The internet is awash with news of the new iOS7 announcement, despite an official release still being months away. Whilst it’s great news for Apple users, it’s a time when developers get to think about how they can make the best use of new features or update older apps to reflect the changes. So what’s changed and which updates are likely to have the most effect on apps…

App Store navigation

Perhaps the feature likely to have the biggest impact on apps is the new navigation and categorisation of the app store. Along with the designs for iOS7 Apple also announced that they now have 900,000 apps available to download which is an exceptionally large sea for your fish (app) to swim in. It’s long been down to great keywords, reviews and marketing elsewhere to make apps visible in the store, but inevitably thousands are rarely or never found.

The new navigation will not only group apps by age – a great feature for parents – but it will also show apps that are popular locally too, giving iDevice users new ways to discover iOS apps.

Safari Bookmarking

In something that could be conceived as a threat to apps, Safari has had an overhaul too, both in design and functionality. The dynamic URL bar can now be resized giving users more space to view what’s on screen and the restriction on tabs has been removed so you can now have as many open as you like…unless thousands of open tabs is a bit of a bugbear!

The most interesting update is that of the bookmarks though. Bookmarks now sit on the start screen of the iDevice, and bring together links from Twitter friends too making it an easy place for information discovery and much more user friendly than before. The updates could lead to many more people using Safari.

Standard feature functionality

Apps that integrate standard features such as the camera will find increased functionality. The camera in particular has been updated to allow ‘real-time’ filters, so you can see what the final shot will look like before you’ve even taken it, and the lens now features a variety of different shapes, including square, circular and panorama.

There’s sure to be many more technical specifications announced nearer the release date.