I'm hoping that they plan on making a big push on cross-app communication. I also hope that they're investing in their platform from an e-commerce perspective: paid upgrades, trials, video previews, better analytics, better coupon/promotional codes, etc.
1: http://mobiledevelopertips.com/cocoa/launching-your-own-appl... 2: http://handleopenurl.com/scheme
The Android homescreen is incomprehensible to me as an iOS user and the main reason is the clutter and weird alignment.
Honestly, the biggest reason I want it is for things that apps aren't allowed to access anyway: a global control on the Springboard to disable WiFi, or change screen brightness, for instance.
1) Turn by Turn Navigation - can't really think of living without it or paying for it. I've used it on Android quite extensively and it really is a solid product. For mere 29Mb and even with spotty rural data connectivity I got through 750 miles of navigation recently. Priceless thing to have on phone and even the iPad for people like me who hang it in their minivans.
2) Better multitasking - Android 4.0 multitasking is another neat thing - the clearly labeled / visible thumbnails of apps and easy ability to get rid of them comes in very handy. The way iOS does it is complicated.
3) Widgets - enough said!
4) Bigger phone screen - 4" seems like the minimum, all soft buttons will afford more screen real estate.
5) Better memory management - My background apps aren't killed as many times on Android whereas even with the upgraded RAM iPad 3 reloads Safari pages at least couple times a day.
6) App to app communication ability - Intents/Contracts style.
7) Better iPad notifications - eliminate alerts altogether and make the notification window span greater horizontal area on the iPad.
8) Bundle more useful apps with the OS - no alarm clock shipped with the OS, no podcast app for the iPad. Wtf?
9) iTunes sync is still very flakey - wired or wireless. I don't remember when it worked on its own the last time.
10) Swype - license Swype stuff, pretty please :)
11) Constant nagging for passwords for App updates - this bugs me a whole lot especially since I have a stronger password. Once I've setup a screen lock - this is fairly unnecessary.
I guess it would just be easier to stick with Android - by many accounts ICS is very usable on newer tabs, so may be I will try the Transformer TF300 out instead of waiting on iOS 8.
However, the iPhone does not have Photo Booth.
(to be clear: the two sides are not iOS and Android, just different people)
- Quick access to brightness. Add to notification center
- Quick access to airplane mode. Add to notification center
- Timestamps on Messages all the time
- Show current date without having to see calendar app. Put it in the notification center
- Real-time suggestions when you type, not this after-the-fact BS
- Clear all notifications
- Unlock phone without being forced to view notification. Happens all the time with events
- Rotate video. Damn orientation lock always ruin my videos
- A better system than bookmarks in the Maps app. Folders? I like to load up my map with bookmarks before a trip.
- Turn by turn navigation
- Offline maps
- Custom routes in Maps
- Better way to view/select alternate routes in Maps
- Formatted email signatures
- Non-ugly Tweet popup
- Fix bugs in new weather app. Keeps giving me forecast for PAST dates
- Do something with the empty space in the global search screen (home key).
- Bigger screen, but not too big
- Text in notes in calendar events are not selectable.
- Notification when address book is accessed without contact selector popup
- Make iTunes music home sharing actually work. Play music from my iTunes library on my phone when I'm at home. Play music from my iPhone library when I'm out.
- Add gmail-style reply/reply all toggle to Mail
- Better way to view conversations in Mail. Too much back button
- Cross app communication. Intents, Contracts, whatever.
- There's got to be something better that double clicking the homepage for multi-tasking
- Better spell check. Option to turn off Ebonics/lolcat mode that was added in later versions of iOS. Typing in iOS 1-3 with auto-correct was flawless. More difficult in 4. Typing in iOS 5 is pretty much broken. "Im" doesn't suggest "I'm" any more. When I type "u", I want "I". I don't want a teenie bopper version of "you"
Slide up from the bottom of the screen (i.e mirror of notifications). It's so obvious, and comes with immediate cancellability of a potentially spurious move (not that I get much for notifications) if the animation is tied to the finger position (again, like notification center). The current implementation literally begs for it since notification center was introduced and it's not like it would need some insane amount of development.
If your phone is on, hit the power button twice (power off, then power on) - the current date appears in the slide-to-unlock screen.
Removing google dependencies matters to apple not users.
- Weather apps that display weather directly on the icon (I don't understand why Apple never did it for themselves).
It would be trivial for iOS6 to implement a protocol where the OS could "poll" the app for a new icon only when the icon is visible, and only occasionally for performance.
Inverting desktop to phone sync, remote desktop seems like an even bigger killer feature that no one's really done right yet.
Facetime w/o wi-fi seems like a no brainer.
Swiping between emails and tabs would be nice.
Swiping emails in list to mark as read/unread ala Byline would be great.
ID browser as ... desktop safari ala Atomic and a few others would be nice.
Some sort of gesture or hack to make all hover based nested menus not close instantly.
An ad blocker (again avail in Atomic or Sleipnir) would be godly but Apple seems very unlikely to implement a large scale one. Honestly the only adds I really want to block are the pop ups "Did you know the website for the article you want to be reading right now made an app! Click 99% of the pixels in this window to further delay consumption of the content you came here for."
Not to mention full-fledged Firefox and Firefox Sync on most devices 2.1+
The problem for Apple is that adding browser sync to iCloud isn't enough. Most people aren't browsing with Safari on the desktop. That means unless Apple
(a) loosens up on third-party browsers (unlikely based on past behavior) and/or
(b) opens up sync APIs for third-party desktop browsers, including third-party browsers on Windows (possible, but at least somewhat uncharacteristic and potentially tricky technically),
Android is likely to maintain its edge in browser sync.
Of course the same logic suggests that browser sync to desktop IE is potentially an under-appreciated advantage for Microsoft and Windows Phone. That's blunted a bit because, based on Microsoft's previous announcements, new versions of IE (including, presumably, whatever version adds browser sync) aren't going to make it to XP, but that's still a significant universe of potential sync targets.
Gruber seems to be using it instead to mean things that are easy to think of, regardless of their size or worth, which strikes me as a journalism-centric worldview.
Why hasn't humankind cured cancer? It's such an obvious next step. And when we do, I can write an article about how there are fewer things to have walkathons for.
It would be nice to fix some of the UI issues though.
This is one of the things I miss from Android since I switched.
Similarly I'd like apps to be able to register things to be uploaded so that even if the app is not running the OS will finish the upload.
Siri is a great example of this: iOS already ha voice control and nobody was complaining about it; it's just that nobody was really using it because it wasn't very good. Apple didn't get to where it is today just by cloning and refining things.
Also, while it may be difficult, it would be nice if there was a way to improve the experience when running games that use Game Center. (They often force you to put up with the game running slowly as it tries to connect and it annoys you by showing you two dialogs; I think the typical OpenFeint experience is a little better.)
And mobile browsers should allow extensions.
