The key with beta testing any software is that your test group have a bunch of "real world" devices with an enormous variation of settings, and installed applications. Apple can test the OS on their lovely clean lab devices til they're blue in the face, but the key phase is when the OS starts to get out to developers who have other stuff installed - music, films, apps, random combinations of settings, real life notifications, different carriers worldwide - that's when the OS really gets a proper test.

And first betas tend to cause poor battery life. As past betas have shown.

I'm sure Apple would put out a laggy product.

seems to be running quite well here on iP5. had a few crashes of the messages app but in general its pretty good as a first beta. certainly better than previous versions were at b1! Haven't tested yet on my iP4.

as for installing without a dev account - it seems possible at the moment but what happens when beta 2 is pushed out and closes the loophole that some sites are detailing? You may well be forced to downgrade to 6.1.4 at that point anyway so is it really worth it?

Lol that was supposed to say wouldn't put a laggy product out.

Talking of it being a beta almost implies a complete ground up re-write, when all that was likely done is a re-skinning of some components.

More likely just some shoddy coding ... which apparently can happen to Apple in the post-Steve Jobs era.

And from the way I've seen it run on a 4, I'd definitely suggest lots of lazy coding. The 4 doesn't have a slow processor, and should be easily able to handle most of whats being asked of it.

I'll give you a 'hallelujah' for that

I've just downloaded it myself - still not sure if i want to flash it yet, but we'll see. I know you can downgrade fairly easily, but I might wait to see what the general feel for the beta is and if it's running well enough to use full time.

Anyone, feel free to pm me with a link to download the FREE Beta version from

Thanks

Exactly. They only have a handful of models that it has to run on. Not difficult to test at all.

What no iphone has ever handled is lots of full screen alpha, which the new UI is full of.

Oh well .. here goes nothing

Yes, they should waive that $100 per year developers fee,
Developers really do do most of the giving.

You obviously have got no clue about software development

You have to remember that they've had to work to a deadline so there are probably issues that they probably know about but aren't deemed serious enough to not release to beta. If people think that the beta version should be production ready, then they don't understand the process

The beta test program from 1000's of devs will give them feedback on scenario's that they wouldn't have thought of.

I did read in a few places that they were actually behind schedule and that they had to pull other developers from other projects to ensure it was done.

I'm finding it actually runs fine at the moment - there are one or two places it does lag, and there's some clipping on Temple Run 2 when i give it a spin, but, as it stands, compared to some of the old Android beta roms I used in the past on my S2/S3, it seems more than usable on a daily basis.

Offical beta ROMS?

I know there's zillions of unoffical DIY ROMS with more than a fair few seeming in permanent BETA even on release.

Considering the amount of times I flashed my Blade, S2 and S3, it was probably official and unofficial as well. I remember flashing a very early version of Jellybean on the Blade just for the hell of it

Actually, just thinking about it - how likely is it that each subsequent Beta can simply be updated through iTunes as normal? I don't mind reflashing as-new again, but I suppose the usual update process would be easier

On iOS 6 beta, after installing the first beta, you could get the subsequent beta updates OTA. Presumably the same on iOS7.

Only ever the one Blade flash for me on day 1, a rock solid one and never found any need to change.
I quite imagine the original stock was OK despite what people claimed but I never ever used it.

PMSL

Yeah, hope so.


I wasn't that quick with my blade. Took my a couple of weeks to find a rom i really liked, but once i did i stuck with it.

I've found a feature in iOS7 I don't like

If you do the double press on the home button while locked if you're listening to music, the player controls appear transparently over the album art. it works fine if the album cover is black - if it's white though ..

The control center is a good substitute though if you've got it enabled in the lock screen.

Buy an android phone and you have ios7 simples :P

Here you go:

iOS 7 link

I keep, almost belatedly, finding incredibly strange that have been there since day one that make it a no no.

We seem to be getting IOS phone, IOS tablet, Windows phone, Windows RT tablet, Windows tablet and Windows.

Then we have 'just' Android.
IOS 7 seems to be removing a restriction or two but it is so so limiting.

I would personally disagree with that, but I'm not about to turn this into the 90000th Android v iOS argument though.