Yesterday I came across this post on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW). I read through it and couldn’t help but laugh at some of the requests; not just because some are silly but because some phones already do this and iPhone users used to ask, “Why do I need that?!” I felt I should write my opinions on these requests. Mind you, I have never owned an iPhone, but I’ve witnessed countless people with them and have used them a good deal troubleshooting for people while at work, I also own an Android-powered DROID; just a disclaimer.
Before I even get into the list I come across this
This is the first of a series of letters to Apple on your behalf, telling the gang in Cupertino what would make their wonder-phone even more wondrous
And it even goes into a real letter to Apple.
Dear Apple,
While it’s clear the iPhone is the best smartphone on the market right now, you have a lot of competition creeping up. We want to help you blow them out of the water with the iPhone OS 4.0. Here are our suggestions:
Now, if you know Apple AT ALL you know that they really don’t listen to the user. TUAW certainly knows this since they write about Apple all the time. Apple’s idea of market research is “Steve said this was good, so it’s good.” This isn’t always the case of course; they brought back firewire to all of their laptops after omitting it on most for a time, but Apple really isn’t going to listen to you all that much. They will look at the market and see what other phones have that they missed, and probably include some of those. For instance, people use removable-media on their devices a lot, some people prefer it over internal media of course. Will Apple ever put a microSD card in their iPhone or iPod? Probably not. Why? Probably because it’s something else that could break that they don’t want to have to worry about, but it’s probably because they don’t want people to add more space to their devices without buying a whole new device.
Now to the list (please read the article if you’re going to ask questions or complain or whatever, I will only be posting the main idea of each item, not the description of the idea)
1. The lock screen needs to change
This one is nothing too crazy. The lock screen could change of course to show more information; a list of to-do’s, emails, whatever. So this one I really don’t have an issue with. Other phones do this a bit; on Android you get your notifications with an icon in the top menu bar as well as a different colored blinking LED on the front of the phone.
2. A new home screen. The iPhone is the smartest phone on the market. Make it smarter. Introduce a location-aware home screen.
This is another one that I really don’t have an issue with. I actually like this idea and wonder why more phones/devices don’t have it.
3. That new home screen? Let us access it by vertically swiping.
This one confused me a little bit. I can see the desire to have all of your feeds and shit within a simple swipe, but why? Do something like Android and use a drop down menu at the top. You select the top menu and slide it out, this way you don’t accidentally swipe vertically while you’re reading something and open your home screen. The mock-up looks nice:
Clik here to view.
Credit: Teehan+Lax
But it reminds me of the drop down in Android, just more refined.
4. Overhaul app navigation.
This is another one I really like. Tape the home button when on your app menu and it shows all of your homescreens in a nice “exposé” style manner.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7soM07Y3qNI]
This should be standard too. If hold my home button on my DROID it brings up my running programs and I can switch between them (more on multitasking later).
5. 85% of us want multitasking and 3rd party background apps
This is where I get a little annoyed with iPhone users. Now, multitasking is something that the Palm Pre does with WebOS, as well as Android phones, but the iPhone falls short here. It SHOULD have it, but iPhone users used to ask me “Who needs that?” or “Who cares about that?” Well, apparently 85% of the people polled care about it enough to respond to TUAW. This is a good demand…until I see the next line: “but not at the cost of battery life.” What? Really? You want to run multiple applications at once and not use battery life? What kind of engineering do you think Apple does? Come on now, be realistic!
6. Almost 80% of us want Flash, even if it’s a bad idea.
Again, a pretty good request. I want it on my DROID too. Apparently it’ll be out for Android before the iPhone though. Also, running Flash on anything MacOS related is a death sentence. They realize this in the post, but I’m just throwing it in there also.
7. We love that you introduced landscape mode across virtually all apps in iPhone OS 3.0, but 70% of us want the ability to selectively turn it off.
Okay, this really isn’t built into the phone? Android has it built in already…why didn’t Apple? I don’t know. But it’s actually a legit request also.
8. When we leave an app, we want it to remember where we were.
This one is part of the whole multitasking thing. When multitasking comes, this better be in it, or you’re doing it wrong! (Yes, Android for the most part has this, and I believe WebOS does as well.)
9. 65% of us want the ability to remove Apple-branded apps.
This next one is a fair request, but it just won’t happen. Apple doesn’t care…really. They don’t want you to remove their apps on the iPhone because, well, it’s their apps. There are ways apparently to hid the app from your screen, but not to remove them. These apps are so small what should it matter? This is what you’re getting with a brand; the device and the apps to come with it. Same on most devices.
10. 60% of us want a universal “documents” folder.
Okay, fair again, but a question is why doesn’t it do this anyway? “We realize this breaks the sandboxing model that prevents one app from blowing away data belonging to another one, but we have every confidence you can make it work.” Yeah, and when an app comes out that removes all of your pictures and documents who are you going to blame for allowing this? Thought so.
11. Better Support for Codecs and Add-ons.
This one is basically asking to allow WMV and AVI stuff to run. I suppose this is another valid request. Next!
12. The iPhone is a hard drive with a screen, so….[Give us Disk mode in the OS. 50% of us want to use our iPhone as an external USB/Wi-Fi hard drive.]
One of my favorites. I wonder why Apple doesn’t allow this. Maybe it’s because they don’t want people to be able to remove their apps so easily, or copy some over, or maybe it’s because they want their users to use iTunes. You know, one of their most popular pieces of software. It’s all about controlling the environment the phone runs with. You can use other programs to add songs, and documents and pictures, but adding apps is all iTunes. There is really no third party app vendor, is there? You’re stuck with iTunes, like it or not.
So that’s really my $.02 on this blog entry. It’s probably biased, but it’s me being honest. I like the iPhone. I think it’s a great device, but it does have some stupid flaws that can easily be fixed (as well as being a shitty phone). Unfortunately these requests might fall on deaf ears, Steve Jobs is not going to listen much, he’s going to make you listen.
Fixing or adding any of these features to the iPhone will still not help if you’re sitting on a shitty network. I’ll keep m DROID and use an iPod Touch (or my 6th Gen iPod Classic). I’ll at least be able to do everything I can on an iPhone while actually being able to make phone calls.
There will most likely be a part 2 from this article, so I may just have to wager in on that one as well.