of things that it makes possible. For the doors that it opens, often far beyond the idea of simply being able to skin an iOS device to within an inch of its life.
When Apple decided to ditch Google Maps as its iOS mapping software of choice it caused quite the stir. With Google's mapping technology almost ubiquitous at this point, and with us all being so familiar with it, the thought of losing it on iOS was rather worrisome. As it turned out we didn't have to wait too long before Google brought Maps to iOS as a standalone app, but all the hooks inside iOS still point to Apple Maps, for better or for worse.
Apple made a bunch of improvements with iOS 7, many of which were aesthetic. But as well as performing some housekeeping on several pre-existing features and apps, the company also introduced one or two new faces. Among them was AirDrop, a convenient file transfer system taken from OS X, but like most new Cupertino implementations, it didn't arrive without limitations on what it was capable of. If you're jailbroken, though, you'll know that the proverbial ball and chain Apple puts on certain aspects of its mobile OS are being removed on a daily basis, and as its name implies, AnyDrop turns AirDrop into the feature it was always supposed to be.
The iPhone 5c has been cited by many as a failure, but while the device is assumed not to have sold in as high a number as Apple might have liked, recent predictions from analysts based upon official financial info made available by the Cupertino suggests that the device has actually fared rather well. Even though Apple hasn't offered a breakdown of iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c sales, preferring to release figures under the general, 'iPhone' umbrella, analysts have done their homework and found that over the holiday period of 2013, the iPhone 5c outsold many of the market's flagship handsets.
One of the most exciting features Apple added with the iPhone 5s was the Touch ID fingerprint sensor, and despite a few teething issues, it seems to have gone down rather well with the iPhone-using faithful. Now a jailbreak tweak has emerged that brings a virtual fingerprint sensor to the lock screen, so if you don't happen to own an iPhone 5s but would like a similarly cool feature, then Bio is definitely a Cydia export that you'll want to check out.
iOS 7 has brought quite a few obvious new features, designed to have an instant impact on the functionality and usability of Apple's mobile OS. Yet, as is the case with CarPlay, for example, not everything that the Cupertino has thrown into its latest software is for its immediate benefit, and even though you probably haven't heard about it, Apple added a little something called Multipeer Connectivity Framework into the fold. The intriguing technology allows multiple devices - which needn't be connected to the Internet - to interact in a manner known as mesh networking, and by utilizing connectivity in the form of Wi-Fi networks, peer-to-peer Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, users can connect in a daisy chain-like manner, to various ends.
As Google's Chromecast continues its expansion to other countries around the world, the company appears to have begun to refocus its energies into the little HDMI dongle. Offering buyers a way to get video and audio onto a television via both Android and iOS devices, Chromecast is almost an alternative to an Apple TV for those that don't need the kinds of features that particular product offers.
