Good Bad and Ugly of iOS7

The Good

I’m sure I’ll grow to love the iO/S improvements, just as I’m sure that many of them were probably available long ago on some small fractured percent of properly updated Android phones. For that matter, I don’t doubt that simply jail-breaking a current iPhone allows for some of the features in the upcoming official iOS7 release.

I’m too lazy to jailbreak my iDevice, so you know I’m too lazy to fool with learning any new O/S, let alone the jumbled mix of Android “flavors”.  No disrespect to those who do, since I could have done so myself under different conditions.  I could easily  have been one of “you”.

There was a time in my life where I wanted to tinker “under the hood” of every electrical or mechanical device I owned. That time is long past. Now I just want my gear to work when I turn it on, and I want it to engage and function without me having to remember a list of coded steps akin to the Up,Up,Down,Left,A,B,X cheat codes of yore.

The Bad

I may grow fond of having my iPhone look like cross between a 90’s MySpace page and a “My Sparkle Pony” commercial, but I can’t be the only person who likes skeuomorphs and wish they were an option.  I want my phone icon to look like it is still mounted to the wall at the Shady Rest Hotel in Hooterville.  I want my mail icon to resemble one of those pneumatic tubes like they use to shuffle mail around in the old days.  Give me a flashlight icon that mimics a coal miners lantern ferchrissakes!

The Ugly

Your preferences on icons may not reflect my steam-punk sensibilities, but isn’t that suppose to be a part of the “big win” of all this new technology?  Isn’t it a bit unnecessarily Orwellian to lock us all down on the same icons or is there some National Security letter somewhere forcing Apple to unify the look of the device the NSA most covets to spy on us?  I dunno, and Siri and Google seem particularly jumbled in their responses.  If any of you happens to see a distressed twenty something American wandering about Hong Kong, maybe you could ask him and give the rest of us an update.

Enjoy.