Despite Apple's internal delays, iOS 7 'will ship on time' - report
Though Apple is allegedly reassigning personnel to expedite development of iOS 7, the next-generation mobile operating system for iPhone and iPad will still meet the company's internal deadlines, according to a new report.
The details come from anonymous sources who spoke with John Paczkowski of All Things D. They likened the current atmosphere at Apple to when the company moved some of its Mac software engineers, at the time working on OS X 10.5 Leopard, to the iPhone team ahead of the first-generation handset's launch.
While the situation is similar, the company's current efforts to finish iOS 7 are "not as much of a fire drill," one source reportedly said. They added: "It will ship on time."
From what Paczkowski was told, iOS 7 promises to be a "pretty big update" for Apple's mobile operating system. Apple will show off iOS 7 at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference, the company has publicly confirmed.
"Evidently the spartan, elegant aesthetic that (head designer Jony) Ive has developed around Apple's hardware is now being brought to bear on its software, as well," Wednesday's report indicated.
Singled out was the felt casino-style table design featured in Apple's Game Center software. One source indicated that the "Circus Circus" look would disappear.
The report reaffirms much of what was reported earlier Wednesday by Bloomberg, which revealed that Ive is overseeing "dramatic changes" to the iOS platform. That report pointed to the native Calendar and Mail applications as items that might see a significant shakeup.
A target of Ive's is said to be the "skeuomorphic" design embraced by his predecessor, Scott Forstall, who previously oversaw iOS development. Skeumorphism refers to design elements that are made to resemble real-life objects, such as the leather texture employed in Apple's Find My Friends application.
While the earlier report stoked concern that the apparent sweeping changes to iOS 7 could cause delays, All Things D's sources suggest that won't be the case. Apple typically makes a beta version of its next-generation operating system available to developers at WWDC, and ships the final software to users later in the year alongside the launch of its next-generation iPhone.
John Gruber of Daring Fireball was the first to report a month ago that Apple was struggling to implement its planned changes in time for the launch of iOS 7. He revealed that Apple had pulled OS X 10.9 engineers from their work to lend a hand in getting the mobile OS ready in time for its debut.
The details come from anonymous sources who spoke with John Paczkowski of All Things D. They likened the current atmosphere at Apple to when the company moved some of its Mac software engineers, at the time working on OS X 10.5 Leopard, to the iPhone team ahead of the first-generation handset's launch.
While the situation is similar, the company's current efforts to finish iOS 7 are "not as much of a fire drill," one source reportedly said. They added: "It will ship on time."
From what Paczkowski was told, iOS 7 promises to be a "pretty big update" for Apple's mobile operating system. Apple will show off iOS 7 at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference, the company has publicly confirmed.
"Evidently the spartan, elegant aesthetic that (head designer Jony) Ive has developed around Apple's hardware is now being brought to bear on its software, as well," Wednesday's report indicated.
Singled out was the felt casino-style table design featured in Apple's Game Center software. One source indicated that the "Circus Circus" look would disappear.
The report reaffirms much of what was reported earlier Wednesday by Bloomberg, which revealed that Ive is overseeing "dramatic changes" to the iOS platform. That report pointed to the native Calendar and Mail applications as items that might see a significant shakeup.
A target of Ive's is said to be the "skeuomorphic" design embraced by his predecessor, Scott Forstall, who previously oversaw iOS development. Skeumorphism refers to design elements that are made to resemble real-life objects, such as the leather texture employed in Apple's Find My Friends application.
While the earlier report stoked concern that the apparent sweeping changes to iOS 7 could cause delays, All Things D's sources suggest that won't be the case. Apple typically makes a beta version of its next-generation operating system available to developers at WWDC, and ships the final software to users later in the year alongside the launch of its next-generation iPhone.
John Gruber of Daring Fireball was the first to report a month ago that Apple was struggling to implement its planned changes in time for the launch of iOS 7. He revealed that Apple had pulled OS X 10.9 engineers from their work to lend a hand in getting the mobile OS ready in time for its debut.
Comments
It's easy to ship on time when you're making up the ship date.
OS X and iOS [including WebKit2/WebCore] are going to get a big boost with these June and beyond improvements. WebKit is finally free from the asinine requirements of supporting Google. Scalability, Performance and Memory efficiencies all took hits when Google was included.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer
There are big improvements in LLVM/Clang/LLDB/Compiler-RT/Libc and more coming in the June Release. What's even more exciting is that with C 11 complete and C 14 add-ons hitting the trunk presently there are even bigger improvements coming to the design of LLVM/Clang after June.
OS X and iOS [including WebKit2/WebCore] are going to get a big boost with these June and beyond improvements. WebKit is finally free from the asinine requirements of supporting Google. Scalability, Performance and Memory efficiencies all took hits when Google was included.
I will take your word for it. Since you seem to be the guy to ask, how does iOS and Android currently compare when it comes to fully utilizing all the cores? With quad and even octa cores out now it seems that the OS that can really get every drop of juice of processing power out of all the cores will have a significant advantage. How do they stack up in that respect?
I keep thinking perhaps Apple could allow alternative GUI interfaces (with in reason) as options. If your into leather bound applications (must be a joke there somewhere!) hey, why not? If you want super cool Jony designs then so be it. How hard would it be to have at least two alternatives in the Finder Prefs?.
Originally Posted by Darran
Apparently Ive is meticulously reviewing each update and feature of ios7 himself before approval is made…
According to someone's butt.
…problems.
What problems?
that's just half of the definition
the other important half is
"without actually carrying any function"
Since I'm not a member of the "other site", I want to rant here.
There are a ton of comments suggesting Apple should hire more engineers. These guys don't understand that throwing more engineers at a problem usually makes the problem worse. Ramp up time, unfamiliar with history, dividing tasks, etc.
Keep in mind, the new campus is being built to add more engineers. They are somewhat limited in space at the current campus.
Bah
Originally Posted by ClemyNX
"without actually carrying any function"
That's a lot more difficult to quantify than some are claiming, which makes its inclusion, at best, redundant (at worst, of course, word for word).
Quote:
Originally Posted by emig647
Since I'm not a member of the "other site", I want to rant here.
There are a ton of comments suggesting Apple should hire more engineers. These guys don't understand that throwing more engineers at a problem usually makes the problem worse. Ramp up time, unfamiliar with history, dividing tasks, etc.
Keep in mind, the new campus is being built to add more engineers. They are somewhat limited in space at the current campus.
Bah
Yeah, it's a classic management blunder as chronicled by the "Mythical Man-Month". Sadly, most managers have still never heard of or read that book as it's still plenty relevant now as it was when it was written.
Quote:
Originally Posted by emig647
Since I'm not a member of the "other site", I want to rant here.
There are a ton of comments suggesting Apple should hire more engineers. These guys don't understand that throwing more engineers at a problem usually makes the problem worse. Ramp up time, unfamiliar with history, dividing tasks, etc.
Keep in mind, the new campus is being built to add more engineers. They are somewhat limited in space at the current campus.
Bah
helped microsoft
they have so many people working on windows, it takes 3 weeks from code submission to see it in a new build of the OS
Quote:
Originally Posted by gwmac
I will take your word for it. Since you seem to be the guy to ask, how does iOS and Android currently compare when it comes to fully utilizing all the cores? With quad and even octa cores out now it seems that the OS that can really get every drop of juice of processing power out of all the cores will have a significant advantage. How do they stack up in that respect?
Kind of hard to do a rough comparison of how iOS is with Android when from top to bottom, both hardware and software, iOS and Apple hardware have been designed to be as efficient and scalable as possible with a focus on zero lag to the User and as minimal idle power drain as possible. Android is a middle-of-the-road approach to OS Design which then allows each manufacturer to work on their efficiencies and deficiencies as they test them. There are multiple vendors that want to offer differing configurations for their hardware which results in trade-offs for Android.
Then the Kernel designs are different between the Linux and XNU kernels and how they manage messaging between kernel/userspace communication.
Lots of work has gone into ARM in this LLVM release. Then there is the difference inherent between Java, C/C++ and ObjC.
As Frameworks are concerned I'm biased as I've never liked Java and being a NeXT/Apple alum I'm firmly in the C/ObjC Cocoa Camp. Never have been a fan of C++ but at least its not the massive overhead and installed toolkits with all it's asinine configurations that is Java.
Apparently you can read ;-)
There is that also
Looking forward to tomorrow's reports of "actually it will be delayed", and then Friday's follow-up of "actually, nevermind, it's on time again".
Can we stop republishing and linking to this bullshit? Isn't it painfully obvious this stuff is all click-whorism at it's worst? Noone knows the state of iOS except Apple's inner circle, and I doubt they're the kind of people to talk to the press about it or anyone, for that matter.
Also, I sense we're starting the vicious circle of "OMG iOS7 is going to be so amazing, such a massive change that they're delaying it.." etc, etc- just so that everyone can start shrieking and whining ab out how "underwhelming", "overhyped", etc it is when it is finally unveiled, even though Apple hasn't said a fucking word about it or hyped it in the least. It's insanely difficult to drastically change something that half a billion people use and enjoy for the better, while keeping it intuitive for everyone. Let's get expectations down to earth, so we don't predictably whine when iOS7 doesn't include a time machine or have enough "INNOVASHION".