At the start of the week Apple launched iOS 7.1, the largest update to its iOS 7 operating system so far. As always, people have been scrutinising the new mobile operating system, going through it with the proverbial fine tooth comb; we’re not going to go into as much detail though, just look at the biggest new features.
First of all there’s CarPlay, something which we talked about in last weeks blog post which you can view here. For anyone who doesn’t want to read the whole post – CarPlay is a new system introduced by Apple which will allow people to use their phones in their cars “Eyes Free”. It’s due to be available in most manufacturers cars before the end of the year.
Updates to Siri voices have been included for UK English, Australian English and a few other languages to make them sound a little bit more human and a little bit less computerised. UI improvements have also been made to allow you to release the home button when you’ve finished talking, rather than letting Siri detect when you stop – really handy if you’re somewhere noisy.
This next update will be something that will please a lot of people; adjustments to the panel zoom. When iOS 7 was first released, people were suffering from motion sickness because of all the flying into and out of screens, a slight update was made in iOS 7.0.3 to try and fix this and people were able to turn off the feature if they felt like. This latest update though has been hailed as the one which “finally” fixes the motion sickness problem.
Aside from these major updates, other improvements have been made to the accessibility and a few minor icon adjustments.
Even though iOS 7.1 is still hot off the press, the rumor mill has already started churning details for iOS 8 which is predicted for release with the iPhone 6. Rumors for iOS 8 include a Health Book app, which will presumably accompany an iWatch (especially after details of a patent filed by Apple for a more accurate wrist based sensor were released today) along with a major overhaul to iOS Maps and the possibility of mobile payments.