What iOS7 means for Hong Kong's tech-freaks

Apple’s newly unveiled iOS7 gives a dramatic re-work on the interface, and has some interesting new features under the hood, some that users will enjoy and some that will delight or frustrate your developers.

One that is sure to frustrate more than a few developers is the elimination of using MAC addresses for tracking, as they previously did with UDID, as a few low-level network APIs are being deprecated, in the seemingly never-ending cat and mouse of unique device identification.

Users of iOS7 will get multitasking, AirDrop (a WIFI file sharing service - which will be immensely useful); integration with certain car models (mostly US models); security improvements - an app specific VPN has some interesting possibilities; make calls over WiFi; and like the iOS Twitter integration, Tencent Weibo integration is now baked into iOS7. 

I have also seen mentions of an an extended Chinese-English dictionary and handwritten character recognition, but haven’t been able to verify or test these features out.

One of the core concepts in iOS7’s new user interface is ‘deference’ - so it serves its functional role smartly and competently without competing with the content.

There is opportunity to be creative with it and of course a level of customization is possible, but why spend time and energy on that when you should be spending it on your content?

There is an obvious advertising parallel in what the master of the craft, David Ogilvy, preached to his clients: A great ad sells the product, not itself. Takeaway - if the majority of your app’s appeal was wrapped up in skeuomorphic UI, then you’re about to lose your appeal.

The new UI itself is raising a few eyebrows - what Apple has done sounds good, and the design theory is sound. It even looks good on the website and various screenshots around the web, but testing it on a live device, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. Obviously this is the beta release and there is some tuning to do.

Viewing it on a new device with default screen contrast and brightness, on the default background as installed isn’t a good match with the app icons. There is just too much color, and it’s easy for things to blend together. Backgrounds are easy to change though.

Strangely, as the interface pulls back from visual effects to trick the eye into seeing objects that have dimension, the app icons have a parallax effect to imply depth and distance from the background. Oddly out of place in the stated goal of the interface, but by itself a nice detail. Once in an app though, things are smoother.

The borderless buttons are nice - it feels like most other modern apps now. The use of transparency is a nice touch - some places a bit too subtle, but overall well done.

iOS7 isn’t due out in final form for a few months, and there will likely be refinements as the release get’s closer. So think about what your app does and how it does it - and with the new interface, content is king!