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Original poster
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Earlier today, Apple released the fifth beta of iOS 7.1 to developers, which included both bug fixes and a minor updates to the operating system. While previous iOS 7.1 betas introduced several visual changes, iOS 7.1 beta 5 included just a few additional tweaks to further streamline the look of iOS 7 ahead of a prospective public release.

Keyboard: In iOS 7.1 beta 3, Apple introduced a new design for the shift key, which was unpopular with many beta testers as it made it unclear when shift and caps lock were activated. With iOS 7.1 beta 5, Apple has tweaked the keys once again to make it clearer when shift and caps lock are enabled.

keyboardchanges.jpg
Shift enabled to the left, shift disabled in middle, caps lock enabled to the right

Wallpaper: Apple has been tweaking the way wallpaper is handled throughout the iOS 7.1 beta testing period. Beta 3 introduced a "Motion" option to turn off parallax for wallpapers and renamed the function to "Perspective Zoom" in beta 5.

iTunes Radio: iTunes Radio has gained a new "Buy Album" button which accompanies the option to buy an individual song that is playing.

itunesradio.jpg

Siri: Siri has gained new natural sounding voices for English (Australia), English (United Kingdom), Japanese, and Chinese (Mandarin - China).

Calendar: iOS 7.1 beta 2 introduced a new event list view within the Calendar app. In beta 5, the toggle for the list view has been made bolder and easier to see.

calendar.jpg

AirDrop: According to several reports on our forums, AirDrop appears to be experiencing some issues in iOS 7.1 beta 5.

iOS 7 Jailbreak: Apple patched an evasi0n iOS 7 jailbreak exploit in beta 4 and it appears to have issued another patch for additional exploits in beta 5.

Previous iOS 7.1 betas have also included a number of significant features like a "Button Shapes" option in Accessibility, more prominence for Touch ID and Passcode options, a new look for several aspects of the Phone dialer and shutdown screen, a new animation for "Slide to Unlock" and a slightly revamped color for the Phone, FaceTime, and Messages app icons.

Details on features in past beta releases can be found in our previous beta posts: Beta 1, Beta 2, Beta 3, Beta 4.

Though a December report from BGR indicated that iOS 7.1 would not be released to the public until March, today's build number, which is not much different than the build number of beta 4 indicates the software could be nearing a public launch.

A new report from BGR issued today also retracts the initial March release estimate and suggests the software will be released to the public in the "coming weeks" following the debut of a golden master build of iOS 7.1 for developers.

Article Link: iOS 7.1 Beta 5 Tidbits: Redesigned Shift and Caps Lock, Public Launch Expected Soon
 

pgiguere1

macrumors 68020
May 28, 2009
2,167
1,200
Montreal, Canada
A new report from BGR issued today also retracts the initial March release estimate

Serious question: Why are BGR "rumors" even reported here? They have next to 0% reliability and BGR in general is so sensationalistic/clickbaity/misleading that it's pretty obvious most of their "rumors" are completely made up just to get page views.

Giving them attention (and page views) is encouraging that practice, and meanwhile the average reader who doesn't necessarily track accuracy of various sources will lose faith in rumors coming from actually reliable sources (ex: Mark Gurman) because they put all analysts/rumor sources in the same basket.
 

576316

macrumors 601
May 19, 2011
4,056
2,556
liking the improvements but apple let us jailbreak .. come on

That seems like a silly thing to say. Of course Apple DON'T want you to be jailbreaking your iPhone. They want you to use it as they intended. Apple will never support jailbreaking and will probably do what they can for as long as they can to stop it/make it very hard.
 

timsutcliffe

macrumors 6502
Jun 18, 2007
348
78
FaceTime

I'm not sure if anyone else has this problem but making a FaceTime call to some of my contacts is not possible. I'm wondering if something in 7.1 will have fixed it.

I'm unable to call contacts with only an email address for FaceTime. It always tried to call the phone number when you tap FaceTime. If they don't have an iPhone it obviously doesn't work. I've not found a work around yet.

Anyone else found this? Is it sorted out?
 

Tankmaze

macrumors 68000
Mar 7, 2012
1,707
351
not a huge improvements, probably siri is the big one.

but i'm still on 7.0.4, so it will be a huge upgrade. can't wait for this release !!
 

576316

macrumors 601
May 19, 2011
4,056
2,556
Nice that they're continuing to make tweaks to the visual appearance of iOS. Shows that things really aren't finished when they're released and there's always room for improvement.
 

Jace91

macrumors newbie
Feb 4, 2014
8
2
not a huge improvements, probably siri is the big one.

but i'm still on 7.0.4, so it will be a huge upgrade. can't wait for this release !!

Hopefully the public release will be soon, and if it is March its not the end of March. I updated to 7.1 starting with beta 4 and it has been exponentially better than 7.0.4. I had frequent low memory crashes, and tons of errors showing up in my diagnostics on 7.0.4 and terrible battery life, since updating the entire software runs much quicker and I am not having any crash reports. All the same data is on my phone as well. I am not comparing 7.0.4 filled with apps/music/photos to 7.1b4 with nothing else on the phone.
 

Kalahan

macrumors newbie
Aug 4, 2011
6
0
That seems like a silly thing to say. Of course Apple DON'T want you to be jailbreaking your iPhone. They want you to use it as they intended. Apple will never support jailbreaking and will probably do what they can for as long as they can to stop it/make it very hard.

Well fine. Then, at the very least, let me pick my default web browser. It are all these small annoyances combined that drive me away from iOS.

That and the expensive storage options on a premium phone. It pushes me to put my data in the cloud. And guess what, it's not going to be Apple's cloud for most people but Google's cloud. Google's cloud that works perfectly with Android.
 

Rogifan

macrumors Penryn
Nov 14, 2011
24,088
31,042
Sorry MR don't think these minor changes warranted a second front page story.
 

ghostlines

macrumors regular
Feb 3, 2010
154
13
Amsterdam
Nice refinements. The caps lock buttons were really anissue. Due to the contrast it was pretty hard to tell if it was active or not.

Turning on invert colours and using control center is also tricky.
 

BillyMatt87

macrumors 6502a
Dec 23, 2013
636
823
All in all, 7.1 seems to look really solid and fairly improved over 7.0 and I think some of the enhancements look good except for the new buttons in the phone app. They looked fine before but the new circular ones look less tactile and waste more space. Also, when you get an incoming call, is the contact picture still limited to a thumbnail (as introduced in beta 3)? The tweaks to phone app look weird and hopefully they do not last.
 

LordQ

Suspended
Sep 22, 2012
3,582
5,653
Oh, well, I'm gonna miss Mobile Data and Kill Background on my Control Center :(:
 

Heltik

macrumors 6502
Jul 16, 2002
254
51
USA
Forget Siri sounding better, I'd be grateful if she, ahem *HE* for us Brits could simply understand a single word I said. Not that this is a new problem...
eggfreckles.gif
 

iSRS

macrumors 6502
Mar 2, 2010
468
291
That seems like a silly thing to say. Of course Apple DON'T want you to be jailbreaking your iPhone. They want you to use it as they intended. Apple will never support jailbreaking and will probably do what they can for as long as they can to stop it/make it very hard.

I haven't jailbroken since iOS 3, so am a but rusty, but are jailbreaks achieved through a security exploit? In other words, a potential vulnerability that could expose all iOS 7 users to malicious attacks? In theory, anyway. If so, and I believe the answer is YES, then Apple has an obligation to protect the mass majority of stock iOS 7 users from this risk, no matter haw small the risk is.
 

notjustjay

macrumors 603
Sep 19, 2003
6,056
167
Canada, eh?
liking the improvements but apple let us jailbreak .. come on

Yeah, Apple! Leave that security flaw alone! Make sure you don't patch it, so people continue to have the ability to inject unauthorized third party code that can take over your entire phone.

Nobody would ever actually exploit the security hole for anything really bad, we just want to be able to change our settings...more. Yeah.

(But all those other security flaws, the ones that make big news when they're discovered? Yeah, fix those. We don't want to be all unsecured like Android! Nope! Most secure phone OS evarrr!!!)
 

Tankmaze

macrumors 68000
Mar 7, 2012
1,707
351
I updated to 7.1 starting with beta 4 and it has been exponentially better than 7.0.4. I had frequent low memory crashes, and tons of errors showing up in my diagnostics on 7.0.4 and terrible battery life, since updating the entire software runs much quicker and I am not having any crash reports.

Wow, good to know. 7.1 even the beta seems to be stable enough for daily use.
 

ZacUSNYR

macrumors regular
Feb 1, 2008
231
78
What is Apple's reason for not showing lower case letters in the keyboard, when you hit shift, change the actual key to show a capital?

It's silly to see capital letters and have them be coming out as lower case. Granted it's like a real keyboard, but this is an on-screen keyboard that can (and should) be dynamic.
 

Jace91

macrumors newbie
Feb 4, 2014
8
2
All in all, 7.1 seems to look really solid and fairly improved over 7.0 and I think some of the enhancements look good except for the new buttons in the phone app. They looked fine before but the new circular ones look less tactile and waste more space. Also, when you get an incoming call, is the contact picture still limited to a thumbnail (as introduced in beta 3)? The tweaks to phone app look weird and hopefully they do not last.

Yeah I thought the phone updates were strange, I like the full screen photo better, you can tell who's calling from across the room. have also noticed clicking the button to hide the keypad after typing a number during a call is a bit touchy. Being less buggy is my biggest issue. Thats what apple WAS known for, not releasing an unfinished product, seems they are having some issues with these last couple snafus
 

Thepoobear

macrumors 6502
Oct 30, 2013
282
0
There had better be more to these recent betas and just keyboard UI fixes. I can't believe this is what we have been waiting for all this time, design tweaks.
 

WilliamG

macrumors G3
Mar 29, 2008
9,920
3,800
Seattle
What is Apple's reason for not showing lower case letters in the keyboard, when you hit shift, change the actual key to show a capital?

It's silly to see capital letters and have them be coming out as lower case. Granted it's like a real keyboard, but this is an on-screen keyboard that can (and should) be dynamic.

I 100% agree. I struggle with the shift key a TON, and aside from the new caps-lock symbol on the iOS keyboard which is now obvious, the other two I'm still going to get confused by completely. Come on, Apple, figure this out!
 
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