Nice! I really hope they've worked hard on iOS 5 and will bring big improvements.
Agree with lots of these...
1. New notification system - A copy of Android, make the status bar a bit thicker and make it a pull down menu spring menu like Android, integrate multitasking switcher into it, plus toggles for bluetooth, wifi, airplane and others, also include music controls.
I don't think anyone debates this now, but it's important to log the toggles. The UX journey for turning off wifi - something lots of people do several times a day to conserve battery - is utterly painful. It should be better.
2. Widgets or at least Live/dynamic icons - A weather app should display degrees on the icon like Calendar does with dates.
Yep, though a better notification system on the homescreen might fill in some of this.
3. Selective Full Multitasking - Integrate backgrounder into iOS, keep the current multitasking as a default but allow those that want a certain app(s) to run fully have that option.
Yeah, possibly, though it would need a better task manager than iOS has now.
I think a lot of the issues could be arranged with some sort of unified task scheduler in the OS. For example, my iPhone is just at on it's dock connected to wifi, twiddling it's thumbs in the morning before I leave the house. It's crazy that I have to use my my limited 3G data allocation on the run to the train station so I can try and download content to read offline while on the train - going into each individual apps to get news content or my tweets.
A task scheduler could allow an app to start half an hour before I get up, sync all that content for me over wifi, and leave it sitting there for me to read on a train. It'd just work. It'd make the experience much smoother. It'd solve a lot of the issues true multitasking would, and with virtually no downsides if done carefully.
4. Mass Storage Support - Give us an access to the filesystem or atleast provide some space where we can drop files into.
God yes. Trying to email stuff to yourself to get document drafts in Pages on the iPad is beyond clumsy and stupid at the moment.
Sites having to write an application just because you can't upload photos using the standard online dialogue box like every other web browser in the world is crazy, especially given Apple's policies on censoring the app store. Even just giving proper access from Safari to the photo folder would be a huge improvement.
7. Ability to change SMS/email tones
I suspect even Apple's embarrassed by this by now.
8. Full Bluetooth support, sending files, contacts, syncing, etc...
Very much so.
Again Apple, think about things in the way you do best - follow the use case and make it great. Last night I took a photo on my iPhone while in my house. I wanted it on my Macbook. If I click forward I can email it (very slow and I don't really want to clog up my inbox) to myself, which is counter intuative. I can upload it to a MobileMe gallery but not just to my MobileMe file store (why??? I dont want to publish everything). I can plug in a transfer cable and mount it
but that doesn't work in OSX if the phone is Windows formatted as mine is (my music collection is on my Windows box). So why can't I just send it via Bluetooth? Why can't I do send it to someone with a dumb phone, which is still the vast majority of the people I know in real life? This is beyond a joke now. If you don't want to let me send music files then don't. Fine. But restricting photographs is *crazy*.
9. Free navigation app with an ability to download maps to use them offline
Yeah, that'd be good, but there are potential licensing problems.
I'd also like to see some attention paid to playing *music* on the device.
- Why does trying to change the EQ settings in the iPod app neccessitate a journey through menus that Microsoft would be ashamed of?
- Why can't I queue up a track to play *next*? We don't have trackwheels any more, I should be able to create dynamic playlists by dragging and dropping.
- Why is podcast syncing SO painful? I can go and manually fetch each episode one at a time via the iTunes store... what? Where's my one click button that syncs all of my podcasts, and attaches cloud data to my Apple ID so my computer knows what I've listened to and what I haven't? This is so easy to do.
Phazer
