iOS 7 Beta 3 Now Available For iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch 205
An anonymous reader writes "Apple on Monday released iOS 7 beta 3 for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch to developers. Apple unveiled iOS 7 during its WWDC 2013 keynote in early June, and the new software was met with mixed responses. While some believe iOS 7 is a big leap forward in terms of innovation, BGR said that iOS 7 focused mainly on renovation rather than the introduction of innovative new features. Of course, Apple still may have some surprises in store for the release version of iOS 7 this fall, especially considering the next-generation iPhone 5S is expected to launch around the same time with an integrated fingerprint scanner."
REALLY?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Ok, look, I'm a huge Apple fanboy and love Apple news but, come ON!! Apple posted a Beta of iOS 7 and that's making it onto the front page?
Guess what? They're going to release another beta of iOS 7 in about two weeks. And then another two weeks later. And so on and so on. Each one will be a bit tighter and tighter until they release the final gold master.
I don't mind seeing these sorts of updates on appleinsider.com but here? Come on!
Re:Unless you have a 1st gen iPad ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:OMG, it still looks the same (Score:3, Insightful)
as someone who carries an iphone 5 and Galaxy S3 daily what is iOS missing that's so awesome on Android?
The ability to install apps from sources that aren't the official app store and the ability to develop apps for free without paying a $100/year subscription?
Plus an open source kernel, so you can verify that all your activity isn't being routed directly to Apple for the NSA. I mean, "advertising purposes."
Re:OMG, it still looks the same (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Consistent data sharing between applications
2. A decent on-screen keyboard. Personally I like the sliding-style ones like Swype and Swiftkey and iOS doesn't do that eithre, but one of my biggest annoyances with iOS is that Apple's keyboard does not change the state of letters on-screen when the shift key has been pressed.
3. Ability to download arbitrary files and organize data in arbitrary ways.
4. Widgets. I'm not a huge fan of them, but it sure is nice to see a list of my e-mails with subject lines right on my home screen.
5. Set default apps to non-Apple options.
Re:OMG, it still looks the same (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure you've reviewed every line of all the open source code on your Android device to ensure none of your activities are being sent anywhere you don't want them to.
You haven't. Hoping someone else has doesn't cut it either, unless you review it how do you know there are no backdoors?
And besides all of that.. congratulations, you're likely using one of the four major cellular providers who all provide a direct feed to the NSA anyway.
Re:Unless you have a 1st gen iPad ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Sounds like you're not the intended demographic for Apple. You need more hipster or fanboi to properly appreciate the lost value of the Apple product.
Re:Unless you have a 1st gen iPad ... (Score:5, Insightful)
My family has had three Android phones. None of them were released with the latest Android OS, and none of them ever had an official upgrade to the latest Android OS of the time. With one of them, we bought the phone only on the promise by the manufacturer that it would be upgraded to Android 4.x (the hardware is capable), and that won't be happening.
These three Android phone companies said "fuck you" from the very beginning. Never. Again.
The original iPad could run the latest iOS for 2.5 years after its introduction, 1.5 years after its discontinuation. That's far better than the official Android support you'll see.
Re:Unless you have a 1st gen iPad ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:OMG, it still looks the same (Score:3, Insightful)
ios you can set it up for email to be on the lock screen
But what about the home screen? I like my communications to at least be hidden behind the lockscreen, not right up front where any asshole that grabs my phone can peruse my account.
the rest are niche geeky things that i would have cared about a decade ago, but not anymore. i hate most of the widgets and have been deleting most of mine lately. the default app thing seems useless. same with outside the app store apps.
Translation: Well, those aren't features that I find awesome, so therefore they are not awesome at all; you fail for not being able to read my mind.
Realistically, most of the points GP made (specifically, 2-4) are quite valid, regardless of your personal feelings about them.
i hate the mail client on the S3 compared to my iphone
i hate the keyboard compared to iOS
Personal observations, having nothing to do with the actual features of Android - kinda seems like an arbitrary bitch to me (personally, I like to KNOW when I'm writing in all caps, especially on those occasions where the keyboard covers the part of the screen the typed text is entered into, like a web form).
Also, considering how much of a trivial matter it is to switch keyboards (and mail clients) in Android makes the complaint all the more trivial. Curiously, I wonder - can you even change the keyboard layout in iOS? If so, what's the process?
the screen seems flaky compared to my iphone 5
the S3 is laggy
the who HD quality screen is not true. lots of stuff looks better on the iphone
those are more issues with Samsung's hardware than the Android OS, are they not?
which apps have data sharing so i can try them out?
Gmail & Google Calendar spring immediately to mind - I can sync my schedule to every computer I use, and my phone, and my wife's tablet... all of which are manufactured by different companies, and running several different operating systems.
i tried google now for a few days and turned it off. about as useless as siri
Novelty technologies, regardless of source, always seem to end up feeling useless... probably because they are.
Cue the emo fanboy ranting from both sides... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously guys, get over yourselves.
You can install from other sources (Score:5, Insightful)
The ability to install apps from sources that aren't the official app store and the ability to develop apps for free without paying a $100/year subscription?
Both have the same answer - Jailbreak. Which is easy to do if you are technically inclined enough to want to program or to be able to protect yourself from malicious sideloaded programs.
Once jailbroken, you can deploy anything you like without paying the $100 fee to deploy to your device. It also opens up the ability to easily hack any third party application with simple code additions.
Meanwhile non-technical users get a fairly secure system that they cannot screw up too easily.
And on a side note, you don't even need to jailbreak just to install apps from sources not from the app store. Anyone can install ad-hoc builds, anyone with an enterprise license can provide installable apps to anyone (though technically they are supposed to be employees).
Plus an open source kernel, so you can verify that all your activity isn't being routed directly to Apple for the NSA
iOS is as open source in that regard, and there've also been quite a lot of people analyzing network traffic outbound from it.
It's absurd to clam that (for instance) the Android that ships with a Samsung or Motorola phone is something you can see all the source code for... that simply is not true.
Re:Or numerous other Android devices ... (Score:4, Insightful)
1st gen kindle fire was android derived, not technically android. never sold as an android tablet, didn't have any of googles stuff..
Just like the latest Kindle - yet you have no problem counting it for Android marketshare.
Re:Unless you have a 1st gen iPad ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually Android suffers from the same hardware limits as iOS. For example the latest version from CyanogenMod you can get on the HTC G1 is "froyo" while the MyTouch 4G only supports up to "gingerbread".
You can only squeeze so much features on older hardware with slower CPUs and more importantly smaller memory.
Re:OMG, it still looks the same (Score:4, Insightful)
One thing that's VERY important to some people:
Bluetooth Stack implementation.
At work, I pulled my HTC Desire S, fired Bluetooth and could see 17 devices around me. Some laptops, some mobile devices, some headphones and one specialized device. My colleague's iPhone 4 could see none. You can't pair an iPhone with a laptop and seamlessly transfer data between them.
When the iPhone:
- can't see headphones;
- Can't pair with laptops;
- can't pair with OBD II devices
Then it's partly useless, and I don't need a castrated device.
Re:Unless you have a 1st gen iPad ... (Score:5, Insightful)
My family has had three Android phones. None of them were released with the latest Android OS, and none of them ever had an official upgrade to the latest Android OS of the time. With one of them, we bought the phone only on the promise by the manufacturer that it would be upgraded to Android 4.x (the hardware is capable), and that won't be happening.
These three Android phone companies said "fuck you" from the very beginning. Never. Again.
The original iPad could run the latest iOS for 2.5 years after its introduction, 1.5 years after its discontinuation. That's far better than the official Android support you'll see.
*All* of the phone vendors have ridiculously short support periods. You can go out and buy a £300 laptop with Windows 8 on it and MS will support that for at least 10 years, after which you can probably upgrade the OS yourself and get a few years more support (I would hazard that current chipsets may well still be perfectly servicable in 10 years time. Certainly my 6 year old laptop isn't showing any signs of needing a hardware upgrade). Conversely you put down £600 on a phone and you're expected to throw it away and buy another one after 2 years.
You get a *bit* better support from Apple and Google than from Samsung, HTC, etc. but its still not great. I hold up as an example, my Samsung Captivate Glide, which was released in November 2011 with Gingerbread on it. 11 months after Android 4.0 was released by Google, Samsung eventually released it for the Captivate Glide... except it was unusably buggy. Despite having similar hardware to the Galaxy S II, as of November 2012 (only 1 year after its release) Samsung have basically dropped all support for it. No more bugfixes, security updates, etc.
What we actually need is standardised phone hardware and open drivers so we can just install a generic OS ourselves instead of having to wait for the vendor to get their finger out and publish a device specific one. Despite the likes of Cyanogenmod, there's still a whole load of device-specific code; you can't just take the latest Android and slap it on an arbitrary phone like you can take a random Linux ow Windows and stick it on any PC.
Re:Or numerous other Android devices ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually it was $500. For the record this $500 device received six major OS upgrades (3.2 to 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 5.0 and 5.1), the $200 device received zero.
And in breaking news, a cheap device isn't supported as well as an expensive device. Full story at eleven.
So, does the lack of OS upgrades have any impact at all on its intended use for reading books downloaded from Amazon, listening to music downloaded from Amazon, or playing videos downloaded from Amazon?
Re:OMG, it still looks the same (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple have LOTS of restrictions on what apps can do with telephony. Android has LOTS of malware. Fundamental difference between a platform that protects the user and one that's a malware-writer's playground.
Now, if Android has a call blocking white/black list built in to the system software, then that's a good thing. If it's open to developers - oops!