After a couple of months of heated conversations and adrenaline fueled debates on its looks and design, the seventh version of iOS, Apple’s venerable mobile operating system, will, in all probability, be made available for general consumption on September 10. The date was leaked online through an email sent by Nuance, the company responsible for Siri, the voice assistant on iPhones and iPads, to Owen Williams, a developer. In the email, Nuance informs developers, “As you are probably aware, iOS 7 GA (which stands for General Availability) will be released on September 10th.” The email which was live on Nuance’s servers has now been taken down but it’s highly unlikely that it contained incorrect information considering the fact that Nuance works very closely with Apple.
iOS 7 will mark the biggest change for the mobile operating system in terms of looks and design. Under the direction of Jony Ive, the Senior Vice President of Design at Apple, iOS will forsake skeuomorphism (design that emulates real-world objects, for e.g. textures that resemble wood or metal) and go for a flatter, cleaner design. The response from the public and the media since the new design was unveiled at WWDC 2013 has been polarizing, to put it mildly. We’ve seen quite a bit of criticism towards iOS 7 with many calling it too colourful and visually inconsistent while others have praised Apple for taking a risk in changing up the look of an OS that had started to look staid.
When all is said and done, it doesn’t really matter what the media or commenters say until the final product is out there and in the hands of consumers. That’s why, September 10 can’t come soon enough.
Source: Owen Williams’ Blog via The Verge