Like every new parent, I wanted to document everything with iOS7. I live for these updates (the typical "geek"), because I love finding the differences in each one, and normally they don't disappoint. I've only seen pictures of iOS7 from the keynote, so in short, I don't know what to expect. I know it looks a lot like the Android screens, but, not to sound like a naive optimist, Apple always seems to make it theirs. So I'm going to, much like a new parent, document my first week with iOS7, and see what I like and dislike. This can also serve as a review for those who choose to wait until it doesn't take longer than the time until Sherlock Series 3 comes out to update. I promise to be bluntly honest with you all. (As I write this, we're still only backing up my iPhone. Oh boy. This is going to take awhile.)
Part 1: Downloading
My Facebook has been blowing up with updates about iOS7 all day, which is the only thing that reminded me that we could get it today. As early as 9AM, someone was posting "When can we get OS7??" and since then there have been posts all over my Facebook Timeline about how slow the download time is, difficulties they're having with it not loading -- a typical first day of a new iOS. I have to hand it to everyone at Apple. Everyone
knows that it will take hours to download. Everyone
knows it will be glitchy, despite the BETA testing since the keynote. Everyone
knows that it doesn't really change anything, but, by God, it's important enough to us to spend our day trying to get (and am I to talk? I'm devoting a week to review this OS7!). Seriously. Whoever runs Apple's marketing department must be giddy every time they release something. It's interesting though. It's not specifically the marketing that makes everyone want the newest iPhone, Mac, operating system. How often do we see Mac commercials? I don't watch TV but I don't remember seeing very many of them. That's what's so amazing about Apple (and the movie Jobs - go see it if you have the chance), the company markets itself. They don't
have to market it with hundreds of commercials and ads online. They don't have to have a countdown on their webpage because everyone already knows and is excited. Somehow, Steve Jobs and Co. have been able to make a company that seems to be so crucial to the average person, that they're willing to pay for the newest model, wait hours for the newest version, just so they can say they have it. As someone who is a Psychology major, this absolutely astounds me. Can you tell that I'm trying to pass time while I download OS7? I will say this -- the first thing I noticed about this particular iPhone update is that I had to update your iTunes in order to even update my phone. That was a little unnerving. The last iTunes change really didn't sit well with a lot of users, and I will agree that the iTunes is a bit less user-friendly than it used to be, I'm still figuring out how to do things, and there are still things I don't know how to get rid of (though this could be my inability to use the instructions). My nerves were for nothing, the only thing that changed in the program was the adding of iTunes Radio.
iTunes Radio: *** (3 out of 5) Apple, I love you, but you're a day late and a dollar short with iTunes Radio. It's a competitor of Pandora and iHeartRadio, but most people I know listen to Spotify because they don't have to deal with listening to songs they don't want to. iTunes has the standard "pick a song and then we'll play songs like it" which works for about the first five minutes and then I get bored and start skipping - and realize iTunes as that strict number of skips per hour. Also, I enjoy listening to showtunes, and I found out that most of the show tunes I want to listen to (contemporary from this year) aren't even available to choose. Okay, iTunes. This isn't Pandora. If I wanna listen to songs I don't want to pay for, I can listen to Spotify. Basically, you picked the wrong companies to go against. Had you given Spotify a run for their money, maybe we could talk. This is just a bad lookback at what the world was before Spotify. In short, Spotify: 1 iTunes Radio: 0 Okay, my phone is done downloading iOS7 (that was actually strangely fast), and I will be back with my reviews of iOS7!