iOS 7 Leaked

Don't ask me how I got this (I don't want to be responsible for any drone strikes), but I have a prototype of Apple's upcoming iOS 7.  This has been hotly anticipated, partly because people were getting fed up with the staleness of iOS 6, and also this is our first chance to see Jony Ive's fingerprints since he took over as head of design.



Gone is the schizophrenic skeuomorphic implementation of previous releases in favor of a much simpler, more unified design.  Instead of switching from metal to leather to blue jeans, your eyes will be now be focused on one texture, with all icons and graphics following the same graphical framework.  But that's just the visual.  The real innovation here is with two brand new technologies called "MultiFinder" and "Hypercard."



MultiFinder, simply put, brings the new ability to run apps side by side in an interactive manner.  I almost don't know what to say about this.  It's so new I think we'll need some time to process all the implications.  It's one thing to have apps, but to have multiple apps working together at the same time?  My head is officially blown.

Hypercard is something I haven't had time to get much into yet, but it's supposedly an intuitive programming interface that will allow any ordinary Joe or Josephine to produce their own apps, no programming language necessary.  This is nothing less than the democratization of software development and could be a revolution in how we interact with our devices.  One can even imagine people eschewing current media models and producing their own communication networks.  Imagine if we had something like this twenty-five years ago.  The World Wide Web would be a far different place.



Other additions are a built-in calculator (finally!) and something that makes my fingers particularly happy, an extended keyboard.  I should apologize for not going more in depth, but I just got this and I'm literally trembling with the adrenaline rush as I write it.  Hopefully I'll have more, though I'm sure Gizmodo will chime in.  They're never far behind on this stuff.  But, yeah, the world's changing.  Thank you, Apple.  Just thank you.