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My iOS 7 Wishlist

tomdale.net

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Re: My iOS 7 Wishlist

#141

Post by anotherbadlogin »

jjjjjosh wrote: post #76
smackfu wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple makes it very easy to create location aware reminders. So I don't think this is the problem you think it is.

I'd argue that Apple makes it possible to create location-aware reminders, but not necessarily "very easy." Say I want to set up a reminder to pick up some dish soap next time I'm near my neighborhood grocery store. I could open the "Reminders" app and try to do it, but that only works if the store is in my address book for some reason or I know the address. Otherwise I have to search for the grocery store in Safari…

This is the kind of thing that Apple continually gets a free pass on. Sure, other companies make similar mistakes, but Apple gets lauded for its "elegance" when in fact it ignores real-world use.

For example, my dad has dozens or hundreds of pictures on his iPhone. I made sure that iTunes was set to sync photos on his computer, and yet this function has never worked on ANY system I've tried it on. No photo is ever synced from the phone to the computer. I don't even know what tool Windows users are supposed to use to get pictures from their iPhones to their computers. On the Mac I wind up using Image Capture, but WTF does Apple expect most people to use? Total detachment from reality.

Re: My iOS 7 Wishlist

#142

Post by anotherbadlogin »

nicholassmith wrote: post #38

Here's my feature wishlist for iOS7: - Nothing. I don't want anything new. I'm happy with the current feature set my phone currently has. What I desperately want from iOS 7 is a renewed focus on stability and Not Sucking. There's been a significant amount of additional functionality brought in over the last few releases, but it feels like in terms of stability it's not improved anywhere near as quickly.

Really? Because it's pretty inexcusable that Apple lets this (which shouldn't have existed in the first iPhone OS, let alone years later) continue to plague users: http://goldmanosi.blogspot.com/2012/06/will-apple-ever-fix-i...

Re: My iOS 7 Wishlist

#143

Post by sp332 »

staticfish wrote: post #132
richardwhiuk wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The IMAP experience of Gmail is possible, but by and large ime it sucks. Gmail treats a email has having 0+ tags, IMAP implementations rely on an email being in 1 folder. This is a fundamental difference.

I think Gmail's IMAP implementation is a rather usable and clever hack, actually. By the way, everything is under one folder, both on IMAP and in the web interface. It's called "All Mail" (Archive)

GP means that each email is under only one folder in IMAP. In Gmail it's possible to have multiple labels on a single email, and this is not at all elegant to hack into an IMAP view.

Re: My iOS 7 Wishlist

#144

Post by crazygringo »

shadesandcolour wrote: post #102
bborud wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, concurrency is not a silver bullet, but when your programmers consistently make beginner's mistakes the software really sucks. You do NOT allow the UI thread to hang on blocking calls. That's UI programming 101. And Apple engineers are unique in how consistently they fail to follow even this most rudimentary of rules.

Sorry. Have you see the source code of any part of the iOS system? No I don't think you have. Give me some reference to somewhere that the UI thread hangs. Not blocking the UI is taught to everyone who writes apps for the app store, so my assumption is that the guys who wrote the app store code know a little better than we do.

The music player blocks all the time.

Connected to AirPlay, and you hit 'play'? Good luck if there's any kind of network problems, because it's going to freeze your music app for 10 or 20 seconds until it either works or times out. Everything to do with AirPlay is snychronous, which is a big no-no when most operations seem on the order of seconds...

Re: My iOS 7 Wishlist

#145

Post by jpxxx »

taligent wrote: post #112
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…

> Apple learn how to write efficient concurrent code Sorry but what ? Apple has one of the best concurrency implementations on ANY platform. GCD is superbly designed and combined with blocks makes concurrency trivial. The biggest problem is that developers often try and over optimise. > which I have timed to usually clock in at 8-9 seconds, but which can take as long as 20 seconds This is definitely not normal. > iOS…

I have had pervasive problems with Address Book stores on Macs for years now. Psychotically slow operations, ten-second hangs, sync failures, endless sync failure loops, and general thrashing are not hard to find on any system handling more than a few thousand cards.

If there are substantial Notes? Good night. Supercomputers brought to their knees.

Re: My iOS 7 Wishlist

#146

Post by eridius »

crazygringo wrote: post #144
shadesandcolour wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry. Have you see the source code of any part of the iOS system? No I don't think you have. Give me some reference to somewhere that the UI thread hangs. Not blocking the UI is taught to everyone who writes apps for the app store, so my assumption is that the guys who wrote the app store code know a little better than we do.

The music player blocks all the time. Connected to AirPlay, and you hit 'play'? Good luck if there's any kind of network problems, because it's going to freeze your music app for 10 or 20 seconds until it either works or times out. Everything to do with AirPlay is snychronous, which is a big no-no when most operations seem on the order of seconds...

Well that's trivially falsifiable.

Re: My iOS 7 Wishlist

#147

Post by jjjjjosh »

hnriot wrote: post #139
jjjjjosh wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that Apple makes it possible to create location-aware reminders, but not necessarily "very easy." Say I want to set up a reminder to pick up some dish soap next time I'm near my neighborhood grocery store. I could open the "Reminders" app and try to do it, but that only works if the store is in my address book for some reason or I know the address. Otherwise I have to search for the grocery store in Safari…

You really use geofenced reminders every day? I've found them useful once in a while but every day seems excessive. Maybe you were being sarcastic, it's hard to tell.

I have one that reminds me to check-in to GymPact when I go to the gym, and then I set reminders like my example above a couple of times per week probably. I definitely wasn't intending to be sarcastic but probably could have expressed that better.

Re: My iOS 7 Wishlist

#148

Post by bruceboughton »

clauretano wrote: post #125
eagsalazar2 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the top 3 apps I use many times per day: email, maps, calendar are way way better on Android at least if you are using gmail. Without exaggeration, if you use gmail the main experience on Android crushes iOS.

Have you seen the new (last month) Gmail app for iOS? It's really quite nice https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gmail-email-from-google/id42...

Nowhere near as nice as Sparrow though... apart from push.

Re: My iOS 7 Wishlist

#149

Post by killerpopiller »

smackfu wrote: post #61
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…

Apple makes it very easy to create location aware reminders. So I don't think this is the problem you think it is.

there is also an App called Travelload which agregates all necessary travelling information and compiles it in a handy list.

Those location aware reminders are not so helpfull imho, if I am in a hurry switching trains, or afraid that there might be a traffic jam, or unsure at which gate my plane departs. Must take hours to prepare those with location aware reminders esp. in such huge areas like airports.

Re: My iOS 7 Wishlist

#150

Post by prawks »

Domenic_S wrote: post #66
prawks wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what happens when you market a phone as something that "just works". It's great that iOS is able to be used by kindergarten-level children, but at the same time, it's not. My next phone is going to be Android-based, because I believe that I can handle using mobile devices expecting users to be able to think critically.

You might have a perspective problem. A mobile device that expects you to "think critically"? Come on now. Some people enjoy building and tweaking PCs. Most don't. Some people enjoy tinkering on their cars. Most don't. Some people enjoy tinkering with their phone, "thinking critically" while using it; most don't. I enjoy endless tinkering with servers, caches, micro-optimizations, and so forth. But I can't stand tink…

> Not everyone is like me, and not everyone is like you. There's no right or wrong, just preference.

I never said there was. The poster I was responding to said that he disliked the closed environment iOS provides. Perhaps my wording was a bit more confrontational that I meant, but my comment still stands:

Apple's products are not marketed to or designed for power users.

That's really all I meant by it. I never said that everyone is like everyone else; they're not. Many people who enjoy tinkering use Apple's phones. These people are, as is apparent to me now (hence my buying an Android next), better off using an open platform like Android.

As an aside, it's just as easy to classify servers and caches as tools that should "just work". It's about perspective, and preference.

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