I have several complaints about Apple technology that I want to address in this post. Some things will be iOS specific, while others will apply to Apple as a whole. Some of these things are similar to what existed in my previous post prior to the release of iOS 7.
1. In iOS 7 whenever you play a video in Safari it is not at all apparent which words are actionable buttons and what is simply a label. In the screenshot below the only thing that looks actionable is the slider for the time. The Done, Maximize, Back, Pause, Next and Airplay buttons are all grayed out. Normally that would mean you can’t use them. In this case however all of them work. A new user (or advanced one) will not know what to press.
2. The wish lists on the iOS/iTunes stores cannot be shared with anyone. (What good does it do to have a wish list if you can’t tell someone to buy stuff off of it?)
3. It is not possible to buy applications or media content from a website. It’s possible to buy Android apps from an iPad, why is it not possible to do the reverse?
4. It is not possible to view purchased content from anything other than iTunes or an iOS device. The web has evolved, it is time to make everything web centric. Google has done this from the start. It is time Apple followed suit. (They have proven they know how to make compelling web apps, they just did it with iWork)
5. Facetime should be opened as a standard. Give it to Google and Microsoft and allow them to make it the default on their devices as well. We’re well past the point of treating text, phone calls and video calls as anything other than what they truly are; more data.
6. iCloud needs to be fixed. The fix is actually very simple. Allow users to specify the iCloud account to use for each service. See below for an example
- I may want to share notes across all of my devices, I may also want to share all of my photos on every device.
- I do not need to share my iCloud Keychain across everything.
7. Magazines are almost dead. That doesn’t mean Newsstand needs to suck. Allow us to see our updated magazines. Don’t hide everything behind an icon.
8. Allow users to delete the default apps. Except for the app store. (Might also help with #7 above.)
9. Place the default apps on the app store so that I can re-download them after I accidentally delete them.
10. Fix the Photos app on iOS devices. It is actually more complicated to find photos now than it was on iOS6. Combine the photos app with iPhoto for iOS. There’s no good readon why both apps exists. They do the same thing.
A Borrowed Idea 