iOS 7: iPhone land new and improved

by Peter Lampley

If you are unaware that Apple has just recently made available their “brand-est,” “spanking-est,” newest operating system, then I’d like to congratulate you on your remarkable ability to shut out all knowledge of current events.

Really, good job. The official release of ios7 garnered more hype than the moon landing, not that it means all that much to me. I’m just sitting here clinging to a basic Verizon flip phone from 2007 and watching the world pass me by with all its fancy touchscreens and airdrops and flashlights and such. Don’t get me wrong, I love technological progress just as much as the next guy, but the release of a new operating system for the newest generations of Apple products matters about as much to me as the release of Grand Theft Auto V. I mean sure, it looks like a great game, but how am I supposed to play it on my Super Nintendo? Useless.

These newfangled innovations confound my aging technology more and more as they trudge ever forward on their slow march to becoming obsolete. In fact, it seems like the only reason Apple keeps pumping out updates (outside of proving just how high they can count) is to make my current and only phone appear progressively worse with each passing day. But I won’t let them fool me. My phone is perfectly adequate. It can call and text and take picturesand that’s good enough for me. Sure, sometimes the “9” key is sticky and I’ve lost the “send” key and it has a Sewanee-battery-life of about four hours, but so what? It does everything I need it to do and always has. I don’t need some easily broken novelty gadget on my person at all times just so I can shave away what little free time I have on snapchats and CandyCrush. Besides, three hundred odd dollars is an awfully high price to pay for admission to the iPhone club, so I’ll pass, thanks. However, for those of you whom have already made the investment and crossed over into iPhone-land, I say congratulations!

If you haven’t yet made the switch, you’re about to step into a brave new world of fully featured multi-tasking, transparent layering and automatic digital scrapbooking. Christ, it’ll almost be like having an Android. You should be pretty pumped. It’s not every day that the user interface of your mobile device is fundamentally altered to parallel the best features of its nearest competitor. The ios7, a miniature revolution for Apple users everywhere that’ll finally put the “‘fun’ back in function” while holistically improving the entire mobile experience (thanks, Google!). It’s just too bad they haven’t yet thought of an app that can prevent you from losing this semi-original multi-hundred-dollar-marvel-of-engineering every other weekend you decide to leave your dorm.