iOS 7 is turbulence. It's change. That scares some people, and makes others hungry. It divides sentiment and reaction, and creates as much fear and noise as it does thoughtful analysis and future thinking. That iOS 7 in its current form had to be realized in under 8 months, that it involved designers at Apple outside the usual human interactive team, and that the beta came in so hot the iPad version wasn't even ready, adds to the turbulence, and to the uneasy feeling that we're still in the midst of change rather than comfortably through it.

Beta 1 has only just been released, and we'll be digging into everything that's been publicly shown off about iOS 7 very soon, but I wanted to share some thoughts to two specific things right now:

iOS 7 is alive. It moves and "breathes" through dimensional layers.

First, this is the most skeumorphic version of iOS that's ever shipped. Jony Ive and teams might have removed almost -- though not entirely -- all of the textures like stitched leather and green felt, but they amped up the physicality considerably. iOS 7 is alive. It moves and "breathes" through dimensional layers. It turns and folds and bounces and does all sorts of other delightful, skeuomorphic things. Safari tabs are a rolodex you can flip through. Multitasking has cards you can throw away. Notification Center is a surface you can slam down and watch ricochet.

Just like the original iOS used OpenGL and other game-like technologies to make the smoothest animations ever seen on a mobile interface -- and back Apple up into a mobile gaming empire -- iOS 7 includes physics and effects that take the gamification of user experience to a completely new level. It's a virtual collection of objects that can be directly manipulated -- played with and discovered -- by a person's finger, by acceleration and rotation, or by other elements of the system. It's what Apple calls "depth. It's brilliant -- if unfinished -- and very much the beginnings of that "something next".