Mrs D's TOP 10 TIPS for Apple's New IOS 7 operating system

So how many of you have installed the new IOS 7 on to your iphone or ipad??  Do you love it or hate it?

Like it???

I really wasn't sure about upgrading but Mr D insisted that I do it!!  He gets so frustrated with me because I HATE learning anything new when it comes to technology.  If things are working fine for me then I don't see why I should mess with them.  "But it'll make your life SO much easier if you just let me show you this new thing" he says "No!" I reply.  "Seriously you are just creating extra work for yourself" he says (with slight exasperation in his voice). "I like it how it is" I reply - still not budging!!

So like I said, the migration to IOS 7 was not done with any kind of excitement or anticipation on my part.  In fact I was convinced I would hate it before I even got it.  The first thing I googled (while it was still downloading was how to revert it - you know, just in case!!).

Just as I thought, my first impressions of it were not fantastic.  "It's like a disco on my screen! The colours are all techno bright and it's all flat and swishery!!"  "I don't like it" I said.  "I love it" replied Mr D (which makes me want to hate it even more).  Fortunately for Apple I'm going to have to admit that it has actually grown on me.  I love the disco keypad lock at the beginning and I'm got so used to the new (actually quite pretty) Apps that I've almost forgotten what the old ones looked like.

I've spent the last two days trying to figure it all out and I've actually come across some pretty cool features.  So here they are:

MRS D's IOS 7 TOP TIPS

• SMS vs Imessage: Sms or txt messages are charged to your phone phone bill and appear green when sent.  Imessages will either use your allocated data or wifi, so are essentially 'free' - which is much better.  These messages appear blue when sent.  In order to set this up correctly with the new IOS 7 you have to go to 'SETTINGS' and then 'MESSAGES'.  At the top will be 'Imessages', which you will need to swipe off and then on again to activate.  After a few seconds it will activate.  Once it has you will then need to go to 'Send & Receive' and de-select everything except your mobile number - that way your messages will not be sent from your email account (and your friends won't get confused on who is sending them messages).  You can also now swipe to the left of each message to get an exact timestamp of when it was sent.

AirDrop and Control Panel - with cool, pretty colours!!

• AirDrop:  This is a pretty cool new little feature.  It basically means that you can send anything from your phone to ANY iphone or ipad in your near facility.  If you wanted to send a photo to a friend, while you are both sat in the park lets say, AirDrop will recognise all the phones near you, including your friends, and you can send it straight over without having to go via email or paying for a photo message.  Cool - yes??  HOWEVER, it does open your phone up to receive ANYTHING from ANYONE that is 'near' you and is picked up by the AirDrop radar.  This is not so cool as who knows what might suddenly pop up on your screen????  So to prevent this - which I think is especially important for kids or teenagers with iphones, you will need to go to your 'CONTROL CENTRE' by swiping your fingers upwards on the home screen and you will see half way down it will say 'AirDrop: Everyone' - click on this and change it to 'Airdrop - contacts only'.  That way you phone will only receive AirDrop messages from people in your contacts list.  Much safer I think.

• Control Panel:  This is a pretty nifty trick too, which I'm sure you've all already worked out.  But by swiping upwards from any screen you can get to your camera, calculator, brightness, volume, airplane mode etc etc!  All those little settings that you use all the time and were such a pain to get to in the old IOS 6 operating system.

• Safari: Apart from the icon looking a little different, I love the new safari.  There are some great little buttons on the bottom of the screen.  A left and right arrow making it easier to move between pages.  A square with an arrow pointing upwards which takes you straight to sharing (message, email, airdrop, twitter, Facebook and even flickr etc) so it's much easier to share what you're reading.  A little 'book' icon that takes you to 'Shared Links', which I think is SO awesome.  Inside shared links you have your bookmarks to save all your favourite stuff.  The glasses, which saves all those links from twitter that you want to read later directly from your twitter feed - how cool??? and a little @ symbol which gives you your live twitter updates!!  No excuses to not keep up with social media now - well for us bloggers anyway!!  Finally the last button on the far right gives you a library of all your 'open' browsers making it a million times easier to navigate between different pages - and it holds twice as many as the old IOS 6 did.

• Multi Tasking: This is similar to the old multi tasking feature but better and it looks much prettier too (which helps of course).  All you have to do is double tap the big home button and it will bring up all the screens/apps that you have been using recently or most frequently.  That way if you are switching between twitter, facebook, your calendar and safari, for example, you won't have to keep coming out of each app before you want to go to the next.  You can see them all open at the same time and just swipe between each one to see exactly what you're doing.  You can also close unwanted apps by them swiping upwards rather than clicking on the little x as you had to do before.  Trust me you're going to LOVE this one!!  

Swiping left and right allows you to work on more than one App at a time

• Calendar:  I have to admit that I don't use my calendar as I hated it.  I've had a look at the new one and I can't see too much difference - apart from the fact that it looks pretty flat and boring.  You can scroll through the months a lot more easily with this one though, so you don't have to click that little triangle a million times to get to next year like you did before. Other than that I'm still not a fan.  Sorry!

• Camera:  There are a few cool little features that are in the new camera app.  Firstly there is a 'square' option for all those Instagram lovers out there.  It had to be done really didn't it??  There is also a cool list of filters that you can use without having to go to a separate 'camera' app.  I love that you can instantly get black and white now.  If you hold down the camera button when taking a picture it will continue to shoot until you remove your finger.  This is great for capturing movement or kids!  Oh and you can also zoom in on live videoing which is pretty cool.

• Kids:  It is now MUCH easier to find age appropriate apps and games for kids in the App Store.  They have now been categorised under KIDS and then divided up into age groups 0-5, 6-8 and 9-11.  I think this is fantastic, as I found it so difficult to search for good kids apps previously.  Another great kid feature is that you can now turn off any music tracks with 'bad language' by tapping the 'now playing' screen and then tapping 'turn off explicit tracks'.  This is great to get you out of a tight spot while listening to Jay-Z in the car with the kids!

• Sounds and Ringtones:  YAY!!!  At last we finally have some more options for ringtones.  To find the new sounds you have to go to 'SETTINGS' by swiping down on your screen to search and typing in 'settings'.  Scroll down to 'SOUNDS' and choose away. I strongly advise you don't do this while sitting on the bus as I'm not sure the person next to you will appreciate listening to every new ringtone on offer.  You can still find all the old iphone ringtones as they are stored under 'CLASSIC'.  I dare you to move off Marimba. I've gone with waves and I quite like it.

• FaceTime:  At last there is a separate App for FaceTime.  If you're like me and live in a different country to most of your family then FaceTime is the BEST.  Now with the new app it is a million times easier to use.  Thank you Apple.

So what do you think??  Have you had a chance to play around with all the new features??  I'm sure there are loads more that I have missed, so if you know of a cool one I'd LOVE to hear it.

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