Apple, power savings, and iOS 7 goodies

(See keynote below.) Apple is doing a lot of work in hardware, in the OS, and in apps to reduce power usage. And I must say I'm pretty impressed. For example if you keep a little eye on what your machine is doing (via for example the Activity Monitor utility/app), you will often discover that some app or apps, very often web browsers, are sitting in the background, not even being used, and just draining the power, completely uselessly.

So one of Apple's really intelligent inventions in upcoming OS "Mavericks" (they've given up on big cats) is that if an app is using a lot of CPU power, and you cover the app with another app (you don't even have to put it in the background), CPU usage immediately drops! Hurrah!!
There are also developments in more effective memory usage.

Frankly things like this are desperately needed. I have what was the top of the line Mac Pro four years ago, and I bought it with oodles and oodles of RAM, and yet it is often slowing down, stalling, or running up against memory walls.

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Oh, by the way, one of the cool things coming up in iOS 7: multitasking for all apps, not just a select few. They are carefully managed still so as not to drain the handheld device's limited resources, but it should improve things. For example I've noticed that only a couple of Apple's own apps are currently allowed to download anything while in the background, other apps are stopped doing it after ten seconds or so of being put in the background.

There's also a new control panel which I really like: you just slide up from the bottom, and it's there, and includes loudness, brightness, airplane mode, and a few more things.  Here it is:

... I'm a bit more doubtful about the translucency which dominates iOS 7... but we'll see how it goes. Maybe it does add a bit of color and feeling of context, without distracting.