iOS 7 may be a disaster waiting for Apple

iOS 7 right from downloading to operating your phone is a disaster. Yes I know today is the first day that this little beauty is made available for general public and the servers will be busy with so many simultaneous requests to download the update, validate and authenticate before actually installing the OS.

Infrastructure Failure #1: A good number of people have been thrown out by the Apple Servers when they attempted to download the update. They had to do a lot of magic to get it started. Some people were thrown out while in the middle of download and they had to redo again. Apple should have expected this load and prepared to handle it more smoothly. If it were Microsoft, all the iFans would have made sure that the total internet echoed with their rants in this regards. But here it is silent. Probably Windows fan boys are more disciplined than Apple. Also Microsoft pushes a lot of updates to its Windows OS, and they are doing it for the past few years, even Apple does with its OSX updates. But this is clearly a failure on its part. Apple didn’t understand the load.

Infrastructure Failure #2: This is part of the above. Once you download successfully, now it has to validate the update before installing it. It throws a EULA screen and then again cancel/agree dialog box. I don’t know why they show this dialog box once you agree to the EULA. Here it shows a small popup saying validating the update. If you are lucky, it will start installing it by rebooting and showing Apple logo with progress. If you are not lucky like most of us, then it shows a weird error box saying that the update download is failed due to connection try again. Well not exactly that, but similar. Here is the confusion. Since you already downloaded update, why does it say update download failure? But actually it is failing to validate the update. Apple should have made that clear. One would wonder how to download the update because it shows install update on the software update part of settings, not download. This is clearly a failure from the deployment point of view.

Ease of Setting up for the first run: Once you successfully update your phone, you have to setup the phone for operations. Now the system will guide you through. The language is a bit confusing and I felt it is worse than my English. :D. Keeping the instructions part of it aside, Apple has taken its UI Design cues from Modern UI or Metro UI of Microsoft (Windows 8 and Windows Phone). Apple also chose the font similar to Microsoft’s Segoe UI. But in the case of Microsoft it is darker and you could clearly understand. Here Apple failed. It chose white as background and grayish black as the font color. If your eyes are tired or you have corrected vision, God only can help you to read through without strain. The navigation buttons are hyperlinks and they are lighter than Sky Blue and you may strain your eyes. Of course your experience may be different than mine, but people like would definitely feel pain while updating it. Setup is definitely a shocker, whether it is good or bad. Lighter colors on white background simply stupid idea. Setting up iOS until 6.1 was cake walk, but not this. So please be prepared.

Change in experience: The experience is totally different. Starting from Phone to Texting, Camera to Photos, App updates to app launching and closing. Some of them are really good and some of them are bad. For example web surfing using Safari is a bit changed and it is not good. Photos album handling and folders/grouping of application is improved. Some of the stuff you have to search and get used to, for example photos and how they are organized. Camera is good. Search is improved, but you miss the left swipe, you have to touch on the home screen until pull down a bit to make the search appear on your screen. Make sure you are not pulling down the screen from top of iPhone or pulling up from bottom. If you pull down from top, it will open the notifications center, pull up the bottom, you will see handy settings like Airplane mode, Wifi, BT etc. or tools like torchlight, compass, music controls or screen orientation lock. Apple’s user base is big and much bigger than Windows Phone. When Microsoft announced Windows Phone 7.x was dropped and it was moving onto Windows Phone 8, entire blogosphere bickered and ranted all nonsense about it. When Microsoft introduced Start Screen instead of Start Button/Menu the iFans, even though they would never use Windows or related products, and media pundits cried wolf. That was not change at all when compared to this. This is total change and it would take people to get used to it. And I think the frustration level would be more if someone is not really ready for change.

Disclaimer:

1. I own iPhone 5, iPad, Android Phone, Android Tablet in addition to Windows Phones and Tablets. I am ready for change and to me change is part of progression. My experience may differ from you totally.
   
2. My family doesn’t represent world but here are their initial reactions.
   

Wife: Horrible, how can I find my stuff? This is totally confusing.

Daughter: Dad, please don’t upgrade mine.

Son: Yuck. The tiles on Windows Phone are bright and live. The colors on this are dull and flat. Dad I am not touching your iPhone. And in fact your Android phone looks beautiful than this.

Of course everyone liked camera, search (Once they figured it out), compass, and Siri. Everyone hated the update experience, overall look and feel (dull and boring) especially navigation between screens is totally gone.

Overall this update is a disaster and failure in my world.