iOS 7.1 Beta 3 Tidbits: Revamped Keyboard, Darker Icons, New Phone Look, and More

[calaverasgrande]

wow !

and nobody thought apple could innovate!


seriously though these changes are so minor it's a joke.

Apple needs to take a cue from Google and push larger changes on a more frequent manner.

the opposite of that.
Huge revamps to interface or functionality are great for Apps, but something as fundamental as the underlying OS should not have frequent huge changes.
It is disruptive to end users and developers alike.
IOS 7 was a pretty huge leap from 6. I would say much bigger than many prior whole number updates. This initial minor revs are likely just stuff that was going to go in 7.0 but did not make the cut due to prioritization of resources for other bugs/features.

 

[afsnyder]

All of these changes are terrible :-(

What are Apple thinking with tiny circular icons that leave huge chunks of space?

Why is time being wasted on this rather than things that actually needed fixing?

I think it's temporary. I think they are experimenting with different designs that was handed to them and they picked this one for now. This update was full of minuscule things like circles instead of rectangles and subtle color tweaks. This completely shows that Apple is still nitpicking the system and finding what they like best. Give them some time, this isn't the public release.

Personally, I like the circles better because it feels more physical considering the home button and camera button is circular.

 

[napabar]

wow !

and nobody thought apple could innovate!


seriously though these changes are so minor it's a joke.

Apple needs to take a cue from Google and push larger changes on a more frequent manner.

And get pushed out to 1% of it's audience.

Apple needs to take no cues from Google.....

 

[rhett7660]

Can anybody who has access to this confirm if they "shuffle via bluetooth" bug is fixed?

 

[secDJ]

This is the first time Time I think apple has gone in a wrong direction. So many circles... So heavy even though it's smaller. It looks cheap!! So cheap. Unfinished. The answer call screen is the worst thing I have even seen in my life...

 

[livit]

The iTunes buttons (repeat, shuffle) now actually looks like buttons.
Still, I really dislike how they look. They still feel like something added in the last second, when there were no room for them.

But some nice changes otherwise.

 

[allanfries]

dark or light?

I'd like to see an option toggle for dark/light options for the keyboard. That way one can choose in the setting the colour they want. Might be an idea for other "too white" features as well. Just a thought!

 

[YourHerojb]

They're getting rid of that beautiful red color in the power slider.

I personally liked it more when the rectangle was flush with he edges back in 7.0 beta 2(?).

 

[Analog Kid]

Does 7.1 still light up my passcode when I type it, because that's freaking stupid.

"Just in case you're having a hard time following my thumb, let me flash the numbers in sequence to burn it into your visual cortex."

 

[secDJ]

All of these changes are terrible :-(

What are Apple thinking with tiny circular icons that leave huge chunks of space?

Why is time being wasted on this rather than things that actually needed fixing?

.

So true!!! It's disgusting. I hope the change this.

 

[afsnyder]

What is the point of circular buttons? That just increases the chance of user error.

The addition of choosing whether or not to use the parallax feature is definitely useful, though, as the old non-parallax wallpapers are obsolete unless Reduce Motion is turned on.

All other changes are welcome, as iOS 7 needs whatever it takes to look less like it was designed by 3-year old.

Circular buttons? Like the home button? I think circular buttons are easier because you can aim for the middle. Plus, they are pretty large buttons.

 

[abhimat.gautam]

Does 7.1 fix the home screen page markers? They have been off-center since the release of iOS 7.

 

[S.B.G]

The changes look nice and all, but I think I like the large call button better.

 

[Sellewiet]

Does the slightly bolder fonts on the keyboard make the iOS keyboard any less ****** of a user experience compared to their competition?

But hey, I am still trying to find at least one thing different about Android 4.4 vs 4.3 and I have had the update installed for about 2 months, so at least Apple is doing something visually different between versions, as superfluous as they seem.

If you didn't notice things like that the app drawer background (and notfication bar) changed from pitch black to transparant, you need to check your eyes. Even in the app drawer, the format changed from 5x5 to 4x5 to accommodate the bigger icons.

I'm not saying these are tremendous changes, but to say you can't notice anything different, is bogus.

 

[LostSoul80]

I like the darker icons better. Hopefully many more apps will incorporate this change too.

 

[YourHerojb]

Does 7.1 fix the home screen page markers? They have been off-center since the release of iOS 7.

Oh god it's going to bother me now.

 

[IT Troll]

Really glad they have got enough spare time to change squares into circles and tweak the shade of green used. I assume then that Safari is all fixed now and will no longer crash out constantly with memory overflows.

 

[afsnyder]

Does 7.1 still light up my passcode when I type it, because that's freaking stupid.

"Just in case you're having a hard time following my thumb, let me flash the numbers in sequence to burn it into your visual cortex."

Haha! Never thought of it that way! Although, there needs to be SOME feedback. iOS 6 darkened them but it didn't flash.

 

[Nautilus007]

Honestly, iOS 7 as a whole is a joke. Most of these "added features" have been available via jailbreak for years and some of these tweaks worked better and had less bugs than any of the new features in iOS 7. This is just my opinion obviously but it feels like it was rushed out and the overall UI is still dated, the majority of consumers won't care though so i doubt this will change anytime soon.

 

[alexgowers]

I love all the small changes but the bigger ones like circular dial buttons are ugly!

at least it's all understandable but apple should make sure they hit the apps that are failing.

Calendar, horrid needs to be changed totally to work how you brain wants to see it not how it slides around with confusing colours that don't highlight anything important.

reminders, this is totally ruined currently you can get stuck in a reminder and have to swipe down with no indication that you should, colours are horrid again.

notes, pointless now and needs to be merged with reminders app or something.

Photos app, goes from white to black when doing a slideshow and icons cover 50% of the photos. The sections camera roll, galleries, iCloud, photo stream make zero sense. They need to just organise the parts better a sort of iPhoto layout might be better.

The small changes to toning down the colours and making whites off white are very welcome.

The colour palette was a mistake i think after getting a print team to design computer graphics. There must have been a RGB vs CMYK battle and they got it wrong IMHO.

 

[Nismo73]

Thought it was easier in 6 to move the place in song with the dot button instead of the small vertical line in 7.

 

[afsnyder]

Really glad they have got enough spare time to change squares into circles and tweak the shade of green used. I assume then that Safari is all fixed now and will no longer crash out constantly with memory overflows.

I have an iPhone 5 and have never had that problem. I've had maybe 15 tabs open max and never had a crash with Safari. I'm curious if you know what actually is happening.

 

[MikhailT]

wow !

and nobody thought apple could innovate!


seriously though these changes are so minor it's a joke.

Apple needs to take a cue from Google and push larger changes on a more frequent manner.

Huh? These changes are minor because this is an .1 update to iOS 7. There are not going to be any major changes until the next major upgrade, iOS 8. iOS releases are being released on an annual schedule, which is actually "a frequent manner".

Releasing more larger changes in a quick pace doesn't help anybody. Developers are still trying to adopt to the way iOS 7 work, pushing more releases hurt them and the apps in the short run.

get back to me when there's some news on stability and usability. seriously? a slightly different hue of green? unreal.

This article is all about the changes we can see. iOS 7.1 does have major stability improvements, it's just not mentioned in the article.

Ok seriously they really don't need to spend time changing things just for the sake of change. How about lets go back to the old days where 0.1 releases actually added some good functionality. Now even major releases aren't even adding much and are focusing more on aesthetics which is a real disappointment

Apparently no one who has ever worked in making UI aesthetics has ever heard the saying "change for change's sake" and how it is often unnecessary.

A few month long beta to introduce circles over rectangles...is there honestly not more important products or problems these people could be working on?

iOS 7.1 will be a useless cosmetic update

a new keyboard such as Swype would have a much a better improvement

Read my last answer here, these are just cosmetic changes everybody can see within seconds of testing beta 3.

Beta 2 has noticeably improved the stability and memory management that will blow iOS 7.0.4 away. It's too early to confirm anything about beta 3, it's going to take a few days of stress-testing to figure out if they made any improvements.

Apple generally DO NOT list such changes in their changelog.

Wait until iOS 7.1 is publicly released before making comments like that.

Anything about iOS optimization for iPad ... I thought not ... and the Apple gurus want to come out with a 12" plus iPad ... without optimization.

Once again, Apple, ahead of the curve.

Don't worry, iOS 7.1 is a major improvement for the iPad, a lot of stability changes and Safari rarely crashes. This has been confirmed by a lot of testers here.

Why don't you fix the broken Touch ID instead? Or what about the constantly crashing iPad Mini Retina? It's a nightmare to use either of them. I never thought Apple would sink this far. SJ would never have agreed to releasing such ****** software as iOS 7.

Did you wipe out all of your scanned fingerprints, reset, and add only one finger per slot? Nobody in my family have issues with TouchID. Still works great here.

As for crashes, it'll be improved in iOS 7.1, not to worry. These reported changes are just something everybody can see quickly within seconds of testing b3. Stability often takes days-weeks to confirm. Considering how long b2 was out, they did made improve it.

Any guess why I can get any beta updates via OTA after iOS 7 GM? The last OTA beta I got was th GM and since then I can only the public OTA. ANY Ideas???? It was registered.

GM seeds do not subscribe to beta updates. You must install beta 1 via iTunes in order to receive further OTA beta updates.

 

[flowsy]

The amount of whining crybabies in this forum is mindblowing.

 

[BigHonkingDeal]

Yep, you're so totally right. Not saying 4.1-4.4 haven't included some neat features, but they've slowed down substantially since releasing 4.0. Mainly because they found a good design and didn't want to fix something if it wasn't broken. You know, kinda like Apple did from iOS 1-6. And now that they HAVE done a substantial overhaul with an entirely new design personality as well as some substantial and incredibly powerful new APIs, you're saying Apple isn't "pushing larger changes"

Lol.

I feel there are two things wrong with that statement.

1. Android in it's current state is a huge improvement over previous versions and at this point Google Maps is way ahead of the Apple Maps App. So is Google Voice..... Notification center and so on.


2. Right now it looks to me that IOS is in need of substantial improvements for iPads. It's no longer true that it is optimized for tablets in fact it feels a little clumsy. I'm not talking about third party apps, we all know that there is top quality stuff out there....