Introduction
How do you make the point that the iPhone has changed the world? The easy answer is “use statistics”—400 million sold, 1 billion downloadable programs on the iPhone App Store, 50 billion downloads…. Trouble is, those statistics get stale almost before you’ve finished typing them.
Maybe it’s better to talk about the aftermath. How since the iPhone came along, cell carriers (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and so on) have opened up the calcified, conservative way they used to consider new cellphone designs. How every phone and its brother now have a touchscreen. How Google (Android) phones, Windows, and BlackBerry phones all have their own app stores. How, in essence, everybody wants to be the iPhone.
The thing is, it will be tough for them to catch up technologically, because Apple is always moving, too. In September 2013, for example, it introduced the seventh iPhone model, the iPhone 5s—faster and better in dozens of ways. And a seventh-and-a-halfth mode, the iPhone 5c, which is basically an iPhone 5 (the previous year’s model) in a glossy plastic body.
More importantly, there’s a new, free version of the iPhone’s software, called iOS 7. (Why not “iPhone OS” anymore? Because the same operating system runs on the iPad and the iPod Touch. It’s not just for iPhones anymore, and saying, “the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch OS” takes too long.)
Why is it so important? Because you can run iOS 7 on older iPhone models (the 4, 4s, and 5) without having to buy a new phone. This book covers all phones ...