iOS 8 Review - The Bad Things

Photo from Macrumors.com

So, keeping in mind that this is just a beta version of the OS, some of these things might (and hopefully will) change. However, based on what iOS 8 looks like on my iPhone 5, here are some of the things that I dislike.

Control Center

The new Control Center in iOS 8.

The changes that they made to Control Center are very minor, but they made it incredibly ugly. They took away the nice borders around the icons and made it so the icons change color in a much bigger and uglier way. I thought the iOS 7 style was much more subtle and elegant. 

They also added a feature that still throws me off, and that is that when you change the brightness the sun icons turn white and the background (where you see the time in that picture) brightens up. I think they did that to show you how bright it would be once you go out of Control Center, but honestly, I never had a problem with the way it was, and this just throws me off. 

I feel like if they wanted to mess with Control Center (which I absolutely loved in iOS 7), they could have added a bit more functionality to it, or added a way to customize what was shown. I don't know really, I just think that it was perfect the way it was, and this just feels like change for the sake of change, with no real added benefit. Instead of a benefit, this just makes it a little jarring to use.

Picture Messaging

The quick send camera thing.

In iOS 8, Apple has gone and tweaked how you send pictures. They have made it so you can quickly send a picture using the most awkward interface in the smart phone world, or you can use something similar to the old style, except adjusted to make it also more awkward. Now when you choose a picture to send, you have to say "add comment" or it will just send it without another thought. This can (and has, in my case) lead to lots of sending the wrong picture, and just a lot of general frustration.
A few cases in which this feature could be awful for a person would be not only sending photos of questionable content (here's looking at you, sexters), but also if you want to send a picture to your friend as a joke and you accidentally send it to the wrong friend, or your boss.

The new way of sending an
existing picture.

These picture messaging features are a big thing I hope changes in the final release, so that you can send pictures with peace of mind. They should at least add an "Are you sure?" feature before sending it. This has lead to my girlfriend receiving a fair amount of awkward "guy staring into the camera with a confused look on his face for no reason" messages from me, and it would be nice to have a little piece of mind with this feature.

It just seems like some of these features are being added so that they can say "See? We can make new stuff!" instead of focusing on enhancing the user experience. There was honestly nothing wrong with the iOS 7 way of sending a picture message. I'm pretty sure nobody was complaining about it being difficult, or wishing they only had to push one button instead of two. There is no added benefit to this feature, and instead they've made it more awkward and clunky as a user.

In Conclusion

Other than those features, iOS 8 is pretty solid. There are some features that I do enjoy quite a lot, but these two features (mostly the picture one though) will likely get a lot of attention from critics and fans alike. I love Apple, and think they're continuing to create great products, but I hope they do some re-staffing in the iOS department. 

What do you think? Have you had a chance to try out iOS 8 for yourself? Let me know if I missed anything!