IOS 7 is public now and it has been adopted by Apple customers at a staggering rate, with global iOS device penetration that recently surpassed 74% according to Apple. So what’s in store for you in this biggest technology refresh from Apple?

Read on this research paper to know the key features in iOS 7, followed by the key strategies to migrate your apps to iOS 7 platforms.

Sprite Kit – The Sprite Kit provides a hardware accelerated animation systems for 2D or 2.5D games. It also provides graphics rendering and animation, sound playback support and physics simulation

Why Should You Move Your Apps to 7 Plat-form?

Key Features of IOS 7 platform

New Frameworks

Game Controller – This allows developers configure Made-for-iPhone/iPod/iPad (MFi) game controller hardware in your app. The controllers must be optional and a way must be provided for players to use the game without a controller

Peer-to-Peer Connectivity – The peer-to-peer connectivity supports discovering nearby devices and directs communication without an Internet connection

JavaScript Core – This allows wrapping of standard JavaScript objects into Objective-C. This can be used to evaluate JavaScript code and parse JSON data

Media Accessibility – This manages the presentation of closed-captioned content in your media files

Safari Services – Support for programmatically adding URLs to the user’s Safari reading list

Apps will support compilation in 64-bit runtime. All system libraries and frameworks support 64-bit mode, so that they

can be used in both 32-bit and 64-bit apps. The advantage is when compiled for the 64-bit runtime, apps may run faster

due of the availability of extra processor resources in 64-bit mode. Also porting code will have lesser issues since iOS uses

the same LP64 model which is used by OS X and other 64-bit UNIX systems

The iOS 7 user interface has been completely redesigned. Every nook and corner of the UI has been redesigned from

icons, colors, typography, and button to general look and feel of the entire OS. The emphasis is on translucent and

transparent design

Dynamic Behaviors for Views - The individual views in the apps can have dynamic behaviors like incorporating the real world

behavior and characteristics such as gravity into the app’s animations. This is available when the views conform to UIDynamic-

Item protocol which is newly introduced in iOS 7.

Text Kit – A set of classes from UIKit classes, is for managing text and fine typography. Text Kit can lay out styled text into

paragraphs, columns, and pages. Text Kit is integrated with all UIKit text-based controls to enable apps to create, edit, display,

and store text more easily than ever before

Apps compiled against the iOS 7 SDK will automatically have the new appearance for any standard system views when

it is run on iOS 7. However if the app’s views are customized, then changes have to be made appropriately to support

the new appearance

Also when Auto Layout feature is used to set the size and position of the views, they are repositioned automatically

64 Bit Support

UI Revamp

UI Changes

AirDrop

AirDrop lets users share photos, docu-

ments, URLs, and other kinds of data with

nearby devices

In addition to the new features there are lots of

changes in the existing features. Following are

the key highlights.

Enhanced Features

Multitasking Improvements

Maps

Games

Apps that regularly update their content by contacting a server can register with the system and be launched

periodically to retrieve that content in the background.

Apps that use push notifications to notify the user that new content is available can fetch the content in the

background.

Apps that now take full advantage of the 3D map support

found in the Maps app, including controlling the viewing

perspective programmatically.

Using a feature called Exchanges players initiate actions

with other players, even when it is not their turn. This

feature can be used to implement simultaneous turns,

player chats, and trading between players. The limit on

Leaderboards per app has been raised to 100 from 25.

The authentication support has been improved and

features added to prevent cheating.

The audio unit framework adds support for Inter-App audio which enables stream

audio between apps on the same device.

Inter-App Audio

OpenGL ES version 3.0 is supported and adds new features to OpenGL ES 2.0.

OpenGL ES

The Objective-C programming language has been enhanced to support modules, which makes the builds faster and

shortens the project indexing times. Module support is enabled in all new projects created using Xcode 5.

Objective-C

The wants Full Screen Layout property of UI ViewController is deprecated. In iOS 7, view controllers always

support full screen.

Deprecated Features

The UIKit framework deprecates the following

IOS 7 supports two new background execution modes for apps

Many drawing additions to the NSString class are deprecated in favor of newer variants.

UI Color objects that provided background textures for earlier versions of iOS are gone.

MAC Address. In iOS 7, requesting a MAC address will return the value 02:00:00:00:00:00.

UniqueIdentifier of UIDevice. This was already deprecated in iOS 5 but in iOS 7 it is completely removed.

The MK OverlayView class and its various subclasses have been deprecated from Map Kit framework and have

been replaced by new MK OverlayRenderer class

Following existing mechanisms of getting the unique identifiers are deprecated

The Audio Session API in the Audio Toolbox framework is deprecated. Use AVAudioSession class in the AV Founda-

tion framework instead

The CLRegion class in the Core Location framework is replaced by the CLCircularRegion class

gethostuuid function in the libsyscall library

Advertising Identifier property of AS IdentifierManager

IdentifierForVendor property of UIDevice

To use an unique identifier for identifying the device consider using one of these

CFUUID.

The UUID property of the CBCentral class has been deprecated. For specifying the unique ID of your central objects, use

the identifier property instead

Historically, iOS users upgrade within days of release. For instance, 93% users upgraded to iOS 6 just 8 months after launch.

Keeping this in context, Consumer apps (B2C) should get the highest priority for migration since the risks in migrating to

new changes are relatively lesser than Enterprise Apps (B2B) and also they are likely to switch to similar/alternate apps

which does the same job efficiently and provides the wow factor.

Enterprise apps (B2B) should get the next focus as they are typically tend to get tied up with custom backend legacy

applications/BI tools etc which needs greater impact evaluation before migration.

The gamut of UI elements has changed in iOS 7. The new UI emphasize on transparency, translucency, refined visual

touches, fluidity that enhances the user experience. This means your entire app’s information architecture has to be

re-engineered from scratch to be in line with iOS 7 user experience. Overall following things have to be taken care.

Now that we know the key feature of IOS 7, next let’s see the 5 key strategies to migrate Apps to iOS 7 platforms

below.

Navigation Elements – The status bar should be transparent and navigation bars, tab bars and tool bars and

other user controls have to be translucent.

Strategy # 1: Prioritize your apps for Migration

Strategy # 2: Re-Engineer Your App’s Information Architecture

Strategy # 4: Embrace Multitasking

iOS 7 introduces several enhancements to secure your business data. Following are some enhancements you should

consider leveraging in app and in your third party MDM solution.

Either your app should embrace iOS 7 totally or get stuck with iOS 6 and be prepared to get ignored. However in certain

cases where iOS 7 specific features are not required and there is/are a potential reason(s) for you to stick with iOS 6 for a

while, then it’s prudent to support both iOS 6 and iOS 7 look and feel in the same app by maintaining different set of UI

elements in your code base. This would typically be the case with enterprise customers.

This way you could continue to cover the existing user base of your app while you simultaneously transit to iOS 7.

Users always want to switch to other apps during the time when your app is occupied doing something else. Instead of

making them wait and spend idle time in your app, you should make use of new multitasking (previously confined only to

selected apps approved by Apple) capabilities to keep it updated even when user switches to another app.

Also keep the app preview screen in the app switched mode updated to let user know what’s happening in your app without

bringing your app to the front.

Open in Management – Control which apps and accounts are used to open documents and attachments.

Managed open in gives IT the ability to configure the list of apps available in the sharing panel. This keeps work

documents in corporate apps and also prevents personal documents from being opened in managed apps.

Buttons – They have to be without borders and backgrounds and custom ones need special mask to support

the automatic view-snapping animations.

Type System – Dynamic type has been introduced to improve the legibility of the text, regardless of the size it

is rendered at.

Screen Real Estate – Make use of entire screen real estate to present the content to the edge of the screen.

Parallax Effect – This is an accelerometer powered 3D effect on the home screen which gets exhibited when the

device is tilted and shifted. Your app can take advantage of this effect to improve the user experience.

Reduce the clutter – The UI design should not cram the content on the screen and should have reasonable

white space around the UI elements to look easy on the eye.

Avoid Splash Screen – Avoid the usage of splash screen as much as possible. The app should be usable almost

immediately.

Avoid Skeuomorphism – Pre iOS 7 UI design elements should not be used in the app. That is, avoid using

bevelled buttons, gradients, drop shadows or other skeuomorphic design elements

Per app VPN – Configure an app to automatically connect to VPN when they are launched. This gives more

granular control over corporate network access. It ensures that data transmitted by managed apps travels

through VPN — and that other data, like an employee’s personal web browsing activity, does not.

Enterprise single sign on (SSO) – This means user credentials can be used across apps, including apps from the

App Store. Each new app configured with SSO verifies user permissions for enterprise resources, and logs users

in without requiring them to reenter passwords.

Strategy # 5: Tap into Enhanced Security for your Business

Strategy # 3: Maintain OS Backward Compatibility on Case-by-Case Basis

What do you think about the new iOS 7 feature and designs? Do you like it or hate it? Share with us your thoughts.

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