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As for Apples multitasking, the only thing I wish you could do is flip from one app to the other without pulling up the multi-task bar

Hit the home button once>select another App.

Or do you mean like swipe to a different App?
 
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I dislike the widget screens in that video...one screen for 1-2 widgets? wasteful..I'd be swiping all day. I don't even like widgets in general though.

I like how Apple has resisted widgets and information overload. Not only does the interface look cleaner, but its less stressful using my phone because I don't have information overload on every view.

I'll be bummed if they add widgets. I don't even know a single person who uses dashboard on their Mac!


That is because dashboard is crap in how it was done. It was poorly set up and not set up for an always there set up. MS did a much better set up using gadgets. A few useful ones can be put on the side of the monitor away from the icons that provide a lot of useful infomation. It goes really well with wide screen monitors which Apple has been using for a very long time. If you need the screen space they get cover up but if you are on the desktop it is a great use for extra space. Apple way of doing it the only way to use its dashboard widget is to cover up what you are actively using so making it rather useless in my book. No one uses them because they were poorly done plan and simple.

iOS current set up is also poorly set up to handle widgets. It home screen is just a list of apps making it rather useless in my book. Android App draw set up is by far better because then you can put your come used stuff on home screens along with widgets and then when you want some other app you bring up the app draw and go to it.

This is why I have little hope of Apple doing widgets very well at all. It would require a massive change to iOS and it turn into something much more like Android to make widgets useful.
 
-Weather/clock widget.

I can see a couple of uses for a clock widget, for weather, it's not so pressing I can't just open the app.

Txt messaging widget (Lets me look threw the most recent txt with out opening up the respective app.)

You said there's more than social networking, and yet one of your examples is basically a social network. Plus, as I've said, privacy could be a concern with that.

Power control widget- (turn on/off wifi, GPS, Syncing, Bluetooth, Brightness control) Lot easier than going threw a menu system to get to it.

Wifi, GPS, Syncing, Bluetooth. Is it really worth the RAM and battery drain? I mean, how many times per week are you changing your Wifi or GPS settings? As for Brightness, on the iPad it's in the drawer, but how often are you changing that, either? Enough where you'll sacrifice battery and RAM?

Pandora control
Music Player control

In the drawer on iPhone and iPad, so it takes up no home screen space, plus it doesn't just go for Pandora or iPod, but anything that plays audio, like YouTube, which can play audio only in the background.

Search widget -

Screen to the left of the first home screen on iPhone.

Data widget - Just keeps a running total of data I have pulled over a month both wifi, Cell. Just because I like to see that info.

At risk of being cheesy, there's an app for that.

News feed - just goes threw and keeps an RSS feeds. Updates every 6 hours.

What's the point of having that as a widget if it updates that infrequently? I could somewhat see it if it updated every 30 minutes or 1 hour.

Moon Phase -For no other reason that it is kind of cool looking

I struggle to think of anything more pointless.

Contacts-Contacts I most commonly call or message. I find it useful.

I can see the validity of this for some people, me, I'd rather go Phone --> Favorites

battery widget - mostly used just to quickly get a break down of where I have been burning my battery life.

"There's an app for that"

and of course
Email widget
Facebook
Twitter

Twitter I can see. Mail I wouldn't use due to privacy. Facebook... I wouldn't use that as a widget.

Noticed that most of that list is NOT your social network or email.

Notice that most of those are easier or not things you would need to do on a short time limit on an iPhone, while not draining battery and RAM

They are also spread across 6 Home screens. My 7th home screen is kind of used for a test bed of different widgets for me.

I have two home screens on both my iPhone and my iPad. I don't want to go any higher than three, because I don't wish to scroll too much. Six would drive me off the wall.

I put the most common used apps on the homescreens. everything else is in the app draw.

What? Where I come from, all apps are in the same place, not bouncing around the OS. And the drawer is how we multitask. Which iOS does automatically. And conserves RAM while doing so. Automatically.


Now iOS lives in the app draw on Android ALWAYS being open so it is not set up as nicely for widgets.

I'm lost here... Because iOS has an app drawer... Android is open and not as good for widgets as iOS which doesn't have widgets?
 
The notifications have got to go. Nothing worse than typing out an e-mail or text, or anything for that matter and in the middle of typing, a notification pops up in the middle of the screen usually causing me to press something I never intended to press in the first place.
 
One thing I want :

In the keyboard, the button that let us "change" our keyboard language (also changing auto-correct at the same time) to change from english to french (example) should also serve to remove auto-correct.

I mean, as much as I want to use auto correct, there is always some situation where its a pain in the ass. I get so angry when the iPhone auto-correct a nickname or an e-mail address.

Wifi, GPS, Syncing, Bluetooth. Is it really worth the RAM and battery drain? I mean, how many times per week are you changing your Wifi or GPS settings? As for Brightness, on the iPad it's in the drawer, but how often are you changing that, either? Enough where you'll sacrifice battery and RAM?

A lot more than you obviously.

Brightness is a pain to change in iOS on the iPhone, and the automatic "adjustment" isn't really useful. Sometime you are in a dark environment, sometime you are outside, you want to be able to ajust it easily with a slider.

About Wi-Fi, the problem is that lots of public wi-fi need some kind of "browser activation" for the device to access internet, and sometime it can take several seconds for the Wi-Fi to set-up. And since the iPhone is set up to use Wi-Fi when it can instead of 3G, i find myself in a lot of situation where i want to check my email, but everything is just "jammed" since the Phone, instead of using 3G is waiting for one Wi-Fi to answer back and activate, sometime this particular Wi-Fi is far and the phone get weak signal, but it still wait for it. So i have to go in the settings to deactivate Wi-Fi because i don't want to waste my time waiting for the public wi-fi to answer and just use the damn 3G.

So yes, I happen to use these a lot.
 
I can see a couple of uses for a clock widget, for weather, it's not so pressing I can't just open the app.



You said there's more than social networking, and yet one of your examples is basically a social network. Plus, as I've said, privacy could be a concern with that.



Wifi, GPS, Syncing, Bluetooth. Is it really worth the RAM and battery drain? I mean, how many times per week are you changing your Wifi or GPS settings? As for Brightness, on the iPad it's in the drawer, but how often are you changing that, either? Enough where you'll sacrifice battery and RAM?



In the drawer on iPhone and iPad, so it takes up no home screen space, plus it doesn't just go for Pandora or iPod, but anything that plays audio, like YouTube, which can play audio only in the background.



Screen to the left of the first home screen on iPhone.



At risk of being cheesy, there's an app for that.



What's the point of having that as a widget if it updates that infrequently? I could somewhat see it if it updated every 30 minutes or 1 hour.



I struggle to think of anything more pointless.



I can see the validity of this for some people, me, I'd rather go Phone --> Favorites



"There's an app for that"



Twitter I can see. Mail I wouldn't use due to privacy. Facebook... I wouldn't use that as a widget.



Notice that most of those are easier or not things you would need to do on a short time limit on an iPhone, while not draining battery and RAM



I have two home screens on both my iPhone and my iPad. I don't want to go any higher than three, because I don't wish to scroll too much. Six would drive me off the wall.



What? Where I come from, all apps are in the same place, not bouncing around the OS. And the drawer is how we multitask. Which iOS does automatically. And conserves RAM while doing so. Automatically.




I'm lost here... Because iOS has an app drawer... Android is open and not as good for widgets as iOS which doesn't have widgets?


The crux of your argument about widgets draining battery and performance just isn't true. We all saw how much copy and paste drained battery and made our phones slow :rolleyes:. Thank god Apple still hasn't implemented copy and paste, our phones would be ruined. Wait what year is it? Oh sorry, I should have posted that two years ago.

Re: App drawer comment. I didn't understand what he meant either, but the app drawer basically is like the applications folder in OSX. It helps you clean up your home screen, so you have more room for widgets. I only have three pages as well, because I put what I consider worthless apps (Android equivalent of "stocks", etc.) in the app drawer and never see them again.
 
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Could you elaborate where Android has failed and that Apple has excelled?

First off, if you prefer Android and it gets the job done for you, I've got problem with that, its your life after all :)

As to your question, let's see off the top of my head:

- iPhones get timely updates, the phones for sale all have the latest versions
- iPhones have higher, in many cases much higher user satisfaction ratings
- Quality of apps for iPhone is much higher as development tools are better, users are more likely to buy apps and therefore devs are more likely to make money. Piracy and rip offs are a huge problem in the Android marketplace
- iOS and it's apps are much more consistent UI wise, even Googles own apps are inconsistent, heck the order of the four buttons (home, back, search, menu) differs from Android model to model. That's kinda like if some cars put the accelerator on the right and others on the left.
- Apple makes money by selling you a product, Google makes money by selling information about you to it's ad buyers. 97% of Googles revenue is from ad sales. Users are the higher priority for Apple, for example they were willing to tell publishers that users have to opt in to providing them data. Advertisers are the higher priority for Google. Carriers too.
- Speaking of making money, that's also something Apple is better at. That Android phones practically have to be given away in some cases does not speak well for the quality of the platform
 
Wifi, GPS, Syncing, Bluetooth. Is it really worth the RAM and battery drain? I mean, how many times per week are you changing your Wifi or GPS settings? As for Brightness, on the iPad it's in the drawer, but how often are you changing that, either? Enough where you'll sacrifice battery and RAM?

YES! And let me say it again: YES, it's worth it.

People need to stop exaggerating about this battery drain and memory hogging fears. You've been listening to Jobs too much. The power control widget uses no CPU resources unless it's actually in the process of turning something on or off. Just as much as when you go and do this via settings in iOS. Memory? I don't see any difference in memory usage whatsoever between adding Power Control to my launch compared to not.

Besides, I prefer to have a choice to use this sort of thing than not. Nokia phones had easy to use profiles for decades now, iOS still does not. This whole close app, open app, close app, open app (or 'switch' 'switch' 'switch' if you like) nonsense to do anything in iOS is really quite tedious and widgets make that workflow a lot more efficient.

Heck, why don't we just make the launcher an image of a big Apple and only show the app icons when you press the home button, as surely they must use up CPU and memory resources to display! While we're at it, let's make the background just a solid colour as bitmaps use too much CPU and memory resources!
 
I can see a couple of uses for a clock widget, for weather, it's not so pressing I can't just open the app.

I can see you never have had any time of tempture thing always feeding you useful information at a glance. Biggest thing I am looking for is temp. Having high/low is a bonus and then just a pretty picture for current conditions. Also you have to wait for it to load and refresh the data. I do not.

You said there's more than social networking, and yet one of your examples is basically a social network. Plus, as I've said, privacy could be a concern with that.

your loss. but it is not something you can read when my phone is lock so privacy is not an issue. I never consider txt social network but more as a communication tool. It also not on the main home screen for me so again even on an unlock not going to be up.


Wifi, GPS, Syncing, Bluetooth. Is it really worth the RAM and battery drain? I mean, how many times per week are you changing your Wifi or GPS settings? As for Brightness, on the iPad it's in the drawer, but how often are you changing that, either? Enough where you'll sacrifice battery and RAM?


umm lets see looking in phone memory of running apps...... Hmm it is in a 216kb of setting which means that widget is (along with the search one) is among the 216kb of memory for all the settings on the phone and guess what ZERO battery life. So that means I will say maybe 50kb and 50kb out of 512 meg (or in my case 1 gig is nothing) does having a wallpaper up on your phone take battery life NOPE. Takes a little mem but when it is taking less than 0.1% it is a non issue. Memory is cheap and lots of it. My contact list sucks up more room out of memory (9megs) than all my settings.

In the drawer on iPhone and iPad, so it takes up no home screen space, plus it doesn't just go for Pandora or iPod, but anything that plays audio, like YouTube, which can play audio only in the background.


Sorry that you have to live in an the App draw only world.
Screen to the left of the first home screen on iPhone.



sorry the screen to the left on the iPhone sucks compare to the one on Andriod since the search one I was referring to is web search/ bring up voice commands.
At risk of being cheesy, there's an app for that.


Not the same. you have to click on something and let it load. I on the other hand have a widget that just auto updates and can see with a swipe 2 screens to the left.

What's the point of having that as a widget if it updates that infrequently? I could somewhat see it if it updated every 30 minutes or 1 hour.


personal choice but I could reduce it to 30 mins. Since it just cycles threw all the stories so I can read them. Generally enough to see them all and if I run out I can and do manually refresh them but most of the time I do not read everything as it is.

I struggle to think of anything more pointless.

not going to argue there. It is complete pointless. It is there for nothing more than a just because

I can see the validity of this for some people, me, I'd rather go Phone --> Favorites


Your choice. For me it just easier.


"There's an app for that"


again not the same. Also I do not believe there is an App for that for iOS as no way to get access to that information. This widget just is more or less a short cut straight to something built into android and puts a battery % there. As for memory straight from the phone 51kb no battery drain off of it.


Twitter I can see. Mail I wouldn't use due to privacy. Facebook... I wouldn't use that as a widget.


mail is set up a lot like the txt message one. You have no access to it when the phone is lock and all that is there is who is it from and subject line. Nothing else. Not much use to most people but a great use to me to see if it is an email I am waiting on.


Notice that most of those are easier or not things you would need to do on a short time limit on an iPhone, while not draining battery and RAM



sorry but you are complete wrong there. I do understand iOS and do use it on my iPod so nope wrong on that account and pulling less than 1% of my ram and no pull on my battery so a non issue. It is more time consuming.


I have two home screens on both my iPhone and my iPad. I don't want to go any higher than three, because I don't wish to scroll too much. Six would drive me off the wall.


wow that is not very many apps. I know for a fact I have at least 6 on my iPod at this point. Android you can have as few as 3 Home screens. My phone is set up that common Apps and weather on main screen. the others are set left or right of and i switch between them. Hit home again on the main one all home screen pop up and quick jump to any of the 7.
What? Where I come from, all apps are in the same place, not bouncing around the OS. And the drawer is how we multitask. Which iOS does automatically. And conserves RAM while doing so. Automatically.


You are not bouncing around the OS. 1 button hit and ALL the apps are there just like iOS even if I have them on one of my home screens.

I'm lost here... Because iOS has an app drawer... Android is open and not as good for widgets as iOS which doesn't have widgets?

You are not bouncing all over the OS. You also have no understanding of Android nor widgets as I have just shown you. You also have no understanding of memory management and why having maybe having 1-2% of it at most of total memory handing widgets is chump change when compared to other apps in your multitasking suck up a hell of a lot more memory in.
 
I like both concepts. There are a few things that I would like to see as widgets. I don't think that widgets will take over apps, but compliment them.

As for the performance aspect, remember,this is Apple. If it ain't done right, it isn't coming out. With widgets, doing it right would be no
t killing the battery life.
 
Widgets work for most. And others refuse to see any benifit of it. For many of us there is no point in arguing about it. Most likely it will be an optional feature. (hint: if you don't like it...DON'T USE IT) no body cares about how against it you maybe.
 
That is because dashboard is crap in how it was done. It was poorly set up and not set up for an always there set up. MS did a much better set up using gadgets. A few useful ones can be put on the side of the monitor away from the icons that provide a lot of useful infomation. It goes really well with wide screen monitors which Apple has been using for a very long time. If you need the screen space they get cover up but if you are on the desktop it is a great use for extra space.

I actually like the way Dashboard is set up more than Windows 7 gadgets, just because I only use widgets on-demand (What's the temperature? What day is it?) - and windows gadgets require minimizing windows, or they clutter your pretty desktop background picture. I don't need them around 24x7. On a mac, I just put the mouse to the corner... figure everything out in a snap.
 
Looks like iOS is finally catching up to Android :)

Naturally, the claims will be the Apple implementation is 'better' of course. And they won't be able to justify the statement technically. They'll just say 'oh it uses less ram and cpu'.

The fact of the matter is that competent developers have been writing applications under multitasking operating systems for decades. Such apps spend most of their time in a sleep state. For this reason I believe (from first hand experience coding under it) that the iOS implementation is as convoluted as it is unnecessary. Specific cases for this, specific cases for that. All unnecessary.

But this is what it's come to: another example is that people now claim that different screen resolutions is 'fragmentation' when in reality developers have been writing windowed applications that can SCALE in size for decades now.

Have we really devolved into numpties who can't code multitasking applications and run in fear of the concept of dynamically resizing user interfaces? Dear me.
 
Thank JESUS they're revamping notifications (or lack thereof). There's no excuse for the horridly intrusive pop-ups iOS has now.
 
Playlist Folders

I'd like to have folders for playlists in the iPod app in iOS 5.

Under Mac OS X, I've created numerous playlists and I have them organized in a hierarchy of playlist folders within the iTunes application. This organization was carefully thought out and really helps me use these playlists. The first disappointment I had when I got my new iPad was to learn that it doesn't support playlist folders, just one long flat list of playlists.

Apple: Please bring playlist folders to iOS 5.

===

I'd also like The New Yorker app to support downloads in the background. Its ridiculous that I have to watch the progress bar as the next issue slowly downloads. I should be able to do something more useful with another app while The New Yorker app continues to download the next issue.
 
No matter what some people might say, widgets are important and make life easier. What's so bad about getting your data of information without launching any apps. And don't bring up battery issue or lag. In terms of battery, widgets don't drain a lot of it. You launching app every five minutes drains more battery than a widget. And if you are so against widgets, you don't have to use them. So why not give people a choice? why are so many people afraid of choice?

And with today's processor speeds, widgets barely have any impact. and again, you don't have to use them. I personally can't live without widgets on my N900. This is a welcome change.
 
Notifications and need sone sort of multitasking like webos ,it's sometimes pain to hit the home button twice . My self I don't care of widgets too much.
 
I completely forgot how ancient the notification system is on the iPhone.

Android has a nice feature where you pull down from top of the screen, and like blinds being lowered you can click on that particular notification. So you can have like 5-6 notifications queued up that you ignore for a while that just pile up in the background.


It's honestly too bad that interface patents are as strict as they are. I think there is a certain level of convergence, where two companies will just happen to come up with a similar idea on how to make an interface. I think Apple is delayed in deploying widgets not because they haven't thought of it, or are too inept to deploy it, but because they have to figure out how to make it different enough from Android such that Apple isn't sued for having it look too similar. The problem is, that ideas converge, you shouldn't be able to put a patent on the concept of a "window" or the concept of a "widget" (or multitouch for that matter, ahem Apple).

The cool ideas of each OS is way too segmented. It totally depends on who patents it first, and we should have more respect for the fact that similar devices for similar functions will probably have some level of convergence in how we interact with them.

I use this now.

http://www.peterhajas.com/blog/2011/2/27/mobilenotifier-beta3-copious-corn-flakes-1.html
 
Hit the home button once>select another App.

Or do you mean like swipe to a different App?

I mean swipe to another app when an app is open. It is annoying to have to double click the home button to switch to another open app. The home button should only take you to the home screen. A two finger swipe should switch you to the next open app.

Reading through all the comments, some of the arguements here seem to be very subjective. Bottom line is, I think most of the iOS fans here believe that when Apple does bring us Widgets or any feature, its going to be implemented in a very clean and stable manner with minimal or no impact on battery or performance.
 
It’s interesting, you’ll notice a pattern over the years of what Apple chooses to do with their updates. Their updates seem to coincide what most people are complaining about over the course of a year, specifically on the Internet.

2007-2008: The iPhone is great but we want Apps! Give us 3rd party Apps!
2008-2009: Third-party Apps come to the iPhone. But we want MMS and Copy/Paste, and a way to get notifications when I’m out of BeeJive IM. If they don’t put that in the next update, I’m switching to [Insert Mobile OS here].
2009-2010: Copy and Paste, as well as MMS have arrived. But all I really want to do is listen to Pandora while I’m doing other things. Please Apple give us Multitasking!
2010-2011: Multitasking arrives. But the notification system sucks! Please fix it in the next update. Also, widgets are awesome! Please Apple, give us widgets.


2011: It looks like Widgets and new notifications are going to come in iOS 5.0

If you want to predict what’s coming in 2012 with iOS 6.0, see what the most complaints about iOS are from 2011-2012.

Yes I know, this is all very obvious.
Way to innovate, Apple! Put out a halfed baked OS and wait for the top complaints to roll in to decide what to add in your next update.

I guess my comment dealt with the OP's use of the word "revolutionary". When something exists, in this case widgets and/or the notification bar, it's quite difficult to ascertain that when it's released by Apple it's automatically going to be so awesome that it is considered innovative. Android using widgets was hardly revolutionary since it's not a new concept. Just because Apple is doing it doesn't mean it hasn't been done before. I'd love for someone to be serious and post how Apple could potentially revolutionize either the widget system or notification bar. It's difficult to revolutionize something that is designed to only have a maximum amount of impact and where there is a ceiling in place in regards to expected usability and/or functionality.
You, sir, have made so much sense here that I wonder how you wandered onto an Apple forum. Bravo!

Well look at the list. It is not that they are complaining but just moving on to the next biggest complaint.
At first lack of MMS, Notifications, multitasking was a pretty big.
Now that you have that widgets are hiring on the list. Notifications well still suck after nearly 4 years so I would not hold my breath on a real improvement there. The wanna be multitasking system still needs a lot of work done and people still complain about it. I call iOS multitasking a wannabe at best but a far cry from multitasking.

As for notifications being fix and improved I would say welcome to the year 2000 apple. You finally got your notifications up to dumb phone standards.

It more he is trying to say apple though of it first but I already pointed out to him that when Steve Jobs first announced iPhone OS 1.0 he called what we call Apps now widgets. iPhone OS 1.0 widgets = apps.
So saying Apple thought of it first is a load of crap and just someone trying to worship at Apple and damn the facts.
I'm gonna go ahead and give you a +10 here. It's the Religion of Apple.

Naturally, the claims will be the Apple implementation is 'better' of course. And they won't be able to justify the statement technically. They'll just say 'oh it uses less ram and cpu'.

The fact of the matter is that competent developers have been writing applications under multitasking operating systems for decades. Such apps spend most of their time in a sleep state. For this reason I believe (from first hand experience coding under it) that the iOS implementation is as convoluted as it is unnecessary. Specific cases for this, specific cases for that. All unnecessary.

But this is what it's come to: another example is that people now claim that different screen resolutions is 'fragmentation' when in reality developers have been writing windowed applications that can SCALE in size for decades now.

Have we really devolved into numpties who can't code multitasking applications and run in fear of the concept of dynamically resizing user interfaces? Dear me.
This is what kills me. Apple OS programmers operate inside their own glass temple and scoff at all the other innovations out there while prophesying their own hamstrung processes as gospel.

The fact that OS apps can't scale automatically and must be specifically written to a given resolution is laughable. The Apple techs need to get out more.
 
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