iOS

The latest rumors surfacing about iOS 7 suggest that it will be "black, white and flat all over." Everyone seems to expect that Jony Ive has gone through iOS with the sandblaster, and the latest rumors suggest just that. The latest comes by way of 9to5Mac's Mark Gurman:

While everyone's pretty much taken for granted that a Monday, June 10 WWDC 2013 kickoff would be a Monday, June 10, 10am (pacific) WWDC Keynote, it's still nice to see it confirmed. John Paczkowski of AllThingsD:

If the latest rumors turn out to be correct we could be looking at social photo and video integration in iOS 7 by way of Flickr and Vimeo support, most likely added to the existing social sharing options of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. The story comes by way of 9to5Mac's Mark Gurman:

The U.S. Department of Defense has approved the use of iOS 6 devices, which may help Apple to build some strength in a market still dominated by BlackBerry devices. The US D.O.D. currently has about 470,000 BlackBerrys in use across its networks, with 41,000 Apple mobile devices and 8,700 Android devices.

The Department of Defense is building a multivendor environment, it said in a press release, with BlackBerry and Samsung Knox devices also receiving similar approval.

The D.O.D. has cracked the door open to Apple and Android users, but it's not a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) environment: The organization doesn't support personal phones to connect to the network.

Every year, for the last three years, I've asked Apple to consider what amounts to a Files.app and FilePicker control in iOS. It would be analogous to the Photos.app and ImagePicker control, but allow us to easily find, and easily open, all the documents we use on all our iPhones and iPads, every day. Now, on the eve of iOS 7, the need for better file handling -- not filesystem! -- remains, and if anything has become even more urgent. In a post-iCloud, post Steve Jobs and Scott Forstall world, how can Apple address it?

Since the dawn of time, BlackBerry smartphones have been the mobile communicator of choice for the United States federal government. The federal National Institute of Standards and Technology has been approving hardware and software to meet the FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard) since 1995, and today iOS 6.0 was granted FIPS 140-2 certification. Specifically, the iOS CryptoCore Kernel Module 3.0 was assured to to meet the security requirements of the government.

While I ascribe to the theory of multiple universes, and there may indeed be several in which Apple is a clown made entirely of candy, in precisely none of them was iOS 7 not going to ship on time. If you need any more evidence of that, I give your Mr. John Paczkowski of AllThingsD:

We've already heard from multiple sources that Apple's vice president of design, Jony Ive, has been working on making iOS flatter and more refined, but now he's also rumored to be working on brand new Mail and Calendar apps as well. It's not clear right now whether a complete revamp of such core personal information management software would be ready in time for iOS 7 this year, or for iOS 8 next year, but the focus sounds interesting. According to Bloomberg:

We've been hearing about Jony Ive taking a sand blaster to iOS 7 for a while now -- removing a lot of the heavier textures, gradients, shadows, and skeuomorphs that built up at Apple under Steve Jobs and Scott Forstall. According to what I've been hearing, iOS 7 will make fans of the richer design style cry. 9to5Mac's ace reporter, Mark Gurman likens the flatness to Windows Phone Metro-style, and what's more: