IOS 7

Update.--This evening (9/20/13) the iPhone is down 10% in just 24 hours and I didn't use it very much during the time, which meant it was idle. I haven't done the autolock off and music playing mode which is most of my use of it. I'll keep you posted there.

Update.--This morning (9/20/13) the iPhone with IOS7 is still at 100%, 14 hours after restarting it, so the power issue yesterday is a question, but it's still at ~65% of the memory usage without doing anything, meaning a few apps and it's running at near 100%. So it's just a memory hog, and yes, the icons are still ugly with the dumb gray background hiding the background photo.

Today (9/19/13) I noticed iTunes showed an update was available for my iPhone 4 to IOS 7 from 6.1.3. I, stupidly, updated it and discovered very quickly it was a big mistake. First, the install crashed near the end, and then the recovery quit about 3/4rds through it, so I had to completely rebuild it firmware and contents.

When all was said and done I walked through all the settings and preferences as well as check the performance of it compared to 6.1.3 and realize more so it was a really big mistake for IOS 7 is, in a sentence:

IOS 7 sucks and is ugly.

There's no two ways about. Just with the same apps and stuff, the memory usage went from ~50% (+/- 2%) to 62% (+/- 1%). And in 4-5 hours the battery life went from 100% to 94% where it took ~2 days to drop from just 1-2%. And turning the autolock off, it dropped to 88% in an hour!

That's worse than a hungry full grown pig at a trough.

Really. Apple has outdone themselves at consumptive use, again. They're notorious for creating consumptive operating systems, and this is just another example they don't learn and don't check themselves.

And ugly really is the operative look of the icons and windows. I won't argue some features and looks are cool and good, but all of Apple's icons really suck, in part because I like the transparent look and hate the new white/gray background. I have a cool photo I want to see than the icon.

As for the apps themselves, there's just more ugly and more features you have to check and set. It's like a small car they keep loading more features adding weight it doesn't need. Why not give users choices to add or remove basic apps and define some window settings?

I also discovered the touch doesn't work as well as IOS 6.1.3 in the apps. I have one of the rubber pointer and the slide buttons on Apple's apps really didn't want to recognize it. I had to keep swiping at it a good number of times before it slide off or on.

My advice to anyone is don't upgrade until Apple solves these issues or give users options to reduce the load on the apps you can't control. And if you have, like me, you can wait for the fix, but don't hold your breath, or download the last old version and install it.

Your choice, but you can get instructions for the latter here for the downgrade. If you keep IOS, I can only say if you have an iPhone 4/4S to keep it plugged in or turned off when not being used. Otherwise, it just eats power. As for the looks and features, it's in the eye of the user.