iOS7 killing apps

iOS7: First Impressions

WARNING: Don’t install it yet! Wait to install! I’ve been reading warnings like this all week since the release of Apple’s iOS7. Most of the warnings came from electronic music sites who rightfully warn that Apple made some changes to the AudioCopy SDK and music apps apparently are suffering from performance issues.

Complainers: The majority of folks complaining were quoting Audiobus. Funny how a company like Audiobus grew so quickly and became the authority on all things iOS in no time flat. And with good reason. An app like Audiobus requires partnerships with every app developer that wants to be compatible with them. Sort of like the Betamax debates back in the day. Jack may be the better app, but Audiobus won the popular vote.

Complaints aside, I decided to take the advice of several others and upgrade my phone but not my iPad. That way I can test apps on the phone without messing up my iPad.

Flat Design: Having read articles about the flat design, I expected to hate it. I had totally bought into skeuomorphism and was not looking forward to having an iPhone that looked like an over-priced Android. I’m happy to be wrong. I love it.

Snappy: Everything has loaded quickly and the keyboard seems especially fast to me. I’ve heard folks saying that it lags, but that was not my experience. Having years of experience doing usability testing, my guess is it seems slower because it is new to the user. Perception of performance is often different from actuality.

One bug: Gmail refused to load. The loader kept spinning. I read that turning on cookies would fix this. I tried switching my Safari » Block Cookies setting from Never to From third parties and advertisers. Not good enough. Needs to be on Always—however, once you’re in, you can switch it back to From third parties and advertisers.

One note: After switching, I was still unable to get in. I killed the Gmail process and that did the trick. BTW, killing apps has a new gesture. You still double-click the Home button, but instead of holding an app till it shakes and clicking the ‘X’, now you simply swipe an image of the app page upwards. So now there’s an app icon that you ignore and a thumbnail of the page of the app you were on and that’s what you swipe. Clear as mud.

UPDATE: Another widespread bug has been reported. According to CDM: “After the phone call or alert is dismissed, audio apps cannot recover their audio session and will either hang indefinitely, crash, or present an error message depending on the app.” Numerous commenters to that post reported that simply putting your device on Airplane mode while playing is a good workaround until Apple has a fix. Thanks, but I’ll wait before I upgrade my iPad.

Have you upgraded? What’s your experience been like?


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