Love or Hate iOS 7? Or Still Yet to Click?

What you were doing last Wednesday at 6pm should offer a fairly accurate insight into how you view technology… 

If you were glued to your Apple device, poised and ready to click on the iOS 7 update I’d say you fell into the ‘early adopter’ category (examples of this type of persona most definitely include my TSG colleagues @SteveC_TSG and @BizPaul)

 And they certainly weren’t the only ones excited.  According to many in the world of technology, Wednesday 18th September 2013 was a momentous occasion, Phil Libin, Evernote CEO went as far as saying:

“I think iOS 7 is the biggest day in technology ever.  There’s never been another day like this in the history of the universe where hundreds of millions of people will see a big change to something that they’re used to”

BUT on the other hand if 6pm came and went, and like me you were fairly oblivious to the buzz around it all (in my case in the car on the way to bootcamp deciding what to have for dinner afterwards) you’re probably more of an ‘approach technology with caution’ type.

Don’t get me wrong, I saw lots of twitter chat on the new update and every news bulletin mentioned it, so I was very aware it was happening, I just didn’t need to have it straight away and was quite happy to let others road test it first.

A few days have passed now since the release and I have to admit that I’m still not inclined to hit that update button (although know I will have to eventually – just postponing the inevitable for now…)

I’ve used friends as guinea pigs and had a shot of their updated devices and haven’t been blown away by any of the changes.  Also, the news of the bugs found in iOS 7 aren’t making me rush to update straight away – the two major ones are:

• Users can make phone calls on an iPhone even when it’s locked – A user is able to bring up the keypad by pressing the emergency button but instead of just being able to dial 999, you can also contact other numbers by hitting the call button numerous times. There is reportedly a fix in the works for the new iPhone 5S and 5C handsets, but a comparable update for earlier devices running iOS 7 is not yet available.
• Another flaw potentially exposes iPhone users’ photos, texts and Facebook content to hacking (this appears to affect iPhone 4S and 5, but not the newly-announced 5S and 5C).

Which suggests that whilst the early adopters have a shiny new system to play around with, they have also potentially opened their devices up to vulnerability by jumping straight in (saying this – slow coaches like me who don’t like change will also be at risk if we hold off updating for long.  In time the latest platform will be the most secure).

But this brings me to think of advice that we often give our own customers when new business software releases come out.  We tend to approach new releases with caution and road test them thoroughly first to ensure there are no bugs that will disrupt their business processes and that the software is compatible with relevant operating systems.

We will then advise them if it’s the right time for their business to make the move to upgrading or not.  Obviously upgrading a business critical software system requires considerable more thought than a simple phone update, but there are parallels in the reasoning why.

I’d like to say that I’ve taken that advice on board and I’m smugly sitting back watching the issues all get ironed out before I upgrade to iOS 7 – but in truth it’s probably more due to me being a bit of a technophobe and not embracing change. 

I’m quite happy with the look, feel and capabilities of iOS 6 so just didn’t see a compelling reason to upgrade straight away (unless the waterproof part had actually been true – then I’d have been ALL over it…!)

For those in the pioneering early adopters group, what are your views? Did you regret clicking the update button? Or are you now iOS 7 converts and have a list of reasons why I should love the shiny, all singing all dancing new version?!  All guidance for this technophobe very gratefully received…