iOS 11 contest: 99 features

[mark-vdw]

I've been reading the iOS 11 wishlist thread, and thought this might be a fun game. I combined many people's wishlists, including my own, and came to below list of 99 features that have been mentioned in these forums. So, I'd like to propose a little contest with the following rules:

• Predict how many of the below 99 features will be present in iOS 11.
• Add the top-3 features in which you're most confident that they will appear.
  
  
• After WWDC, I'll update this post to congratulate whoever had the closest number.
• In case of a tie, whoever has most of his top-3 most confident features right wins
• In case of a tie there as well, whoever posted first

Obviously the list isn't short and coming up with your tally might take a while, so best done at work while the boss isn't watching. Good luck and may the man with the most inside information win!


-----



System-Wide
01. Ability to change default apps for Mail, Calendar, Contacts, ...
02. Widgets on lock screen, like Complications on watchOS.
03. Multi-tasking multiple instances of same app
04. Drag and drop between apps in split view on iPad
05. Multiple user accounts on iPad
06. Secure individual apps or documents with password or Touch ID
07. Some type of Finder or easier way of letting apps access each others files

Control Center
08. Customisable control center
09. Force Touch in control center to select WiFi network, Bluetooth device, ...

User Interface
10. Dark mode
11. Merge long press & 3D touch into single gesture
12. Improve keyboard on larger phones, e.g. number bar
13. Re-think the UI paradigm for that little black "copy-paste" bar
14. Make the UI design language consistent again (re: Music, News)
15. Advanced clipboard features like a clipboard history or favourites
16. An "edit" sheet separate from the "share" sheet
17. "Home" and "Sleep" buttons merged into single type of interaction
18. Blocking warning boxes (“10% battery remaining”) replaced by regular notifications

Home Screen
19. Smarter icon rearrangement (e.g. move multiple icons at once, or auto-sort most used to 1st screen)
20. Live icons like Apple's clock or calendar apps
21. Home screen widgets.
22. Ability to add other things than apps to the home screen, e.g. contact persons
23. Completely redesigned home screen on iPad

Settings
24. Setting profiles (“Home”, “Work”, …). Could be geo-fenced.
25. Ability to lower brightness below current minimum
26. Ability to control device media syncing directly from iOS or iCloud instead of through iTunes
27. Further improved Family Sharing.
28. Re-organized settings menu (some key settings hidden way too deep)
29. Allow access to settings both from within the app and from within the Settings screen.
30. Ability to send audio to a specific device.
31. Wi-Fi network priorities, like in macOS.

Continuity
32. Handoff of ongoing media: transfer an in-progress phone call, transfer a playing movie, ...
33. Native support for screen sharing, e.g. AirPlay from iPhone to iPad, or using an iPad as secondary display for a Mac like Duet Display
34. Ability to share screen or push audio to a contact on same wifi or via Bluetooth, e.g. screen sharing in a meeting, or listening to same music while running
35. Use iPhone / iPad as drawing pad for macOS
36. A “push” form of continuity (send a user activity to the target device from the source device, rather than the current “pull” form where you start from the target device)
37. Allow iPad to access files shared from macOS
38. A framework for social collaboration, Handoff-style (NSUserActivity) - for example having multiple people on same wifi edit same document or play a collaborative game.

New Apps for iPad
39. Weather
40. Calculator (too much to ask for a Graphing Calculator like Mac OS of old?)
41. Phone
42. Voice Memos
43. Apple Health. Specifically, a dashboard. I get the privacy concerns (and legal issues) in syncing health data through iCloud, perhaps syncing it locally over Bluetooth is an option? In any case, after amassing a few years worth of Health data, the phone is not the right platform to analyse all that data on.
44. Apple Support app built in - this app can be really handy. Either bundle it, or integrate it into the Apple ID section of settings.

Siri
45. On-device Siri
46. Textual input for Siri
47. Fully merge Siri with Spotlight - why these 2 give different results for the same query? Because I typed one and spoke the other?
48. Extend SiriKit to additional categories of interaction

Messages
49. Archive messages to iCloud
50. Faster search
51. Streamline interface, improve discoverability
52. Streamline Messenger Apps . Separate stickers and apps. Make stickers easier to access.
53. Allow Messages apps to be x-platform on iOS + macOS
54. API to read/write to iMessage history (inc. SMS)

Facetime
55. Group calls
56. Screen sharing
57. Facetime voicemail
58. Sync favourites across devices
59. Unify Phone + FaceTime into a single app.

Photos & Camera
60. Sync faces across devices!
61. Easily export Live Photos as animated GIFs
62. Better user interface for mass face tagging
63. “Ignore this face of random background person forever"
64. Native RAW support
65. OCR in photo analysis machine learning step
66. Streamline user interface choices, e.g. why on earth is "not this person" under the "share" sheet? Why are the markup options hidden behind the "more" button? Seriously, has anyone from Human Interface or Usability groups looked at these apps recently?
67. Allow albums from the "Albums" tab to also be shared under the "Shared" tab rather than requiring 2 completely seperate albums for private collection vs. sharing
68. Tweak the Memories feature to be more targeted at automatic album creation, less at video creation
69. Manual Camera Controls - Build in a "Manual" mode in the stock camera.
70. Probably not easy to build, but some type of intelligence around age of children would be nice. My library keeps suggesting that my 2-year old is my 5-year old because they looked similar at age 2, but taking timestamps into account somehow could make this relatively trivial. Less relevant for adults of course, but I don’t think I’m an exception in saying that almost 50% of my photo library are pics of my kids.

Health
71. Sync from iPhone to iPad. I know they wouldn't want to sync over iCloud due to privacy concerns, but I would imagine some type of local sync from iPhone to iPad should be possible, just like how the Watch syncs to iPhone
72. Better charts and dashboards.
73. Allow entry of non-quantitive info, like listing when I had a cold or got a vaccine, ...
74. Sleep tracking
75. Multiple health profiles - specifically, allow me to enter info for my kids as well. Fevers, childhood diseases, growth, how much milk the baby drank, ...

Contacts
76. Manage contact groups on iOS
77. System-wide VIP contacts (for Mail, priority Do Not Disturb, …)
78. Default contact method for a person (FaceTime, Phone, WhatsApp, …)

Mail
79. Rules for which mails trigger a notification and which not

Safari
80. Download Manager

Videos / TV
81. Multiple profiles. Netflix executes this almost perfectly.

Music
82. Make it more usable for people who only use their local downloaded library, no Apple Music
83. Split the iTunes Store app out into the seperate apps for Music, iBooks, Videos, Podcasts, ...
84. Some type of light subscription to Apple Music, for those of us who don't listen to Music enough to pony up the full price but still would enjoy the benefit of not having to curate our own library. For example a 2.99$ subscription with only access to a limited library, 6 month delay on recent releases, and only a limited amount of hours per month.
85. Integrate Lyrics into all Apple Music songs. And Album booklets too if not already done.

Maps
86. Offline Maps
87. Dynamic re-routing in case of traffic
88. Street view
89. Bicycle directions. For bonus points, take popular biking tracks into account.
90. Indoor maps

Calendar & Reminders
91. Improved Do Not Disturb scheduling (pick specific days/times, or turn on for x amount of hours, or linked to Calendar events)
92. Just start paying some active attention to these apps rather than keeping them so basic. I don’t understand what the philosophy is behind having the same bare-bones Calendar app and Reminders app since pretty much iOS 1 (leaving a nice market for Todoist and Fantastical), but aggressively upgrading Notes every single release.

Wallet
93. Be able to scan a few of my cards directly into Wallet (i.e. Health Insurance, Drivers' Licence, etc.) to shave off a few millimeters from my physical Wallet
94. Apple Pay support across all of the European Union (seriously, we’ve had a Single Market for years, why is Apple Pay out in France + Spain but not the rest?)

Podcasts
95. Support for subscription podcasts
96. Better access to older episodes
97. Better annotation (e.g. automatic transcription, ability to display certain links at certain timestamps within the episode, …)
98. Some features for better monetisation (e.g. ads, in-podcast purchase links to apps, payed access to older episodes, …)

Remote
99. Improved Remote app with Handoff, i.e. watch a movie on your TV, hand it off to phone, hand back over to your Mac on PiP, …

 

[CTHarrryH]

Wow - must be nice to have time to put together a list like that.

I predict <10

 

[Shirasaki]

Some are legit, some have existed features, some are just interesting.
Sorry, but they are too many. Can't list those "somes" at all. Lol

Wow - must be nice to have time to put together a list like that.

I predict <10

Yeah. I actually read your reply first before reading the OP post lol.
Btw I have seen certain features over previous forum posts.

 

[Mlrollin91]

Skimming the post, I predict 9.

 

[LordQ]

So, how much $ to the winner?

 

[GreyOS]

10

Top 3: can't be bothered

 

[Casfin]

99 new emojis will be added.

There will be much rejoicing.

 

[Defender2010]

71. Query. - Why wouldn't Apple allow syncing of Health data to an iPad via iCloud? Are you saying they don't trust their own system? It's already backed up to iCloud from the iPhone or with iTunes so I don't see the issue here. The same security exists on both devices.

Something I'd like to see are Read Notifications when an iMessage is read. I send out messages to my team and I want to know they read work related stuff without having to go in and check individually.

 

[Natya Sadella]

Ive read the whole list and I sadly have noticed how apple prescribes us how to use our phones.

So much potencial.. Please apple let users decide whats good and useful.

An iphone is like the brain. It uses just 10% of its potencial. Nice list.

 

[Chazzle]

8 of 99.

 

[Jessica Lares]

14

• [77] With the Clips app, they are suggesting people to share the videos to based on whether they appear or not, so there's probably going to be more work on suggesting who to send stuff to based on mentioning them in emails, etc.
• [52] And they're most likely going to revamp the Messages app with how poorly its done
• [04] And a very good chance of drag and drop in split view on the iPad

 

[liledd]

great speculation. I love speculation. Check out my list but there's a lot of similarities. I'm really hoping apple does something big this year. I feel it coming but I feel that every year lol

 

[theShredder]

So I've been reading the iOS 11 wishlist thread and thought this might be a fun game. I combined some lists including my own, and came up with below list of 99 features that have been mentioned in these forums. I'd like to propose a little contest with the following rules:

• Predict how many of the below 99 features will be present in iOS 11.
• Add the top-3 features in which you're most confident that they will appear.
  
  
• After WWDC, I'll update this post to congratulate whoever had the closest number.
• In case of a tie, whoever has most of his top-3 most confident features right wins
• In case of a tie there as well, whoever posted first

Obviously the list isn't short and coming up with your tally might take a while, so best done at work while the boss isn't watching. Good luck and may the man with the most inside information win!


-----



System-Wide
01. Ability to change default apps for Mail, Calendar, Contacts, ...
02. Widgets on lock screen, like Complications on watchOS.
03. Multi-tasking multiple instances of same app
04. Drag and drop between apps in split view on iPad
05. Multiple user accounts on iPad
06. Secure individual apps or documents with password or Touch ID
07. Some type of Finder or easier way of letting apps access each others files

Control Center
08. Customisable control center
09. Force Touch in control center to select WiFi network, Bluetooth device, ...

User Interface
10. Dark mode
11. Merge long press & 3D touch into single gesture
12. Improve keyboard on larger phones, e.g. number bar
13. Re-think the UI paradigm for that little black "copy-paste" bar
14. Make the UI design language consistent again (re: Music, News)
15. Advanced clipboard features like a clipboard history or favourites
16. An "edit" sheet separate from the "share" sheet
17. "Home" and "Sleep" buttons merged into single type of interaction
18. Blocking warning boxes (“10% battery remaining”) replaced by regular notifications

Home Screen
19. Smarter icon rearrangement (e.g. move multiple icons at once, or auto-sort most used to 1st screen)
20. Live icons like Apple's clock or calendar apps
21. Home screen widgets.
22. Ability to add other things than apps to the home screen, e.g. contact persons
23. Completely redesigned home screen on iPad

Settings
24. Setting profiles (“Home”, “Work”, …). Could be geo-fenced.
25. Ability to lower brightness below current minimum
26. Ability to control device media syncing directly from iOS or iCloud instead of through iTunes
27. Further improved Family Sharing.
28. Re-organized settings menu (some key settings hidden way too deep)
29. Allow access to settings both from within the app and from within the Settings screen.
30. Ability to send audio to a specific device.
31. Wi-Fi network priorities, like in macOS.

Continuity
32. Handoff of ongoing media: transfer an in-progress phone call, transfer a playing movie, ...
33. Native support for screen sharing, especially AirPlay from e.g. iPhone to iPad, or using an iPad as secondary display for a Mac like Duet Display
34. Ability to share screen or push audio to a contact on same wifi or via Bluetooth, e.g. screen sharing in a meeting, or listening to same music while running
35. Use iPhone / iPad as drawing pad for macOS
36. A “push” form of continuity (send a user activity to the target device from the source device, rather than the current “pull” form where you start from the target device)
37. Allow iPad to access files shared from macOS
38. A framework for social collaboration, Handoff-style (NSUserActivity) - for example having multiple people on same wifi edit same document or play a collaborative game.

New Apps for iPad
39. Weather
40. Calculator (too much to ask for a Graphing Calculator like Mac OS of old?)
41. Phone
42. Voice Memos
43. Apple Health. Specifically, a dashboard. I get the privacy concerns (and legal issues) in syncing health data through iCloud, perhaps syncing it locally over Bluetooth is an option? In any case, after amassing a few years worth of Health data, the phone is not the right platform to analyse all that data on.
44. Apple Support app built in - this app can be really handy. Either bundle it, or integrate it into the Apple ID section of settings.

Siri
45. On-device Siri
46. Textual input for Siri
47. Fully merge Siri with Spotlight - why these 2 give different results for the same query? Because I typed one and spoke the other?
48. Extend SiriKit to additional categories of interaction

Messages
49. Archive messages to iCloud
50. Faster search
51. Streamline interface, improve discoverability
52. Streamline Messenger Apps . Separate stickers and apps. Make stickers easier to access.
53. Allow Messages apps to be x-platform on iOS + macOS
54. API to read/write to iMessage history (inc. SMS)

Facetime
55. Group calls
56. Screen sharing
57. Facetime voicemail
58. Sync favourites across devices
59. Unify Phone + FaceTime into a single app.

Photos & Camera
60. Sync faces across devices!
61. Easily export Live Photos as animated GIFs
62. Better user interface for mass face tagging
63. “Ignore this face of random background person forever"
64. Native RAW support
65. OCR in photo analysis machine learning step
66. Streamline user interface choices, e.g. why on earth is "not this person" under the "share" sheet? Why are the markup options hidden behind the "more" button? Seriously, has anyone from Human Interface or Usability groups looked at these apps recently?
67. Allow albums from the "Albums" tab to also be shared under the "Shared" tab rather than requiring 2 completely seperate albums for private collection vs. sharing
68. Tweak the Memories feature to be more targeted at automatic album creation, less at video creation
69. Manual Camera Controls - Build in a "Manual" mode in the stock camera.
70. Probably not easy to build, but some type of intelligence around age of children would be nice. My library keeps suggesting that my 2-year old is my 5-year old because they looked similar at age 2, but taking timestamps into account somehow could make this relatively trivial. Less relevant for adults of course, but I don’t think I’m an exception in saying that almost 50% of my photo library are pics of my kids.

Health
71. Sync from iPhone to iPad. I know they wouldn't want to sync over iCloud due to privacy concerns, but I would imagine some type of local sync from iPhone to iPad should be possible, just like how the Watch syncs to iPhone
72. Better charts and dashboards.
73. Allow entry of non-quantitive info, like listing when I had a cold or got a vaccine, ...
74. Sleep tracking
75. Multiple health profiles - specifically, allow me to enter info for my kids as well. Fevers, childhood diseases, growth, how much milk the baby drank, ...

Contacts
76. Manage contact groups on iOS
77. System-wide VIP contacts (for Mail, priority Do Not Disturb, …)
78. Default contact method for a person (FaceTime, Phone, WhatsApp, …)

Mail
79. Rules for which mails trigger a notification and which not

Safari
80. Download Manager

Videos / TV
81. Multiple profiles. Netflix executes this almost perfectly.

Music
82. Make it more usable for people who only use their local downloaded library, no Apple Music
83. Split the iTunes Store app out into the seperate apps for Music, iBooks, Videos, Podcasts, ...
84. Some type of light subscription to Apple Music, for those of us who don't listen to Music enough to pony up the full price but still would enjoy the benefit of not having to curate our own library. For example a 2.99$ subscription with only access to a limited library, 6 month delay on recent releases, and only a limited amount of hours per month.
85. Integrate Lyrics into all Apple Music songs. And Album booklets too if not already done.

Maps
86. Offline Maps
87. Dynamic re-routing in case of traffic
88. Street view
89. Bicycle directions. For bonus points, take popular biking tracks into account.

Calendar & Reminders
90. Just start paying some active attention to these apps rather than keeping them so basic
91. Improved Do Not Disturb scheduling (pick specific days/times, or turn on for x amount of hours, or linked to Calendar events)
92. As an aside, I don’t understand what the philosophy is behind having the same bare-bones Calendar app and Reminders app since pretty much iOS 1 (leaving a nice market for Todoist and Fantastical), but aggressively upgrading Notes every single release.

Wallet
93. Be able to scan a few of my cards directly into Wallet (i.e. Health Insurance, Drivers' Licence, etc.) to shave off a few millimeters from my physical Wallet
94. Apple Pay support across all of the European Union (seriously, we’ve had a Single Market for years, why is Apple Pay out in France + Spain but not the rest?)

Podcasts
95. Support for subscription podcasts
96. Better access to older episodes
97. Better annotation (e.g. automatic transcription, ability to display certain links at certain timestamps within the episode, …)
98. Some features for better monetisation (e.g. ads, in-podcast purchase links to apps, payed access to older episodes, …)

Remote
99. Improved Remote app with Handoff, i.e. start watching a movie on your TV, hand it off to phone, hand back over to your Mac on PiP, …

 

[snow755]

So, how much $ to the winner?

you win a 24hr banned for being the winner this joking

 

[kirky29]

Sadly probs less than 10. Maybe 11 magical features for iOS 11!

 

[Sharkey311]

17

Top 3
Further improved Family Sharing
Extend SiriKit to additional categories of interaction
Better [Health] charts and dashboards

 

[Justaguy48]

Knowing Apple there is stuff that will be in iOS 11 that no one has even thought of or know they need.

 

[marvz]

71. Query. - Why wouldn't Apple allow syncing of Health data to an iPad via iCloud? Are you saying they don't trust their own system? It's already backed up to iCloud from the iPhone or with iTunes so I don't see the issue here. The same security exists on both devices.

Actually it's not. When you restore an iPhone from an iCloud Backup the Health and Activity app will be empty. Even when you restore from an iTunes backup it won't restore Health and Activity data. The only way to restore these is to use encrypted iTunes backups.

 

[simonmet]

Wow - must be nice to have time to put together a list like that.

I predict <10

Maybe he got bored at work!

Pretty impressive stuff!

 

[Defender2010]

Actually it's not. When you restore an iPhone from an iCloud Backup the Health and Activity app will be empty. Even when you restore from an iTunes backup it won't restore Health and Activity data. The only way to restore these is to use encrypted iTunes backups.

I didn't dispute that. I know if an iTunes backup is encrypted the data will restore as I've done this several times. I would assume an iCloud restore does too as it's clear to see in settings what data is backed up - health data is for sure

 

[mark-vdw]

Maybe he got bored at work!

Pretty impressive stuff!

Sssssh don't tell my boss. But yeah, pretty much this

 

[pacorob]

Here is my top 3:
08. Customisable control center
05. Multiple user accounts on iPad
31. Wi-Fi network priorities, like in macOS.

But it was really hard to pick out these three because I do want and hope to see all the below (16 + 3 of myself in iOS11. See the three I would like to see as well below:

* Finally build in a word sliding/swiping feature in Apple's own keyboard (so we won't have to use 3rd party ones like Swype, Gboard, Swiftkey) which tend to be buggy either by the API or by third parties
* Have a good search feature / a way to (de)select apps from the Slide Over/Split View supported apps list
* Kind of like 07. to make URL schemes mandatory for each app and preferabbly also actions within apps so you can easily launch those via other apps or e.g. widgets such as Launcher / Magic Launcher. Instead Apple recently started asking developers to remove the URL schemes to Settings features

As far as 90. I think indeed that Apple should finally implement that you can see a full day appointment in your calendar widget. I'm currently using a third party widget for that. Also I'm missing the support for Google's calendar way of address and showing travel time (in minutes/hours) and distance. It now only works with an Apple calendar but I can't easily access that via iCloud to add appointments on a (Windows) laptop/desktop. I'm currently using a third party calendar instead (Week Calendar).

01. Ability to change default apps for Mail, Calendar, Contacts, ...
02. Widgets on lock screen, like Complications on watchOS.
03. Multi-tasking multiple instances of same app
04. Drag and drop between apps in split view on iPad
05. Multiple user accounts on iPad
06. Secure individual apps or documents with password or Touch ID
07. Some type of Finder or easier way of letting apps access each others files
08. Customisable control center
09. Force Touch in control center to select WiFi network, Bluetooth device, ...
10. Dark mode
31. Wi-Fi network priorities, like in macOS.
39. Weather on iPad
40. Calculator on iPad (too much to ask for a Graphing Calculator like Mac OS of old?)
82. Make it more usable for people who only use their local downloaded library, no Apple Music
86. Offline Maps
90. Just start paying some active attention to these Calendar/Reminder apps rather than keeping them so basic

 

[SoN1NjA]

the problem with lowering brightness below what you're able to now is distortion of colors

 

[Zaft]

I will add a feature for maps: See pictures of POIs without leaving to yelp.. So annoying.

 

[netsped]

My top 3 are:

Dark mode
Native RAW support (included with more advanced camera controls in stock app)
Some type of Finder or easier way of letting apps access each others files

And I would really want:

100 - Ability to disable Night Shift on a per app basis.