iOS 7 Beta 3 first impressions

I’ve been using iOS 7 betas for a few weeks now. On phones and iPads.

I have a few first impressions:

First, it looks great. My wife says “pretty” — she’s using it ‘for real’ on her iPhone:

Second, beta 3 seems ok for every day use. Still a lot of little bugs to work out, but overall it’s just fine. Beta stuff usually kills the battery on iOS, but it was surprisingly decent on the iPad mini. Almost 15 hours of use. Not bad:

Finally, here’s an interesting bit… When I tried one of these cheap Lightning cables on the iPad mini, this error shows up: “This cable or accessory is not certified and may not work reliably with this iPad.”

The cable still works just fine, but perhaps its a glimpse of the future, where only Apple-approved cables work?