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My iOS 7 Wishlist

tomdale.net

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Re: My iOS 7 Wishlist

#51

Post by bborud »

I have one wish: that the iOS programmers at Apple learn how to write efficient concurrent code and that they stop leaning on the next, faster, generation processor so hard that any phone that is just one generation older than the leatest and greatest becomes slow as shit.

My iPhone used to be fast. Most things used to be snappy. Now it is slow as shit. From the address book lookups (which I have timed to usually clock in at 8-9 seconds, but which can take as long as 20 seconds) to the atrocious piece of penguin dung that is the podcast app. Seriously, Apple could not have created a shittier app if they had hired a bunch of Microsoft engineers to bang their foreheads on keyboards for 88 hours.

iOS software is fucking slow.

(Firing Scott Forstall to stop the skeuomorphic wankery was a good start. Now they need a real software engineering director to beat some sense into the engineers and to make sure they have "Concurrency 101" under their belt before writing another line of code)

Re: My iOS 7 Wishlist

#52

Post by mathieuh »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #42
uptown wrote: post #32

Yet the problem with your phone doing all of this location-aware intelligence is that you wind up with the dead-battery he started his article out with. Whenever I read articles like this one I'm left wondering whether my life is distinctly different from most. I generally have a pretty good idea about my calendar - where I'll be going that day, and what restaurant I'll grab a bite to eat in if that's part of my agen…

> Yet the problem with your phone doing all of this location-aware intelligence is that you wind up with the dead-battery he started his article out with. Unlikely. The main culprits in high battery usage are the screen, the gps, and the radio when there's not very much signal. Google Now does not ever show up in my top-five battery users list.

An app itself doesn't use much battery unless it's doing something CPU intensive. Android reports the actual thing that was using the battery. For example, if I watch YouTube until my battery's dead, it won't say YouTube used the battery, it will say the screen did.

Re: My iOS 7 Wishlist

#53

Post by starik36 »

jonknee wrote: post #13

I'd love to be able to actually replace Apple's apps with Google's. When I hit a link I don't want it to open in Safari, I want Chrome. Ditto with Map links. I want Siri to be replaced with Google Voice Search (and for there to be APIs that allow Google to fully replace Siri).

Siri is pretty great at the domain I use it on (directions, alerts, reminders, etc...) . Google Voice Search is not even close. Not quite sure why you'd want to replace it.

Re: My iOS 7 Wishlist

#54

Post by marcuschristie »

Xuzz wrote: post #7

What APIs would something like Google Now need that don't currently exist? The only one I can think of is a way to launch it easier, rather than with an icon. But the push and local notifications, geo-tracking, ability to access your Gmail, and even the ability for Google Maps to pre-download map tiles are available to Google on iOS. What else does it need?

I had a similar thought. Google Now's voice search is already available in the iOS Google Search app, so what would it take to get full Google Now functionality in that app? It seems like Google could get very close with what is already available api wise.

Re: My iOS 7 Wishlist

#55

Post by rdl »

My #1 wishlist item, which would be easy to implement, is "guest mode" -- let me hit a button on the lock screen (or elsewhere) which lets me loan someone my phone briefly without any personalization or sensitive data. A standard web browser, phone app, etc. Maybe let me customize what apps are available in "limited mode". This matters even more on an iPad, which I'm generally willing to share, vs. my phone, which I won't let out of my sight due to fear of missing a call.

This would be for: 1) Loaning someone my phone briefly 2) Kids -- you might want to lock the phone down to a single app. (or, for me, lock the phone to a single cat toy application for cats) 3) Theft -- if someone steals my device, it would be nice to remotely drop it into "browser and email only" to keep him online so I can continue to location-track and then order pipehitter as a service to recover the device.

Re: My iOS 7 Wishlist

#56

Post by 0x0 »

rdl wrote: post #55

My #1 wishlist item, which would be easy to implement, is "guest mode" -- let me hit a button on the lock screen (or elsewhere) which lets me loan someone my phone briefly without any personalization or sensitive data. A standard web browser, phone app, etc. Maybe let me customize what apps are available in "limited mode". This matters even more on an iPad, which I'm generally willing to share, vs. my phone, which I…

I think you can do the lock-to-one-app in iOS 6 already, random first google hit: http://www.gottabemobile.com/2012/10/01/how-to-lock-the-ipad...

Re: My iOS 7 Wishlist

#57

Post by cheald »

bluetidepro wrote: post #39
uptown wrote: post #32

Yet the problem with your phone doing all of this location-aware intelligence is that you wind up with the dead-battery he started his article out with. Whenever I read articles like this one I'm left wondering whether my life is distinctly different from most. I generally have a pretty good idea about my calendar - where I'll be going that day, and what restaurant I'll grab a bite to eat in if that's part of my agen…

I see both sides. I agree with you, I'm the same in that I plan very accordingly and would probably go crazy if I was in a "Hotel Tonight" situation. However, I like to know that if I was ever (somehow) in a "Hotel Tonight" situation, the app is there and ready to use for my convenience. To add to your battery life point, I wish there was more exposure to how apps eat battery life on your iPhone. It would be nice if…

I feel like it's worth pointing out that Android makes this kind of information easy to get to - BetterBatteryStats[1] and GSam Battery Monitor[2] are both amazing in tracking down and fixing power leaks.

I think that this is sort of the core of the Android vs iOS difference; iOS says "don't worry about it, trust us to get it right", and Android says "here's enough rope to hang yourself with, but you can also use it to climb out of that pit if you want".

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.asksven.be... [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gsamlabs.b....

Re: My iOS 7 Wishlist

#58

Post by aetherson »

ajross wrote: post #43
rednukleus wrote: post #25

Sounds like the author just wants Android in a iPhone form factor.

It's more than simple form factor. Apple's hardware integration work too is way beyond what the Android OEMs are doing, too. One of the complaints in the article is battery life, and that's dead on. My wife's 4S routinely lasts all day. Occasionally she forgets to plug it in and in the morning it's crossed 24h of uptime with a little power to spare until she can plug it in at work. My Galaxy Nexus with the extended b…

For whatever it's worth: I got a Motorola Droid RAZR M a few months back, explicitly because it's not gigantic and I don't like gigantic phones.

It gets 24+ hours of battery life, even though I play Ingress a few hours a day (though I don't do much else that's heavily battery draining). It is not gigantic. It is presently on Android 4.1, and while it's not the entirely pure Android experience you'd get with a Nexus, it's not that far off.

The screen isn't anywhere near as pretty as an iPhone's, and the build quality is probably inferior (but, honestly, plenty high for me).

I'm pretty happy with it.

Re: My iOS 7 Wishlist

#59

Post by gurkendoktor »

bborud wrote: post #51

I have one wish: that the iOS programmers at Apple learn how to write efficient concurrent code and that they stop leaning on the next, faster, generation processor so hard that any phone that is just one generation older than the leatest and greatest becomes slow as shit. My iPhone used to be fast. Most things used to be snappy. Now it is slow as shit. From the address book lookups (which I have timed to usually clo…

Optimising code costs money, may make the code base harder to maintain and does not help much with selling new devices. I really hope there will be a future shift in making money from software, not hardware. Right now the opposite seems to be happening. :(

Re: My iOS 7 Wishlist

#60

Post by smackfu »

0x0 wrote: post #56
rdl wrote: post #55

My #1 wishlist item, which would be easy to implement, is "guest mode" -- let me hit a button on the lock screen (or elsewhere) which lets me loan someone my phone briefly without any personalization or sensitive data. A standard web browser, phone app, etc. Maybe let me customize what apps are available in "limited mode". This matters even more on an iPad, which I'm generally willing to share, vs. my phone, which I…

I think you can do the lock-to-one-app in iOS 6 already, random first google hit: http://www.gottabemobile.com/2012/10/01/how-to-lock-the-ipad...

Not too useful when that one app is a browser though that has all your identity in it.

It's really only good if you want to let someone play a game and only that game.

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