If you ask Digg co-founder and Google Ventures partner Kevin Rose, changes in iOS 7 are more than skin deep. Additionally, Rose in the latest episode of The Random Show makes claims – without divulging his sources – that WWDC will bring us updated MacBook Airs.
I approve his message – it’s fairly safe to assume Monday’s keynote will see a specs upgrade for the Air (Retina, much?) and quite possibly for the Pro, stemming from Intel’s just announced fourth-generation Haswell chips.
More importantly, Rose mentions iOS 7 will be “very different” from what we’ve been accustomed to. The way he phrased it, you may not want to put much faith in iOS 7 renderings and mockups that have been floating around the web…
“I heard that the next iOS is very different,” Rose said on the show.
From someone that I know – the next version of iOS, I was told, is a BIG change. It’s not like ‘hey, we’re doing a little updating, fixing some bugs and a couple of things’.
“Apparently,” he goes on to explain, “things have moved around in certain ways, there’s different things happening – a lot of stuff has changed”.
Here’s a clip (WWDC predictions start at mark 1:00:40).
For a glimpse of what the rumor mill thinks the next major version of iOS is going to look and feel like, check out this interactive iPhone 5S + iOS 7 concept.
Rose over the years accurately predicted a number of Apple products.
For instance, he posted accurate fourth-gen iPod nano shots and correctly predicted new iTunes features ahead of Apple’s ‘Let’s Rock’ media event. He also called for iOS 3.0 copy and paste and the Apple TV’s $99 price point and launch date.
On the other hand, Rose has had his share of misses, too.
As 9to5Mac points out, he blew it by calling for a physical keyboard on the original iPhone and incorrectly reported the Apple TV would be called iTV, run the App Store and feature ad-supported TV stations.
As Tim Cook put it, next Monday Apple will be “rolling out the future of iOS and OS X.”
The Loop’s well-connected Jim Darlymple told us to definitely not expect any new iPhones or iPads. Previously, analysts predicted a fall iDevice refresh citing technical challenges and manufacturing issues.
Are you getting excited about iOS 7?
I’m not sure I give a damn about the redesign itself.
What I’d absolutely love to see in the next version of iOSÂ is enhanced communication and document sharing between apps. Personally, I like seamless iCloud sync, but hate how iOS keeps my document tied to a certain app.
The big issue here is to let users access their Keynote documents from Quickoffice easily or browse their Camera+ Lightbox images from any photography app, for example.
I’m really hoping for some major innovations on that front because quite honestly – iOS has fallen behind Android in these aspects.