Apple may not be able to demo its new iOS 7 operating system at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) next month, as the company is rumoured to be behind schedule.
According to “people with knowledge of the matter”, Jonathan Ive is said to be completely overhauling the current iOS 6, moving away from realistic images like the bookshelf format of the Newsstand, and instead moving toward “more dramatic changes” to iOS tools like email and calendar.
However, due to the enormity of the rumoured changes, internal deadlines for submitting iOS 7 features for testing are much later than with previous operating system releases, or so the sources suggest.
The Cupertino company confirmed that it will be holding the Apple WWDC in San Francisco next month on June 10 – 14, and promised to give developers “an in-depth look at what’s next in iOS and OS X.” However, if the sources are correct, developers attending the WWDC could be disappointed by the lack of an iOS 7 preview.
“Apple is really under tremendous pressure to come out with something different and something new,” said San Francisco-based Opus Research analyst Greg Sterling. He added that IVe has “a tremendous sense of design, and he’s been the guru behind a lot of these enormously successful products, but he’s always had someone like a Jobs to push back on him and give him some guidance, and it’s not clear that Tim Cook is capable of playing that role. Maybe without a collaborator, he’s not as strong.”
Ive has already been instrumental in the major Apple products, including the design of the iMac that helped the company return to profit when Jobs returned as CEO in 1997. He also worked closely with Jobs to create the iPad, iPod and iPhone, but was much more involved with the hardware than the software for these product launches.
iOS 7 was recently rumoured to launch as a very flat operating system, redesigned to appear much more like the Windows Phone platform “potentially unsettling for those who are long-accustomed to the [Apple] platform.”
If the sources are right, iOS 7 could be the first time many of Apple’s mobile-software programs like email and calendar since the original iPhone was introduced in 2007.
“There is a tidying up that needs to be done and a rethinking,” said Benedict Evans, an analyst at London-based Ender Analysis.
We think we’ve narrowed down what iOS 7 features Apple needs to catch Android.
Via: Bloomberg
