iOS 7.0.3 is available for download, it’ll fix iMessage and kill transitions

Nearly lost amongst the piles of Apple news yesterday was the fact that the company rolled out the next edition of iOS 7, version 7.0.3. This is the update that many people have been for since iOS 7 was released thanks to it finally fixing the problems that some people have had with iMessage and giving iOS users the ability to turn off all of the operating systems transitions. As you’ll likely remember, these are the visuals that were making some people feel sick and sucking down battery life with their cool but unimportant parallax effects.

In Apple’s full description of the iOS 7.0.3 update reveals that while the headline feature will be the iMessage fix, this firmware will also bring iCloud Keychain to iOS (on the same day Mavericks brought it do OS X), install a Password Generator on the OS which will work with Safari, and optimize the lockscreen for use with Touch ID fingerprint reading.

The Siri lockscreen bypass hack was also fixed and and the accelerometer software was tweaked so that correct calibration is no longer an issue.

If you turn to turn off the parallax effect (which is most visible on homescreen icons, but is used elsewhere as well) and stop all those transition effects that occur when you open and close apps, Apple has made it very easy. To do this you simply need to go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Reduce Motion. At this point you can either opt for all of the motion effects or none of them, you can’t keep parallax while killing the transitions, or vice versa.

So iOS 7.0.3 is available and you should download it — it’s basically the update we wanted from iOS 7.0.2 which landed about three weeks ago. The download and installation of 7.0.3 should take you about 30 minutes total on a newer iOS device (assuming you’re coming from 7.0.2), during most of which the phone/tablet will be usable.