Apple will let us toggle design elements in iOS 7, beta says
A new beta of iOS 7 is available now, and it lets us choose how the operating system looks.
Apple has released a new beta build of iOS 7 for developers, and as well as making it faster, it's added some custom design elements for us to play with, 9to5Mac reports.
iOS 7.1 beta 2 is available via the iOS Dev Centre, as well as over the air. One of the key changes is the fact you can turn on button shapes, so you know where to tap. This might seem like nothing major, but as Business Insider notes, it does mark a shift away from Apple's usual design ethos.
You can choose to turn on button shapes, so clickable text becomes shaded, making it look more like a button. In the above picture, "Note" and "Done" on the left screen, and "Edit" and "More" on the right are examples of how they'll look with buttons shapes on. It just makes it more obvious where to press. (The right screen has "More" as a heading as well as a clickable option, for example, which could prove confusing.)
But the point is Apple is giving us the choice of whether to use it or not, which is quite a change from its usual top-down way of doing things.
In iOS 7, Apple also lets you turn off the motion backgrounds if you like. The OS is still nowhere near as customisable as Android, but still, it shows Apple wants to give its customers more choice, instead of dictating how everything looks. And it's hard to imagine such a change under the leadership of the notoriously controlling Steve Jobs.
So what else is new in the beta? They're all pretty minor changes. Touch ID and Passcode Settings will be more prominently displayed, animations are faster, and a bug to do with the default tones has been fixed. Control Centre has been spruced up, with a new bounce animation and a new label. The list view has been redesigned in the Calendar app, the dark keyboard option from the previous beta has been dropped, and there's a new iPad wallpaper from the iPad Air.
I've asked Apple when these features will find their way into the consumer build of iOS 7, and will update this story if I hear back.
Should Apple make iOS 7 more customisable? Let me know in the comments, or on our Facebook page.
Image credit: 9to5Mac