Updating my iPhone 4S

I am sure there are hundreds of thousands (even millions) of stories similar to mine in the big city this morning.  It is Day 2 of having iOS7 in the wild (actually that makes it sound like a virus).

I’m guessing Apple will provide statistics someday but I have to believe that there were a very large number of iPhone users busy trying to get up to date yesterday, and there will be even more today.

To telegraph the bottom line of this blog:  for me the upgrade went extremely smoothly, and all appears to be fine as far as I can tell.  I could have been without a telephone today!

Now that the initial rush of enthusiasm is over with, I wonder what I would have done if it hadn’t gone well.  After all, my iPhone is now my main phone (I have no wired phone anymore) and its even my door buzzer!

Here’s what happened to me:

• It was hard to tell initially what time iOS7 would actually be available, but the predictions of about 1pm seemed accurate.  I was also wondering if Canada would be later than the U.S.
• First sign of change was a big wave of applications being updated (I have more than 300 apps).  Way more updates than a normal day.  It wasn’t obvious whether these updates needed to be done before iOS7 was installed, but I played it safe and updated everything I could in advance.
• There wasn’t much mention of a new version of iTunes and whether it was a pre-requisite for iOS7, but it did arrive in advance of iOS7 so I decided to download it as well.  The “check for updates” in my current iTunes did not catch it so I had to go to the Apple website, and then it was ok.  It installed easily on my desktop PC.  I am not sure it really improved iTunes – it still seems to have difficulty detecting my devices and seems to load more slowly.
• In the meantime, iTunes kept telling me that 6.1.3 was the latest version of the OS, even though it was evident from a search that other people had been able to get iOS7 at that stage.  Then I read that you had to download it directly to the iPhone itself so I started down that path.
• I started the direct download to my iPhone via WiFi, even though it told me it would take 2 hours to complete.  Eventually it did finish and I signed the agreement, after which I was told to wait until later because it could not upload my agreement acceptance.  A sign of being too busy, I assume, but it left me in limbo.
• By this time I discovered that iTunes could actually find iOS7 and so I downloaded it on iTunes (it was much faster) and I did not run into any delay issues.  But I was not sure, of course, if downloading iOS7 both ways would confuse everything!!  Luckily enough it didn’t, and after doing a lot of verifying and other stuff, it eventually got loaded and my iPhone 4S was back in business.

Some observations:

• I would never have trusted my Microsoft software enough to do this with my PC OS.
• Despite being there as soon as iOS7 came out, I really had no issues with significant delays or slowness.  The idea that they can efficiently serve millions of customers with large (800MB) file transfers is actually pretty impressive.
• There were a few minor glitches, most due to me being an early adopter,  that made me wonder how most people would have handled it, but nothing that appeared to jeopardize my applications or data.
• I like the new look and feel, although I was expecting a more 3D appearance.  As others have said, it will probably become “normal” quickly but right now it looks new and shiny – brighter, cleaner and more readable.
• I think there are more “under the covers” things to learn in this OS, so some of the tips and tricks will take time to discover.  It really has changed a lot, indicating that Apple has been doing a lot of design thinking, and presumably not all of their plans are being delivered at once.
• I am now firmly in the dual OS camp – iOS7 for my iPhone and iOS5 for my iPad 1, so I will have to remember both worlds (not desirable).  I will also wait to see what Apple is going to do with the next iPad.
• I have to say, I was impressed with the overall process.  It’s not really a question of the small differences between the mobile ecosystems, it’s more a question of the big differences between mobile IT and the “legacy” PC world.

Anyone else have a completely different experience?