A Few New Things in iOS 7 Beta 3

iOS 7 beta 3 was released to iOS developers on Monday. I’ve had it installed since then and been able to spend a little bit of time getting to know this latest beta version. I’ve also been checking out what others are finding in beta 3.

One of the most interesting changes is that the system font is now stronger in beta 3. It has been changed from Helvetica Neue Light to Helvetica Neue Regular – something that Marco Arment (creator of The Magazine and Instapaper) and others feel is a much-needed course correction by Apple.  I agree that the heavier version of the font works better.

Here are a few other new things I’ve noted while using iOS 7 beta 3 so far:

— The Calendar app has been added to the Background App Refresh page. It’s the first non-Newsstand app that I’ve seen in there. I am hoping that we’ll start seeing RSS apps and others appearing on this page soon as more apps begin to work on iOS 7 support.

— When Increase Contrast is turned on under Accessibility settings, UI elements like the Notifications Bar and Control Center are  less transparent.

— In the settings for the Safari app there are a few items that look new to me, though I’m not quite sure whether all of these are brand new to beta 3. There’s a new Smart Search Field settings area, where you can toggle on or off Search Engine Suggestions and Preload Top Hit. There’s also a new Fraudulent Website Warning item that can be toggled on/off under the Privacy & Security section. The Show Bookmarks Bar item is renamed to Show Favorites Bar – which seems a lot more new user friendly. 

— Stability has improved a lot from beta 2 to beta 3. I’m seeing far fewer Springboard resets on my iPad 3.

— Newsstand apps are still not recognizing existing subscriptions – at least not the handful that I use.

— A couple of notable apps are still not working at all – Google+, which fails to open, and Feedly, which opens but then gets an error saying it is ‘over capacity’ when I try to login.

I still haven’t spent as much time as I’d like with iOS 7 on the iPad. I hope I’ll get more chance to do so over the next week or so and I’ll share any other interesting things I learn as I go along.