IOS 7 vs iOS 8
David Price compares Apple’s two operating systems
iOS 8, the latest version of Apple’s operating system for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, launched to the general public alongside the iPhone 6 last month. In this comparison review, we contrast the features in iOS 8 and its predecessor, iOS 7, to
help Apple fans decide if they should upgrade their devices to the new mobile OS.
Design
When it launched, one of the major concerns people had with iOS 7 was the way it looked, which was brighter, ‘flatter’, more colourful, more abstract and generally very different to iOS 6. To our eyes at least iOS 6 now looks very dated, but at the time it was a big change and one that was hard to get used to. iOS 8 looks largely the same as iOS 7, so if you were a fan of skeuomorphism, you’ll be disappointed.
Continuity
So if the differences between iOS 7 and iOS 8 aren’t visual, it follows that most of them are functional. iOS 8 has a bunch of new features, as well as a panoply of small but important tweaks to existing features. Let’s start with the features; first up, Continuity.
This is in fact a whole suite of features (in both iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite) based around the concept of connectedness or interoperability between your Mac and your iOS devices. They’re designed to make your iPhone and iPad work seamlessly with your Mac.
Handoff, for example, is a feature that allows you to continue conversations and suchlike from desktop to mobile and back again. When you start working in one Handoff-compatible app on your iPhone (such as Mail), a link will appear on your Mac. Tap this link and you can continue working on the same account, in this case carrying on writing the email on your Mac that you started on the iPad.
Continuity also lets you answer calls coming in to your iPhone, on your Mac, and send texts from it too. Finally, it’s easier to set up a Wi-Fi hotspot that your Mac can easily access.
iOS 7 devices can’t perform any of the Continuity functions. If you’re using a PC, of course, or don’t plan to upgrade your Mac to OS X Yosemite, then this won’t be a concern.
Health and HealthKit
One of iOS 8’s big leaked features before WWDC, Health is a sort of umbrella app for all the data collected by a range of health- and fitness-related apps and peripherals, bringing the data together for ease of comparison and tracking.
It’s a nice idea in its basic form, although it’s debatable how well the healthcare-related elements will cross the pond, given the vastly different provisions in the US and UK. But things could get a lot more interesting in the future, as developers get their hands on the source code.
The HealthKit developer tools Apple unveiled at the same time as Health itself will let devs come up with new ways to manipulate the data in useful ways.
Widgets
Widgets was the point in the iOS 8 launch event where Apple fans started getting really excited. It’s a feature that we’ve been asking for years, and one of Android fans’ perennial boasts.
They are user-customisable mini-apps that sit on the Notifications screen and perform features on command – a watered-down version of the wider
home-screen customisability offered in Android, while retaining the tight security of iOS.
You can download widgets from apps and customise their position on the Notifications screen. The example Apple software boss Craig Federighi gave in the keynote speech was a (rather brilliant) eBay widget that lets you observe the progress of your auctions, and make a bid from the Notifications Centre itself. It’s all part of a wider theme of greater interoperability between the different parts of iOS, and the separate iOS apps, that runs through iOS 8.
Interactive notifications
While we’re on the subject of the Notification Screen, it’s worth mentioning that the notifications themselves, which have been quietly becoming more useful over the past few versions of iOS, are more interactive than ever in iOS 8 – and far more independent of the apps they connect to.
Whereas in iOS 7 you can swipe a Twitter notification to be taken straight to the Twitter app to reply to the mention or whatever (which we felt was a nice feature), Twitter
notifications in iOS 8 let you reply there and then, without leaving the app you’re currently in; just pull down the little notification box that’s appeared at the top of the screen and a keyboard will appear. The same interactivity marks notifications from Facebook (you can like a status update, for example), Messages (replying to a text), Calendar (accepting or declining an invitation) and so on.
It’s a lovely enhancement, and helps to avoid dragging you out of whatever you’re working on in order to reply to an important notification.
QuickType predictive typing
After a long time with few changes to its system keyboard (and a gradual falling-behind as Android added various typing-related customisations and enhancements), iOS 8 sees several major improvements in this neglected area.
Out of the box iOS 8 features QuickType, a form of ambitious predictive typing. We’re not just talking about completing words you’ve nearly finished typing – in Messages, Mail and similar contexts, iOS 8 will offer entire words that it suspects you may wish to use based on context, in a little palette above the keyboard.
For example, if you type a message to a friend suggesting dinner, predictive typing might add “and a movie”. Eerie, no?
Furthermore, Apple says iOS 8 will be able to learn the words you typically use and understand the context in which you’re typing, such as ‘business’ or ‘personal’, and adjust its suggestions accordingly.
iCloud Drive
Apple’s iCloud Drive feature, new iOS 8, was one of the most loudly cheered announcements at WWDC 2014. It works alongside Apple’s Documents In The Cloud system, providing direct access to files saved inside Documents In The Cloud. When your files are saved to Documents In The Cloud, you’ll be able to access the file directly in the iCloud Drive folder in Mac OS X.
Essentially, iCloud Drive enables you to create documents on one device and use it on another; so you’ll be able to create a Keynote presentation on your Mac and then continue making edits on your iPhone or iPad. The advantage of iCloud Drive is that you’ll also be able to access files directly, and store and share files other than ones created by iCloud apps.
Family Sharing
Family Sharing looks incredibly handy for those with families, unsurprisingly.
With Family Sharing, up to six people who share a credit card can share purchases - games, apps, films and music - from the iTunes Store with each other. The idea is that if one member of the family buys something from iTunes, the whole family can easily enjoy it on their iOS devices (and other Apple products) without paying for it again. Ingeniously, it
incorporates parental controls if you want, so that if little Jacob wants to download a game on his dad’s account, a permission notification will automatically be sent to dad’s iPhone.
Family Sharing also includes new iOS familyfocused features for Calendar and Photos apps that help a family stay connected.
Mail gets a solid make-over in iOS 8, with a range of handy tweaks and new features.
You can use gestures to delete, flag or ‘unread’ messages, swiping across a message to perform the chosen action: it’s a single swipe to mark as unread, flick across and tap to flag, or drag all the way across to delete. You can flick a message down to the bottom of the screen, check or copy material from another message, and then return to it with a single
click. From the demo, it appeared to be roughly the same as minimising a window on a desktop OS – highly convenient.
Finally, Mail appears to have got smart – during the demo it recognised an invitation in a marketing email as an event, and offered to add it to Calendar. Sounds terrific; needs testing to see if it works.
Safari
A variety of small tweaks are added to Safari. In iOS 8 Safari on the iPad, you can get a ‘bird’s eye view’ of all the tabs you’ve got open. The sidebar from Mavericks is now present in Safari on iOS. Safari users will be able to use DuckDuckGo - the privacyfocused search engine, designed specifically to offer a way of searching that doesn’t track the user - as the default search. And Safari on iOS 8 will enable Private Browsing on a per-tab basis.
Messages
Messages has a few updates, particularly related to the handling of group message threads, but one new feature stands out: voice messaging.
Voice messages are easy to send and selfdestruct (to save memory) after two minutes unless you choose to save them. (You can either keep them on a case-by-case basis by tapping Keep next to the voice message in question, which will store the message for 30 days, a year, or forever, depending on what option you’ve selected in the Settings app, or you can choose to save all the audio and video messages you get. Again, this is done in the Settings app.)
But it’s the little things that make this sound so good. Fantastically, voice messages appear in the lock screen with a waveform graphic, and you can listen to them by simply lifting the iPhone to your ear: iOS detects the motion and interprets the gesture automatically. You can then reply, again without pressing any on-screen controls; say your reply, lower the phone and the message is sent. In testing this proved a bit flaky, but it’s a lovely idea.
Camera features
Various updates arrive for the Camera app in iOS 8: time-lapse video; a camera timer; users of older iPhones will get access to the quicker burst mode previously only available to the iPhone 5s, and the iPad gets access to Panorama photos; separate focus and exposure controls. It’s odd that
Apple didn’t make more of these enhancements, which all sound useful and appealing, at its iOS 8 unveiling event.
Photos
And what happens to the photos after you’ve taken them? With the launch of iOS 8, photos shot on any iOS device are automatically saved in the cloud and accessible on your other iOS devices. Hand in hand with this new feature, Apple says it’s heavily enhanced the search features across the Photos app - a vital tool when wading through pages upon pages of shots. Search terms are returned as locations, times and album names.
You can also edit photos within the Photos app and the edits are transferred across to other iOS devices, pretty much instantaneously.
Siri
Along with Health, the biggest consistent rumour about iOS 8 before the unveiling concerned Shazam integration. Sure enough, Siri can now listen to a song and tell you what it is and point you to a download. Siri also gets 22 new languages.
App Store
The last update that will affect consumers directly concerns the App Store, which is getting a raft of new features with the launch of iOS 8: preview videos, along with the current static screenshots; bundle deals, whereby you can pay a single fee for multiple apps; a beta test service that will let you try out unreleased apps if the publishers let you; and improved search. These are all sorely needed and appreciated.
New developer tools
As you can see, iOS 8 adds a few big new features for users, and loads of handy small new feature, without taking anything away from iOS 7’s feature set. But the entire app ecosystem is likely to benefit from the iOS 8 launch, thanks to an array of new developer tools and relaxed rules that were announced at the same time. These included Extensions, Third-party keyboards, Third-party Touch ID, HealthKit, HomeKit, BitCoin currency transfers, Swift and Metal. Expect more announcements over the coming months.
iPad & iPhone User’s buying advice
Should you upgrade from iOS 7 to iOS 8? Well, there are three issues to consider: visual design, features, and performance. Visuals are in essence the same; unlike when iOS 7 launched, and many users were put off by a starkly different visual design, iOS 8 is set apart from its predecessor in functional terms rather than visual ones. New features have been added, and they’re great: varied, imaginative additions that are convenient for the user. The only reason not to upgrade from iOS 7 to iOS 8 would be if you’re concerned about performance, and the danger models are the iPhone 4s, the iPad 2 and the iPad 3. For those devices you are likely to experience a slowdown when upgrading, and I think I would advise against it unless your heart is set on Health, or Family Sharing, or one of the other new features. For other devices upgrading to iOS 8 seems to me to be a no-brainer – just remember that you can’t go back once you take the plunge.