After a year of the iOS 6 maps disaster, Apple worked really hard and managed to map out Paris as well! Now, you have another city where everyone should be living in since Apple managed to map it out…or…so they claim.
When you also consider the fact that the current iOS 7 beta is available for the iPhone only, one has to wonder what Apple has been up-to with iOS 7 after the iOS 6 disaster. BTW, for those who are trying the Apple dev centre site, nope, it does not work and is down.
Although, iOS 7 does seem to have some of my wish list, it does not seem to have the buttonless experience that people would still want to jailbreak for. Consider the fact that any half decent Android phone has touch buttons compared to the most expensive iPhone which still requires the use of a regular (read lame) tactile button.
The Apple “maps” disaster continues! Effectively, all location based apps will still remain useless excepting the two cities mapped out by Apple in 2 years, one in the US and now one in France. Notice the fact that even in the iOS 7 Paris demo, at no point did the “maps” move beyond the known Apple mapped points.
Excepting for the maps disaster that continues, and extends to the new OS X, the rest of iOS seems to be on track…just a year or more late. Wonder who gets fired this time around for continuing the “maps” disaster!
The new OS X, like earlier versions, retains the old 17th century UI although some UX improvements seem to be there. While the announcement of iBooks on OS X etc might seem exciting, it should have been there at least a year or more ago.
The new MacBook Air with all day battery life seemed a good step forward for the line, but, it was somewhat overshadowed by the new MacPro preview. The new MacPro seemed to be impressive in the preview. Let’s see how it performs when it is actually released.
Overall, it was a mixed bag of announcements. While the “maps” disaster continues and extends itself to the desktop, the rest of iOS 7 seems to be on track. The new OS X is just an incremental change in UI although the UX seems to have improved, but, it’s not what one would call a major update. There are simply too many issues with OS X that need to be fixed before it can be called a major update from a user viewpoint. The hardware that was announced, as usual, was way beyond the current software capabilities of Apple.
Let’s wait and see what happens when iOS 7 and the new OS X are formally released. Will the Apple “maps” disaster remain? Will the new OS X actually fix at least some of the long standing OS issues? Will iOS 7 actually includes a buttonless experience? Will the iPad 3G version of iOS 7 have SMS capabilities? Will Apple continue to artificially limit features on older devices?
We are still around 3 months away from the final answers…