Designer Antonio De Rosa regularly churns out some fantastic concepts pertaining to numerous Apple products. Adding to his growing list of great designs comes an all-new iPhone 6 mockup, which looks simply stunning with its large, edge-to-edge display and touch-based home button, and it runs Apple’s iOS 7 beta. Check it out after the break, you’ll definitely love it!
With the release of iOS 7 beta 1 having just occurred, the question that was posed to a huge number of iOS device owners was whether or not they should upgrade, and lose their jailbreak just to try the first beta of iOS 7. For those not aware, many of the features found in iOS 7 are accessible already via jailbreak, thus it seems almost foolish to update. For those people that rely on a jailbreak too much however, like myself, I have some good news! A few packages and tweaks have hit Cydia in the last few days which do a great job of emulating iOS 7 on a jailbroken device.
Apple's iOS 7 beta has certainly gained the headlines this week, but while we fully expect the final release to operate across the entire iOS device range, the build released a few days back is only compatible with the iPhone and iPod touch. Why is that? Well, it's because the Cupertino company is behind on compiling the version for the larger display, but on the bottom of Apple's official iOS 7 page, you can get an idea of how the home screens of both the full-size iPad and iPad mini will look once the forthcoming iOS release is able to grace it.
On the day of its launch, I offered very early thoughts on running iOS 7 on iPhone 5 after I had used it for less than an hour. I was still waiting for most of my 3rd-party apps to install, so I was certainly in no position to offer a proper review of the beta version of iOS 7. In fact, 3 days later, I'm still not.
As soon as iOS 7 beta was announced and subsequently revealed by Apple on the introductory morning of this year's WWDC, many onlookers took to the blogs, forums and social networks to note of the incredible similarities in design between it and another major mobile OS - Windows Phone. The motif of clean lines and vibrant colors has long since been a set of values associated with Microsoft's smartphone platform, of course, but as you will see in a comparison video by tech fan Sean Rosairo, it would seem as though the fruit company has ripped more than a few segments directly from Windows Phone.
If you cast your minds back, you may remember Apple adding a little feature to iTunes 11 allowing you to scan your iTunes cards using the camera on the front of your Mac’s camera. Now, the exact same feature is coming to iOS 7, and although it's not new in a sense that barcode and QR reading apps have been around for a good while now, the fact that it's baked into the operating system means that developers can also make use of it, should they wish to.
The overall design of iOS 7, as has been noted considerably during the last couple of days, bears a striking resemblance to Microsoft's Windows Phone, but the aesthetics of several integral apps may not be the only elements that the Cupertino company has borrowed from rivals. The Today tab found within the brand new Notification Center is very à la Google Now, and it would seem as though Apple really took the sneers of iOS's lack of functionality to heart.
Apple officially announced iTunes Radio for iOS 7 at WWDC this week, but as is the case with most fledgling features and applications, it's limited only to those residing within the confinements of the United States. The good news is, however, that those living elsewhere can also get in on iOS 7 beta’s iTunes Radio right now, provided they have, or can create, a U.S. iTunes account. Details after the break!
For quite a while now, rumor and speculation have suggested that Apple could be planning to release its very own gaming controller for iOS. Third parties, if you'll excuse the pun, seem way ahead of the game in this respect, with many vendors and developers already supporting the traditional physical peripheral, but if Apple were to go ahead and bring its own official offering, it could be a real game-changer. According to mutterings at WWDC, the Cupertino is plotting exactly that, but not on its own, and with some documentation for iOS 7 pertaining to a Game Controller having just popped up on the dev site, official physical gaming controller support is about to become a reality starting from iOS 7.
If you're running a fairly new iOS device; for example, an iPhone 5 or iPad 4, you can rest assured that you'll be reaping the full benefits of iOS 7 when it does eventually become available to the end user. However, if you're in ownership of something a little more, shall we say, mature from the iDevice range, it's likely some of the latest and greatest iOS 7's treasures and niceties will be held back, due largely to lack of hardware support.
