Good News: Voice Memos Is Coming Back To iOS 7 - Bad News: It Has An Ugly New Icon

Last week, we pointed out the absence of the Voice Memos app in the first iOS 7 beta, which was released by Apple to developers shortly after its WWDC 2013 keynote address. But as rightly noted by my colleague Jamie, considering that we're looking at iOS 7 in beta, it's likely that Apple will bring the missing app back in the next beta versions and in the final version for public release this fall. Indeed, Apple's release notes for the first iOS 7 beta suggest that Voice Memos will make a comeback in upcoming seeds:

Voice Memos - Known Issues The VoiceMemos app is not available in this seed.

It's also worth noting that Voice Memos is included in the list of apps under Settings > General > Usage > Show all Apps in iOS 7, albeit with an icon that merely shows the new grid system that Apple has created for iOS 7. Apparently, though, when Voice Memos gets restored in a future iOS 7 beta release, it will come with a new app icon that, dare I say, is even uglier than Safari's new app icon. Introduced in iOS 4.0, Voice Memos underwent a drastic icon makeover with the release of iOS 4.2. From its original skeuomorphic microphone icon, it switched to a plain white microphone icon, which could easily go alongside iOS 7's redesigned stock app icons with a bit of "flattening." But as shown in the image above, which was taken by a MacRumors tipster from a WWDC developer session video, Voice Memos has an entirely different icon on iOS 7. Instead of some sort of a representation of a microphone, the icon now shows a sound wave … an ugly sound wave. Let's hope that icon gets improved, along with the Voice Memos app itself, before iOS 7 gets released in its final public version this fall.

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