iOS 7 Beta Adds iPad Support, Male Siri Voice

On Monday, Apple released the second beta version of iOS 7, the latest update to its mobile operating system. Noteworthy changes in the new beta include iPad support and a male voice option for Siri.

Salvador Rodriguez with the Los Angeles Times reported, “Apple released the second version of iOS 7 beta Monday, bringing the new operating system to developer’s iPads for the first time. The Cupertino, Calif., tech company unveiled iOS 7, its next mobile operating system, this month and made it available to developers immediately. However, the first release of the upcoming system worked only for the iPhone and the iPod Touch.”

9 to 5 Mac noted, “iOS 7 includes an all-new user interface and features such as AirDrop peer-to-peer file transfer functionality, Control Center for quickly accessing settings, a new Photos app, integration with cars, and new Siri voices and options.”

Juli Clover with MacRumors added, “In iOS 7, screenshot behavior has been altered, and as the release notes state, ‘Active touches are no longer canceled when the user takes a screenshot.’ This minor change has a number of implications for several apps that rely on screenshots to notify users of unwanted behavior, such as Snapchat and Facebook Poke.”

In related news, Computerworld’s Martyn Williams wrote, “Sales of devices based on Apple’s Mac OS and iOS will overtake those of products running all flavors of Windows in 2015, a Gartner analyst predicted Monday…. Last year, shipments of products running Windows still handily outnumbered those running Mac OS and iOS, by 347 million to 213 million, according to figures from Gartner published Monday. The lead will be slashed to 23 million in 2014, and the Apple OSes will likely outnumber Windows devices in 2015, said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner.”