Apple is terrible with built-in software, why not buy themselves out of a problem?

[FrozenDarkness]

built-in mail app: terrible
built-in calendar app: weak
built-in reminder app: terrible
built-in browser: good

i find it odd that through so many iterations of iOS, these apps have essentially stayed the same in functionality whilst the competition has changed. Apple should just buy some of these companies like any.do or mailbox and integrate it into iOS. it's baffling to me that they can still make the same built-in apps and try to sell it.

the most hilarious thing is that these apps aren't even the easiest to use. the reminder app is terribly inefficient

 

[McGiord]

Because they are betting on Siri to do all.

 

[old-wiz]

The apps you name work just fine for me.

 

[Armen]

built-in mail app: terrible
built-in calendar app: weak
built-in reminder app: terrible
built-in browser: good

i find it odd that through so many iterations of iOS, these apps have essentially stayed the same in functionality whilst the competition has changed. Apple should just buy some of these companies like any.do or mailbox and integrate it into iOS. it's baffling to me that they can still make the same built-in apps and try to sell it.

the most hilarious thing is that these apps aren't even the easiest to use. the reminder app is terribly inefficient

The apps that come baked into iOS are sufficient enough for most users. Heck, some people don't even use some of these apps.

Suggesting that Apple should buy these companies is like asking Ford to buy Alpine, Sony or Pioneer so that all Ford cars will come with better audio systems from the factory. Unfortunately Not everyone cares about premium sound when they purchase a car.

 

[The Doctor11]

built-in mail app: terrible
built-in calendar app: weak
built-in reminder app: terrible
built-in browser: good

I think of it more like this...
Built in mail app: Awesome
Built in calendar: Ugly but ok
Built in reminders: Awesome
Built in browser: Good

 

[LordQ]

I'll never understand all the hate to the Mail and Calendar apps around here, they work just fine...

I don't get what else you want them to do, pick up your children from school?

 

[blue rocket]

i dont agree at all, i find the default Apple apps to be better than anything i've ever downloaded to try to replace them with.

 

[lovewd]

I don't understand why you have an apple product if you think it's so inefficient

 

[FrozenDarkness]

Apple built in mail app: no push notifications for gmail

Apple built in calendar app: Sufficient but better ones allow for integration with more websites like linkedin and yelp which will allow the calendar to prepopulate contacts and/or directions based off of your calendar entries.

Apple built in reminder app: Hard to use, works with siri which is a plus but doesn't have the abilities to easily create a task, create a subtask, create a new list of tasks, and attach a file to the task.

I'm merely suggesting a strategy apple is already employing with their maps app which I personally find fairly enjoyable to use. I don't find the built in mail app/calendar/reminder fun to use at all.

love safari, ironically i hate safari for mac because it never seems as fast as chrome so I can't realize the full benefits.

 

[McGiord]

If Apple covers all the functionality in those Apps there would be a significant reduction in the quantity of Apps in the App Store, I can't even think on the number of to do list apps out there. Try to look and test some of them and pick one, by the time you are done you already lost one year and nothing done...

 

[dcp10]

Apple is terrible with built-in software, why not buy themselves out of a pro...

I've always thought it was a deliberate strategy to provide basic functionality for many users and let the 3rd party market fill in the gaps. Apple does get 30% after all.

 

[C DM]

Apple built in mail app: no push notifications for gmail

Apple built in calendar app: Sufficient but better ones allow for integration with more websites like linkedin and yelp which will allow the calendar to prepopulate contacts and/or directions based off of your calendar entries.

Apple built in reminder app: Hard to use, works with siri which is a plus but doesn't have the abilities to easily create a task, create a subtask, create a new list of tasks, and attach a file to the task.

I'm merely suggesting a strategy apple is already employing with their maps app which I personally find fairly enjoyable to use. I don't find the built in mail app/calendar/reminder fun to use at all.

love safari, ironically i hate safari for mac because it never seems as fast as chrome so I can't realize the full benefits.

Google isn't supporting that themselves, so not that much Apple can do about it.

As for the other items, Apple's versions of these apps are there to provide the most relevant functionality for the app, not to bloat it with all kinds of extra things that can be useful to some, but not to others. So, calendar does all the typical things a calendar would do, and while integrating it with data from Yelp or LinkedIn or something else can be useful to some, those are extraneous things for most when it comes to typical calendar usage. Similar things apply to the other Apples apps, although the user experience can certainly be improved in at least some of them.

But, the bigger point is that what the whole "There's an app for that" Apple ecosystem is for--if there are more specific or extended things you need beyond the basic that are included, you can almost always find something that would suit you from a third party and use that. That said, it would certainly help if Apple allowed to change default app associations so that you can set up a different mail app or browser as the system default.

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I've always thought it was a deliberate strategy to provide basic functionality for many users and let the 3rd party market fill in the gaps. Apple does get 30% after all.

Yup, that's one of the bigger parts of it all.

 

[FrozenDarkness]

Google isn't supporting that themselves, so not that much Apple can do about it.

As for the other items, Apple's versions of these apps are there to provide the most relevant functionality for the app, not to bloat it with all kinds of extra things that can be useful to some, but not to others. So, calendar does all the typical things a calendar would do, and while integrating it with data from Yelp or LinkedIn or something else can be useful to some, those are extraneous things for most when it comes to typical calendar usage. Similar things apply to the other Apples apps, although the user experience can certainly be improved in at least some of them.

But, the bigger point is that what the whole "There's an app for that" Apple ecosystem is for--if there are more specific or extended things you need beyond the basic that are included, you can almost always find something that would suit you from a third party and use that. That said, it would certainly help if Apple allowed to change default app associations so that you can set up a different mail app or browser as the system default.

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Yup, that's one of the bigger parts of it all.

well i'm not sure what teh push notification problem is between google and apple but most apps like gmail app, mailbox provide push notification for gmail. it might just be apple? not sure

but apple's app ecosystem is thriving, but the problem is apple locks down your ability to use them efficiently. for example, if i use a third party mail app, i can't send e-mails from that app without also running the apple mail app. i'm glad apple is opening up siri APIs for third party developers but it's still not quite there yet.

 

[dcp10]

Yes it would be nice to be able to choose default apps such as email, but I think it's unlikely. Apple would lose too much control over the "user experience" if they did.

 

[carjakester]

I liked the days when they used to use google for maps instead of their own app, i still use google, and i know I'm not the only one.

 

[NewbieCanada]

I'll never understand all the hate to the Mail and Calendar apps around here, they work just fine...

I don't get what else you want them to do, pick up your children from school?

First they'd have to conceive and gestate some children for me. And I won't lie. If they did that I'd be pretty damn impressed.

 

[C DM]

well i'm not sure what teh push notification problem is between google and apple but most apps like gmail app, mailbox provide push notification for gmail. it might just be apple? not sure

but apple's app ecosystem is thriving, but the problem is apple locks down your ability to use them efficiently. for example, if i use a third party mail app, i can't send e-mails from that app without also running the apple mail app. i'm glad apple is opening up siri APIs for third party developers but it's still not quite there yet.

It's not really between Google and Apple, it's more that Google doesn't provide Exchange push anymore and doesn't support push for IMAP. The other apps use other means to do push notifications, like mail essentially going through their servers and then sending a regular Apple push notification for that. That's not what a normal mail client does--as a lot of people wouldn't want their mail to go through another external server not associated with their email provider--it supports the actual mail protocols that exist (like Exchange, IMAP, POP) and what they provide and what the provider of the email service itself provides through those protocols, which is what Apple's mail app does.

 

[0000757]

built-in mail app: terrible
built-in calendar app: weak
built-in reminder app: terrible
built-in browser: good

i find it odd that through so many iterations of iOS, these apps have essentially stayed the same in functionality whilst the competition has changed. Apple should just buy some of these companies like any.do or mailbox and integrate it into iOS. it's baffling to me that they can still make the same built-in apps and try to sell it.

the most hilarious thing is that these apps aren't even the easiest to use. the reminder app is terribly inefficient

The mail app is perfect. I don't use boxes or sorting or anything. The most I ever do is flagging. The calendar I use rarely, reminders I just use as a homework list, and Safari is amazing.

Just because you don't think they're good does not mean others do too. I do agree though I can understand people wanting more power user features.

 

[antiprotest]

I like all those apps.

 

[FrozenDarkness]

while many of you guys may think it's enough for your purposes, i don't stand alone as most review sites have also point out the shortcomings of apple's build in apps. it's not that they're not good, it's that they're not good enough and functionality has not evolved in the past 3-4 years. in fact, i don't care what the reasoning is, not having push notification with the biggest e-mail provider is a huge step back for them.

and "using reminders as a homework list" isn't really the typical application. I welcome you guys to check out other apps so you can get a taste of just how much functionality is not there that apple can easily implement. Again, it's not only lack of functionality, it's also lack of ease of use. the reminders app is NOT easy to use. It doesn't autorecognize places, time, etc from initial input. it does through Siri but not through keyboard input?

 

[C DM]

while many of you guys may think it's enough for your purposes, i don't stand alone as most review sites have also point out the shortcomings of apple's build in apps. it's not that they're not good, it's that they're not good enough and functionality has not evolved in the past 3-4 years. in fact, i don't care what the reasoning is, not having push notification with the biggest e-mail provider is a huge step back for them.

That's kind of like saying I don't care what the reasoning is but not being able to make calls while flying in airplanes is a huge step back for iPhones. It's got nothing to do with them, and has to do with Google removing support for push outside of their own apps and their own ecosystem (Android).

I completely agree that it sucks, but it doesn't have to much to do with Apple and it's Google that you can essentially be upset with at best.

 

[FrozenDarkness]

That's kind of like saying I don't care what the reasoning is but not being able to make calls while flying in airplanes is a huge step back for iPhones. It's got nothing to do with them, and has to do with Google removing support for push outside of their own apps and their own ecosystem (Android).

I completely agree that it sucks, but it doesn't have to much to do with Apple and it's Google that you can essentially be upset with at best.

Well no we just agreed that there are apps that still work with push. Every calendar app for example on iOS works with push notifications. Most 3rd party mail apps as well. Apple is a big company, they should figure it out.

It's not akin to anything. Almost everybody and their mothers has a gmail account. I think I can safely say, in the US, gmail is the most popular e-mail service. It's taking functionality away. Apple should figure out a way like every other app developer has done already, to support that. it's a joke that they have a gmail fast set up option but completely ignore this fact.

 

[C DM]

Well no we just agreed that there are apps that still work with push. Every calendar app for example on iOS works with push notifications. Most 3rd party mail apps as well. Apple is a big company, they should figure it out.

It's not akin to anything. Almost everybody and their mothers has a gmail account. I think I can safely say, in the US, gmail is the most popular e-mail service. It's taking functionality away. Apple should figure out a way like every other app developer has done already, to support that. it's a joke that they have a gmail fast set up option but completely ignore this fact.

The apps that do push for Gmail are either from Google directly that they conveniently left support for themselves or from other providers that you have to grant access to your Gmail account so that every email would go through them for push--quite a few people don't want to have their email go through another company though, and those who are OK with it can use third party apps and companies that do that then.

Native email clients work the way Apples does where they don't go trogon their own servers to go through your email (again, as quite a few won't want that) and access your email from the provider directly supporting what the provider provides.

If Apple routed things through their own servers for email I'd likely be more upset about having to have my private email go through more servers and companies just for push notifications. And if I'm not upset by that then I can use a mail client that does that--which isn't a typical and expected or even necessarily desired feature or a normal email client.

 

[Tmelon]

Like previously stated, Gmail doesn't use the normal method of push, which is why they have a Gmail app in the App Store. The only phone I can think of that natively has push with Gmail is a BlackBerry because it reroutes every email through it's own servers. Even Google's Android phones have a separate app for Gmail.

As for Contacts, Calendar and Safari; I don't see what's lacking. Contacts and Calendar haven't evolved much in the past few years because there's only so much you can do with an address book and a calendar. As for Safari, I'd say it's equal to or better than the competition.

 

[charlituna]

built-in mail app: terrible
built-in calendar app: weak
built-in reminder app: terrible
built-in browser: good

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Opinions and not universal