I love the new IOS 7 operating system on my iPhone and iPad

When it comes to my desk work, I want a PC.  Although my first computer was a Mac (215K), I’ve always felt more comfortable on PCs.  I don’t know why.  It just is what it is.  When it comes to other devices, however, I’m Apple all the way.  I’ve never seen or used a smart phone or a tablet that feels as intuitively right to me as my iPhone and my iPad.  Part of it is the aesthetics (although that’s not important enough for me to use a Mac) and part of it is that the organizational principle makes sense to me.  From the moment I touch them, I know what to do, and I get real sensory pleasure from doing it.

Apple’s newly released IOS 7 operating system takes those pleasures to a whole new level.  As these screen shots from my iPad show, the interface is just beautiful:  clean lines, and light, bright colors.  Every time I look at it, my brain gets a little thrill.

It starts with the color scheme.  The home page just seems to pop.  Apple has taken the spring-like colors we associate with Easter, injected them with a dollop of pizzazz, and spread them out before us.  It’s a wonderful palette.  It’s also bright enough that you can lower the brightness on your monitor, which helps preserve battery life, without impairing visual integrity.

IOS 7 home page

If you’re like me, and like to have things in folders, the folder views are eye candy too.  My only quibble is that, if you have a full folder, rather than see all the items in one screen, you have to swipe to get to the second screen.  However, since folders now hold 18 items, not 9, I really shouldn’t quibble.

Folder view on home screen

The “control center” is one of the coolest things about the IOS 7.  If you swipe your screen from bottom to top, the control center pops up, enabling you to do common tasks from any screen.  No longer do you have to look for your clock feature if you want to set a timer.  It’s right there.  Flying on an airplane and need to go to airplane mode?  Forget trying to drill down through Settings.  Airplane mode is there with one finger swipe, as are Wifi on/off, Bluetooth, music, screen brightness, etc.

Control center

Sharing photos also couldn’t be easier.  Select one photo or more and, once they’re selected, you can easily distribute the photos any way you want.

Sharing photos

All the things that you normally check throughout the day — calendar, missed phone calls, texts, etc — are also just a swipe away.  Swiping from top to bottom gives you your “Notification Center.”  Now you can see in one place all the things that are important to you, plus get a heads up on what’s coming down the pike tomorrow.

Notification center

Even Safari is better.  It now has a single input area that allows you to start typing either a search or a URL.  As you go, it starts suggesting popular sites, Google searches, and previously visited pages.  Again, it’s both easy and visually delightful.

Safari interface

Those features are just the tip of the iceberg. At every level, no matter what I’m doing, I’m discovering that IOS 7 is fun to use, extremely logically organized, and beautiful to look it. As far as I’m concerned, this new operating system is a winner.  Downloading it yesterday was a hassle, but worth every minute.