Should Apple Gut it's iPhone OS and start over?

stevelam said:

Just ignore people like this who don't seem to have a clue. Boohoohoo my icons are on a grid! Cry me a river.

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Why so emotional? It's fine you are happy with iOS just the way it is -- but according to the responses from this poll many people here at least see room for improvement.

Just because you think people should be happy with iOS the way it is, doesn't make it so. If Apple doesn't update iOS more significantly than they have in the past then many will eventually choose another smartphone--simple as that. It won't matter what you or I think they should do or how they should feel.

Yujenisis said:

I never quite understood this perspective. No one complained about the Desktop UI metaphor needing to be thrown out a few years after it was popularized in the 1980's. It was accessible, powerful, and easily understood. Perfect? No. But damned good.

Why now, do we expect revolutionary technology on a yearly basis? One would think this constant change would be quite detrimental to the majority of non-techy consumers.

Don't get me wrong, I love it when Apple shocks the industry and we go through the predictable cycle of media/fanboy dismissal followed by the rest of the industry unabashedly following suit.

But this doesn't and shouldn't happen constantly, IMHO.

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When did this happen?

Last time I checked the industry does something and as usual Apple is late to the party

wxman2003 said:

Its not stale if it works. It works perfectly for me. People are stale if they get bored with perfection.

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Perfection. If perfection Is ****** maps app then yea it's perfect. Or if half assed mail app is perfection then yea. Or if you go through many perfect steps to turn simple things on and off then yea perfection is there. Stop being delusional.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

What I need Apple to do most is to enable me to download photographs anywhere I want, because iPhoto is not really my thing, and I need them to implement something like Activator. Both will probably never happen though. I still went for a used 4S, so hopefully an iOS6 jailbreak is in the cards.

I'm perfectly fine with how the user interface looks with its largely white, grey and desaturated blue interface. Looks business-like and out of the way to me, just like mac os. My phone looking like sinfuliphone is the last thing I need, together with non-stale but useless widgets that empty my battery and take up my app icon space.

So, yea, I voted slight update. The other two options are nonsensical anyway.

I don't think it needs to gut EVERYTHING,,I think it just needs an update.

But tbh I'm leaving no matter what the changes are. My perfect phone is a jailbrokeine iphone,and as I think about upgrading to the 4S next year,I don't know how long I'll be able to play the cat and mouse with apple about it. Plus the A5 chip has proven harder to jailbreak than my iphone 4 A4 chip with limeran exploit. So I think it'll be refreshing to try something new and definitely something more exciting than ios

thehustleman said:

When did this happen?

Last time I checked the industry does something and as usual Apple is late to the party

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iPhone 1st gen.

matttye said:

iPhone 1st gen.

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True. If there were no iPhone, Android as we know it would not exist.

What is this obsession with bloody widgets?

The easiest and most helpful change to how things work would be to put toggles for wifi, airplane mode, bluetooth, VPN, tethering, etc, in notification center. It's such a simple and positive addition I'm not sure why this hasn't been implemented yet. The JB community has had this for many years and now that iOS has notification center it's time to make it happen.

My other grip is a change to how folders work. I'd like to tap on a folder icon and have it open to a full screen where you could put as many apps as you'd like and with the ability to scroll through them.

I really dislike having multiple folders of the same or similar category of apps. The current limits are just not necessary.

I know what I'm asking for is possible since the feature was available to me back when my phone was jailbroken. It worked very well and helped with the clutter of icons and folders all over the place.

Some people may offer advise to cut down on unused apps but there's a total of 84 on my iPhone right now. I still feel it could look cleaner and less cluttered with a new way to store apps in folders. Maybe a completely different layout all together would help more than the folder fix. I hope they do something to refresh and clean up the look and feel.

BlindMellon said:

Seems most people here agree that the iPhone's OS is stale and needs an update. What do you choose?

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It seems that 82.53% of people on this board (at the time of this post) disagree with you about the OS needing to be "gutted". I'd imagine in the real world that number would be even higher.

Thanks, OP. Now we can all use this poll as a reference whenever this issue is discussed.

I despair at how many people miss the point entirely.

This is Apple. They are not going to make iOS into an Android clone, nor are they going to update it "because it's stale". They will update when they're good and ready, and it will likely be subtle.

They need to overhaul the OS add the ability to tweak the interface and allow apps that allow modifications after they have passed an apple approval process.

All Apple has to do is put a new name next to the lastest released iPhone to sell millions.

The OS is fine. It works great. Everything functions as it should. I think some of the "glitz and glam" needs work, Siri for instance. iTunes Match integration is another example and quick text responses in notification center would be nice.

I am tired of my toaster. All it does is making toast. I think the toaster industry should gut everything and start over. I am sick of the stale interface. I want a toaster than I can adjust the crispiness of my toast from my phone so that I can toast from anywhere in the world. I want one that I can schedule to toast for everyday of the week so that my toasts are done earlier on weekdays and later on weekend.

A couple of things here or there, but I generally like iOS. I had a Droid X for 2 years and I currently have a Nexus 7. Android has some cool things, and I guess would be better for "power users", but in my opinion a lot of their features are overhyped. Widgets, to me, aren't as great as they're made out to be. They're basically shortcuts, and I've found that I usually just open the full app anyway instead of using the widget.

Jelly Bean is by far the best android iteration yet, but I remember using the old Ice Cream Sandwich or whatever was on the Droid X and HATING it.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think it's necessary to be able to customize my home screen with a time/date/weather app or whatever else. I use that example because that just happens to be the widget I placed on my Nexus 7 homescreen. I can look at that and see the weather, or I can take .5 seconds to click the weather app and get the same information. Same thing with tweet widgets, facebook, etc...the only widget I ever really used a lot was the power amp widget that allowed me to control my music player from the lock screen.

Again, I might be in the minority, but I don't mind iOS, I don't mind the grid icons, I don't mind the screen size (currently have a 4s). I switched to android after I got rid of my 3Gs because of all the things I could do with it, then after a while I just said "meh, this isn't all that fun". Went back to iOS with my last phone purchase. Probably would have bought an ipad mini if it had come with retina and was a bit cheaper.

Sedrick said:

I don't know: one choice to gut (not needed IMO), one choice to update and one choice to leave it alone. Are you angry about being given a choice at all?

If anything the poll seems slanted to leave the OS mostly the same.

I'd vote for themes if it was on the list.

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Angry?

Lol. No.

Just commenting that a poll which is slanted one way or the other isn't really worth putting up.

meistervu said:

I am tired of my toaster.

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Obviously you don't know anything, iToast sheepster. Toasters are so caveman it's beyond belief. Toasters need a slick, refined interface for cooking bread. They need to be perfectly square and modern, not hideously skeumorphic and shaped like a toaster. And another thing? Why only bread? That's so confining! We're only allowed to cook what the toasting industry wants us to! I hear samsung makes this huge toaster that has enough room in it to cook a whole turkey! They should do this for my toaster!

Also, what if I want to remove the built in heating element and install my own? Why am I not allowed to change the default heating element? The built in one is so featureless and stale. Ugh..

WeegieMac said:

What is this obsession with bloody widgets?

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For me, it is the ability to see some information without going into the app. For example: weather, next calendar appointment, etc.

Really bad poll. So I can't vote for an update without live icons and widgets? Ok

Also, why can't they substantially revamp the OS without starting from scratch?

ucfgrad93 said:

For me, it is the ability to see some information without going into the app. For example: weather, next calendar appointment, etc.

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Again, what's the obsession with bloody weather?!

See before smartphones, we looked out the window or watched weather bulletins prior to leaving the house. And, as you know, there is a weather widget in NC on iOS.

Just have the ability to customize it at your own will. No need to overhaul it for the masses. Since the masses like it for it's simplicity. But let those who want to tinker with it, just tinker with it.

So they should have the attitude, "If you buy it from us or another reputable dealer, then you have this elegant and simplistic design. If you root it, and tinker with it, or buy it from who knows who, your all on your own."

Apple's M.O. is to provide small incremental updates, but at this point I think they need to swing for the fences in hardware and software. Provide us with some great innovative designs. The issue is its competition has no such qualms in pushing the envelope, so apple needs to do the same.

there are some things I think could be good that would be relatively minor, like have the weather app icon update to reflect the current weather, or having a quick shortcut to turn on/off wifi or bluetooth without having to delve into settings. Other things like multi-user support on the iPad (don't see a need for it on iPhone, that's more of a one user only device) might need a more drastic overhaul to implement.