Not even Tim Cook. And it’ll be months before we do.
Right now, thousands of developers (and plenty of journalists) are using an early version of iOS 7, Apple's next major update to its five-year-old mobile OS. Reviews have been written, and verdicts have been reached. Everyone who would have an opinion on a new iOS update has already rendered one, and published it online.
Even though it won't be available to the general public until September, when the next iPhone comes out, the discussion about what iOS 7 is, how it feels, and whether or not it's a good thing feels almost over.
This, however, does not comport with reality. iOS 7 beta testers have experienced, at best, a framework — they've been given a preview. They've used a new homescreen, a new lockscreen, a new app switcher, a new mail app, a new texting app and a new browser. Those pieces account for a small part of how people actually use their phones. A Flurry report from earlier this year puts these pieces at well less than half of a typical users' experience:
Via: blog.flurry.com
Using iOS 7 today is like using iOS 6 with a skin: some major pieces look and feel different, but the heart of the experience — third-party apps — are exactly the same. Facebook, which eats up an incredible 18% of smartphone users' attention, still looks and works like an iOS 6 app. So do Twitter, Instagram, Pandora, Tumblr, and Yelp. Apps in all the categories accounted for above, excluding "Games," will be subject to fairly substantial changes before the next iPhone is released to the public. There's even a Tumblr devoted to imagining what they'll look like:
