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What Features Does iOS 7 Need?
Nerval's Lobster writes "Apple's iOS 7, which is heavily rumored to make its debut at next week's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco, will almost certainly feature a totally redesigned interface. According to recent rumors (including a few key postings on the Apple-centric blog 9 to 5 Mac), the OS will stand as a shining example of "flat" design, which eliminates "real world" elements such as texture and shading in favor of stripped-down, basic shapes. That means certain iOS environments such as Game Center (with its casino-like green felt) and Newsstand (with its wooden shelving) could soon look completely different. But what about iOS 7's actual features? What could Apple change that would improve the operating system's chances against the increasingly sophisticated Google Android, not to mention the new-and-improved BlackBerry 10 and Windows Phone 8? What would you do to iOS with Apple's full resources at your disposal?"
the OS will stand as a shining example of "flat" design, which eliminates "real world" elements such as texture and shading in favor of stripped-down, basic shapes
Something different instead of the simple outdated icon grid on the home pages. Whether it be a form of widget or something completely different is up to Apple.
This is double as strong when it comes to the iPad. I remember when they launched the device they were encouraging developers to use then larger canvas instead of just making big iPhone apps. They have still not done this themselves.
wouldn't need to be listening about bitching about changing the default look then.
other stuff: start adding resolution and density independent ui elements. you know, so that you wouldn't be so fucked as apple is with osx.
dedicated multitasking drawer+button.
block notifications from this app button to every notification sent through the apple system.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I want to be able to choose Chrome as my browser instead of Safari.
I want 1password to be able to hook in to it.
I want apps to open new links in Chrome instead of their own embedded browser.
WebRTC support
Save MP3s in to iTunes
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
OS:
- real push notifications (no connection) a la BB
- real bluetooth support
- sound multiplexing
- multi-user support a la Nexus 7
Shell:
- themes
- screensaver
- background download/upload without 'location services':o
- exif info in gallery
- realtime-thumbs task manager
Politics:
- JS JIT in apps
- support for other browsers
are not the features, but the idea that Apple wants to control everything.
If they change that, i will reconsider. However, since i bough quite some Apps for Android, and Android emulation would be nice
I might be a terrorist, after all.
see title. nothing would make my gaming experience better then a standard joypad support in the os. and them actually supporting keyup/keydown so i can map keyboard keys to button presses.
It needs: TOR, full disk/device encryption, PGP for email as standard and the "iCloud" repository fully encrypted and opaque to apple unless YOU specifically tell them it's ok for each app/service.
I want the iPhone to be primarily mine by default, and allow Apple to provide options I can opt into, rather than primarily Apple's and I need to jailbreak it to opt out of things.
Central filesystem so apps can share data in a simple manner.
That would break simplicity.
Allow printing to any fucking printer.
It can do printing, but only with printers that follow the spec. Printers that don't work requires extra drivers, that we shouldn't need in the first place anyway.
Freedom
Flat simply means a more refined version of what is common in OS X. iOS has grown fragmented and some of the apps are poorly designed as a result- ie, Game Center, the old Podcast app, etc. They are toning this kind of design back. They're not eliminating things like gradients and gloss entirely.
Like the were drawn with a mechanical pencil
Apple's (or *any*) DRM, i don't really know what features to posit
A VR desktop, something like oculus rift and leap motion combined. It also needs to display the keyboard in the virtual world and show where the fingers are.
Also the UX needs to be in 3D, so to operate a slider you have to move your hand forward for example, windows should be replaced with cubes, with the controls to maximize, minimize, force quit on the outside of the cube and the app is contained inside of that cube, the interface should look a bit like what tony stark sees in his ironman suit. The interface could obviously be designed to only be see from a single perspective, but if a control is on the z-axis it has to be operated on that axis be the user.
It's not going to happen, but a single checkbox in the settings would do:
[ ] Allow installation of apps from unknown sources
What Apple needs is themes. The default looks are rather blah already and now it will be more so? Nunn
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Sounds like he's saying iOS should look a whole lot more like Android. Well, sounds like they already copied Android's and Windows' flat themes.
The ability to run windows programs.
Do that and microsoft is dead.
We have a big mix of Wintels, iDevices and Androids at home & work.
They're all pretty good at doing what we need.
The iDevices, however, stand out for being harder to get things onto and off.
And don't get me started on iTunes, especially when running on a non-Mac.
Sure there are alternatives, and apps like SugarSync and Evernote ease the pain, but why make it hard when a USP of Apple is supposed to be the user-friendliness?
Still, as I said, never going to happen...looks like they're going to focus on the cosmetics, rather than listening to their customers. Shades of Windows 8?
Final thought: Why don't they just take the top-selling and/or free apps, for both 'geek/power user' and 'normal consumer' and bake 'em into the OS? They've got the cash...
Apple didn't become the largest company by playing catch up to the competitors. I wouldn't change "features" in iOS. I'd change the paradigm in which iOS runs.
Select from tblFriends where interesting >= 4;
Two words: Self Destruct
Possibly a large enough explosion that makes an apple shaped mark on the device owner, so I know who to avoid talking to.
If you take a pic with the camera you can immediately post to twitter aaaaaaaaand, that's about it. On Android I have something like 20 options directly from the camera (twitter, facebook, dropbox, etc....)
Maybe add inter-app communication.
Or at least a "guest" mode, so that an iPad can be shared among parents and kids.
Central filesystem so apps can share data in a simple manner.
That would break simplicity.
The current solutions for importing/exporting files from Apple applications don't really qualify as "simple". Ever tried to share a file via iTunes or WebDAV? Having a filesystem that didn't raise its head until you chose 'share' wouldn't break simplicity - or maybe providing a standard API that let apps share through DropBox, Google Drive etc. (Flap, oink!)
I tried iCloud but it insists on moving everything off your iOS device into the cloud. If I wanted to do that I'd use Google Docs so I could share things with non-Mac users!
Allow printing to any fucking printer.
It can do printing, but only with printers that follow the spec. Printers that don't work requires extra drivers, that we shouldn't need in the first place anyway.
No, but there's no reason why Airprint can't work with any shared printer on your Mac. When AirPrint was first announced Apple were going to support this - then they signed an exclusive with HP and disappeared the feature. There's third-party software to do this (e.g. Printopia). At one point, I found instructions for adding the appropriate zeroconf and CUPS settings to my Linux box so I could print to it (but a later iOS update borked that).
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Not like Android where you have your apps list, and the second confusing menu where you can put the same apps, and widgets... just the very same windows they have now but with the ability to add widgets.
Perhaps what it really needs is a "NSA Prism" icon
IOS cant play flac as far as I can tell.
ISO cant be managed initialised and thier databases updated through free software. I hate iPlayer and have no intention of runnign it even if it is ported to my favourate flavour of Linux.
I cant develop IOS application using non Apple operating systems.
If Apple fixed these missing features I would buy an ipad and iphone tommorow.
I would love to be able to lock down the volume so my autistic son, who lives on the iPad, doesn't max out the volume on everything he does.
for god's sake, enough with the absolute-nothing Apple stories for the sake of ad impressions, it's pathetic.
Apple made their mark controlling and simplifying the user experience to achieve broad market appeal. /.ers will inevitably want them to go the other direction and load up the feature set, as all engineers will. Without Jobs, the engineers will get the upper hand and the feature set will expand, thus losing their broad appeal. Unless someone else comes along who can stand up to the engineers, Apple is toast.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
Why doesn't apple get with the times and add a built-in 3D printer?
tell them to fuck off and do it themselves instead of paying whichever bunch of shills runs the rotting corpse of /. to get us to do it for their lazy arses.
PAH-LEEZE ... doing the flat look is more like changing the skin, not a total redesign.
As for any features add, changed, or modified ... well that is anyone's guess until Apple says so. Anything else is speculation and a blatant attempt to boost advertising revenue by driving clicks/impressions.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
It needs relevancy.
The only thing keeping IOS in "the market" is that "the market" are all rabid Apple fanbois.
Everyone who can make an intelligent decision has left Apple for greener orchards. Even
the new Windows phones are taking IOS "market" share.
MP
They are called patents.
What I'd like is to be able to do something with the file system on the device. If I take pictures or write a document, I want to know where it is so I can upload it, not merely presume it's in the one-place-that-rules-them-all
Other than that, Apple has been rather good about not making foolish UI changes. Like the change from the "plastic" looking OSX to the "brushed metal" OSX was done in tandem with the change from plastic iMac's to metal iMac's. Nothing substantial. Some menus and configuration panels change, but they're in the same place.
On iOS I hope it's like that. Incremental changes, not Windows Phone/Windows 8 backhanded "NEW INTERFACE YOU LEARN NOW!"
Makes sense that a program called "iTunes" would deal with sharing files and getting apps.
Citizen, thank you for your input, USTASI welcomes feedback like yours for double plus good safety.
Feel safe citizen.
Yours observantly,
Senator Dianne Feinstein
USTASI, the "United States, True American, Surveillance Initiative"
We value your privacy.
Threads and a mechanism to launch them in the background at specified times like hardware wake alarms. Having to use the location thread to do background processing violates apples guidelines and sucks.
I want to be able to tell iOS to a) only check for app updates on a schedule I specify and b) individually opt in or out of an update for a specific app. At an absolute minimum I would settle for the ability to turn off the icon badge for the App Store. I'm ticked off with the constant barrage of updates, the badgering of the badging bugs me.
This is the big thing. Whatever features are added, just make they damn well work. Almost two years to fix the damn podcast app is two years too many.
21st Century Renaissance Man
I want to be able to select which app opens things by default. If I want a new mail app, then I want all mail links to open in it. If I want a new browser, then I want all hyperlinks to open in it. If I want to change the default maps app to Google, then I want all directions opened in that. Etc.
So it supports double sided printing, perforations, multiple paper bins etc?
Thanks for pointing that out. I had not yet discovered it myself. (My GF has an ipad provided from her work.)
That is a really non-intuitive processes designed to prevent users from actually doing what they want. Why can't we just drag and drop from a folder like every other GUI? (including OSX)
I totally agree with GP. If Apple wants to improve the IOS experience they should get rid of the propriety crap and provide easy ways for people to use their devices as they want.
I think it is very important that they provide a way to allow some background processing to any app, it is plain stupid that you receive notifications and the content is not there after opening the app, that messages don't get sent because you minimized the app or that you can't minimize a web page / app while something is being loaded. Mainly because of this my iphone 5 feels like crap compared to my old Galaxy SII. Also: - Let people decide the snooze time... the fixed 9 minutes is weird. Turning off the vibration of the alarm would be good also. - How about providing a decent way to share photos between devices, and apple fans please... email or whatsapp is not a decent way. With decent I mean not having to use a cable and without a third party app. - Save files to your phone and download them later. - Share needs to be extended as in android, twitter + facebook is too limited, I would like to see whatsapp there or even better let the apps ask for permission to appear in the share menu.
No, but there's no reason why Airprint can't work with any shared printer on your Mac. When AirPrint was first announced Apple were going to support this - then they signed an exclusive with HP and disappeared the feature. There's third-party software to do this (e.g. Printopia). At one point, I found instructions for adding the appropriate zeroconf and CUPS settings to my Linux box so I could print to it (but a later iOS update borked that).
On a Mac, handyPrint works wonderfully. I have a networked HP laserjet that predates AirPrint. It's set up as a shared printer on my Mac, and then handyPrint adds the appropriate Bonjour advertising and any other necessary tidbits. Printing from my and my wife's iPhones and iPads works great. I have no connection to the company, just a very satisifed user.
Michael J.
Root, God, what is difference?
May sound silly, but if it supported a bluetooth mouse (I do not jailbreak but know I could and get this) I could use it much more effectively in two ways - easier to select text for copy/paste type operations, and when connected via RDP or VNC to another box I could have the full experience of that box. I would still use my iPad 90% of the time for browsing, email, etc. But if it had this and I added a BT keyboard it would get a lot more use.
no comment
...and a "start" button.
This is a front page story written by Slashdot staff member Nerval's Lobster linking only to Slashdot BI with no useful or interesting content. This has happened multiple time for several months now (Dice holdings aquisition?). Fuck Slashdot BI. Fuck this shameless self-promotion on the /. front page.
I propose a new tag "!bicurious" for "news" like this.
sshfs.
It'd be great if Android provided that, too.
All apps should run on all devices OS agnostic. AppleTV, iOS, MacOS, Classic (PPC/68K/Intel), Windows, DOS, CPM, Unix. With rare exceptions everything should run. The computing power to do the emulation is there on even the lowliest Apple device.
Likewise we should be able to access and manipulate our data sets in our applications on any device.
You mean like Marlin, Konqueror, Nautilus, or Dolphin are obvious file managers?
Let me delete Apple apps I don't use. Especially Newsstand, which can't even be "hidden" in a folder.
iPhone? iPad? Are people still buying those? They really need to catch up to 2013. I actually did get an iPad but it just collects dust. It's pretty clunky compared to my Androids.
No, but there's no reason why Airprint can't work with any shared printer on your Mac. When AirPrint was first announced Apple were going to support this - then they signed an exclusive with HP and disappeared the feature.
Strange - my Canon printer works fine with Airprint. What did I do wrong?
That would cause iOS to lose it's Apple identity.
It really does seem like all the OSes are pretty good now as compared to 10 years ago. as for iOS it would be nice to have some sort of central way to store and access documents. The cloud can be limited in areas without good cell service.
it is about time to enable WebGL in the browser. WebGL runs fine in Safari on Macs and iOS Safari but is currently only enabled in mobile safari for iAds. In other words, it does work but is only enabled for the kinds of things that I need the least, i.e., ads.
run 3rd party software like android
So now Apple aesthetically is a follower of Microsoft. Just saying.
It should be able to read your thoughts and transmit them to Apple every time you have a new idea, so that Apple can instantly create a new patent application and claim that they invented the idea. This would solve the problem of people being able to steal Apple's inventions before they have a chance to secure a patent on it. The API should be called something like 6. (Not sure if those will show properly, but there should be a superscript th and the c used for cents. Obvious play on 6th sense)
I agree, workflow on the iPad is tough because of the security model where apps can't get into each others files. While this keeps down malware, it makes uploading files, creating digital portfolios, and sharing between apps nearly impossible without the use of computer or cloud service. Hopefully Apple has a plan for it's new shiny giant green data centers other than serving iTunes apps and running flaky near useless iCloud service.
Improving workflow on the iPad would be on the top of my list, I can live with the UI as-is.
Some other interesting features might be allowing wireless devices communicate with each other to share and collaborate. The 8 iPad - Jam session for Garageband is a good start but we need more than just "more cowbell".
I know the marketing Apple marketing droids don't want the iPad to be a laptop since it would cannibalize MacBook Air sales, but I say forget it and let the iPad morph into a better platform.
Just make the media elements in HTML5 behave according to spec. I know that this may be more related to Safari, but it also seems that the two have somehow become entangled.
iOS needs to be able to resuscitate the dead corpse of Steve Jobs, and save us from the coming disaster - The Cook and Ives Show.
They did once call this "the Jesus Phone"... Oh, but for "Lo, he has risen..."
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
if i want to muck up my phone with crap thats on me. I dont want apple pretending to be my dad and im 4 years old "now hold my hand as we cross the road."
I don't know any logical reason why you would want to "muck up" your phone with crap. Apple's policies have nothing to do with you specifically. They're in place because the vast majority (well into the 90% range) of people who use an iPhone (or Android for that matter) are very ill equipped to keep their phones free of malware. Most people really just want their phone to work and don't want to deal with a repeat of the malware removal software (ala Norton Antivirus) on their phones as well as their PCs.
If you want a phone with less hand holding, there are some options out there. No one will be offended if you choose something other than an iPhone.
Ogg vorbis support is needed to be supported a lot better then it is now. Currently if you want to play Vorbis music files you have to transfer the files manually to your iDevice and use a different music player that supports the format. However, I doubt the chances of this happening may unfortunately be slim to none. Ogg vorbis IMHO is a much better format then AAC but god forbid Apple supporting it on the devices and in iTunes.
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
Screw flat. I would really like to finally have a 3D interface.
Otherwise, anyone else gets ahold of your iOS device, they can wipe it or take it to an Apple Store to make it theirs.
It would be trivial for Apple to hook in a bit in the firmware that gets toggled; by default it is ON to allow DFU mode. When you set up your iDevice under Find My iDevice, it is turned off, until you re-enable it via iCloud. This way, unless YOU want to DFU your iDevice, no one else can.
Sure, there's an ugly scenario here where you could lose your wifi/3G access AND forget your passcode and be unable to DFU it (take it to an Apple Store) or whoever steals your device could have your iCloud account... but this simple improvement would make stealing iDevices a lot less practical.
What about Finder? I think that would have been a good choice for sharing files and getting apps.
1) Need Siri to respond intelligently to time-based queries - "Show me nearby currently open hair salons"
2) Voice Translation in Siri - "English and Korean translation mode. You are so beautiful!"
3) Ability to replace default utilities - i.e. replace safari with Crome.
Interesting... Requirement to enable promiscuous printers... I wonder what the detection algorithm would look like... And the multiple attach printing algorithm might be interesting to.
Seriously. Was there some sort of UI conference that decided the added information gained by shadows and faux 3d buttons was a bad thing? They add information and take up virtually zero space.
iOS 7 should let the device act as normal flash storage. This is a crippling weakness in Apple's current devices and traces all the way back to the Newton's custom filesystem in the 90s. Seamless printing, especially with all the wireless printers around, is a no-brainer.
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
iTunes as a method to manage things is a joke. App organization is particularly weak.
Buying apps through iTunes is silly: why not use the web? At the very least the browser built into iTunes should be made more robust. You should be able to do browsery things like change the font size, bookmark, etc.
Photo syncing is a mess. In fact the whole backup/sync distinction is too confusing.
The find file function lets you launch an app, but doesn't tell you where the app lives.
USB hubs should be supported so that more than one thing can be connected to an iOS device.
I could go on, but it might seem like I'm ranting.
...flat non skewmorphic interface, devices in colored cases... ...you mean like the Nokia Lumias?
I would love it if I could leave my phone unlocked, but with an option to lock the few particular Apple applications where I care about others' access - especially Apple's email, but maybe also the phone, calendar, etc.
Yes, of course I'd like to see it more open, etc. But I take it we're discussing realistic options here.
Seriously, this is like the worst of the military command structure, where every time a new commander steps in they have to change everything around just to pad their package.
It doesn't need to be "flat". Doing that says that the height of design style was AOL in 1997.
Ives, stop being an ego-maniacal clown and try introducing some real design improvements.
--- Void where prohibited. Your mileage may vary. ---
Meanwhile, for those of us with root, iFile is freaking fantastic....
I'd really like to see Apple implement an approval process for privileged code. Establish the world's tightest NDA for a private source code auditing program, or require that all privileged code be open source.
Allow people to do what they want with their phones if developers can make the peer-reviewed cut, preserving the quality of the user experience Apple prides themselves on but can only achieve by locking you out of the device you own. What most jailbreakers really want is not root... we just want our experience to be open to the same innovation that computers have facilitated since their inception, and we don't want to have to make the compromises ourselves to get it done. As Apple has made abundantly clear: the compromise is their job.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
a volume testing app that makes sure the user is as close as possible and then ignites the dime sized piece of c4 resting cozily in the earpiece!
Things like Notification Center and four-finger-swipe-to-change-apps should be controllable in some way, so apps that really want a full-screen UI can have one.
Honestly, that'd be a pretty big part of it.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Why can't we just drag and drop from a folder like every other GUI?
Because Apple sees manual management of data files in folders a legacy concept. Something that belongs to the PC model of computing, and will be gone with post PC devices.
We're in an awkward period of transition right now, where manual management of data files are still a fact of life. But the time will come when such a concept is as irrelevant as choke, distributor cap and carburettors to modern day motorists.
Apple is skating to where the puck will be, not where it is, let alone where it used to be.
Since most folks desire to use their iOS devices for both work and personal use, Apple really needs to get on board with that. They lag significantly to what Blackberry has offered with Balance. This lack of native functionality is what leads enterprises to adopt clumsy, expensive and difficult solutions to try to cobble this on. If Apple really desires to improve usability of their devices, they really need to catch up on this.
My Mac should certainly be able to act as an intermediary. Afaict, it can't.
I'd settle for "open".
The CB App. What's your 20?
honestly, what "files" do you need to share between apps?
Just get a decent network printer and hook it up correctly to a router. Most companies these days are trying to provide cloud functionality. It's not the automagical solution with 1 or less buttons that Apple typically sells but it's not very hard either.
My iphone prints to a HP 3005dn. with no problems.I also enabled eprint so I can just forward stuff to an email address if I need to print from some other device.
Yep, less sand boxing so apps can interact in a useful manner like on every other os. That would be nice.
Why not allow installing apps that aren't signed? That would make the platform a little more appealing to me, knowing I can run everything for it instead of what Apple thinks is ok.
It won't happen, just get a Nexus 4.
They're both wrong, and being disingenuous. IOS uses traditional filesystem organization EVERYWHERE except where the user can get at it. What the user gets are these crippled ass, can't-hold-subfolders, limited-to-few-files abortive pseudo-folders that (barely) act as a filesystem. IF you don't have very many apps. Then your stuff overflows into other folders, you end up with multiple folders containing the same types of things, apps can't share data or features, so every useful feature has to be re-invented and re-implemented by every app that has it... this is toyland. It's viable, sure, because half the population is on the left side of Gaussian. Unfortunately, for the rest of us, it cripples the living hell out of the device.
No, Apple has skated back to where the puck was in the late 1970's. Tiny directories that can't have sub-directories. It's not a new idea. It's an idea the entire computing world tried, found wanting, and discarded long ago.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Images. RAW images. Text files. Art. Spreadsheets. Email. Source code. Notes. Calendar data. Stats. IQ data. Recordings. Videos. MIDI data. Preferences and other control information. HTML files. CGI. mp3s. tar, zip, dmg, and other compressed data files. Logs (talking ham radio logs, but yeah, program logs as well.) Screen grabs. You know... FILES.
And then there are plugins for apps. How to get a feature in one app to appear in another. We know how, it's a doddle, but under IOS... nope.
Meh, doesn't matter. Know what we're probably going to get? "Flat Icons." Whoopdee farking doo.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
standard USB connector.
ogg/flac/opus support
removal of app kill switch
xterm + coreutils + bash
well documented open program API
unlocked bootloader + weak/no carrier lock
ability to sync with stuff other than itunes + linux desktop support, to include tethering via USB.
root access
the source code.
If your not willing to provide at least 3/4ths that list, I couldn't care less about it, like I couldn't care less about it now.
Make everything look flat, then sue Microsoft.
I just wrote a blog post about this exact subject. http://jonathansblog.co.uk/ios7-wish-list essentially it just needs the ability to pick a default email app, photo app, browser, map app, etc. if it had that I'd be happy
So that my existing apps which don't get updated by their publishers in a timely manner (if they ever get updated) won't make me hate the new OS rev with a passion.
So it supports double sided printing, ...
Funny, I have a printer plugged into my linux (Ubuntu) box that supposedly does double-sided printing, but many hours of digging around in TFM pages, googling, and experimenting were utterly unsuccessful at getting any 2-sided pages printed. The CUPS there even admitted to me that the printer does this, but I have yet to discover a way to make it actually happen.
There's also the problem that, for the past year or so, only other linux systems can use this printer. Various Macs see it and think it's working, get no errors, but their files never print, and I get popup print windows saying "Network host '<hostname>' is busy; will retry in <N> seconds...". This state is permanent, with N slowly increasing. Google gets lots of matches for that error message, but I've never found anything saying how to fix the failure. The logfiles on the linux box show no connections at all from the Macs. (My suspicion is that recent updates on the Macs quietly blocked the ability to talk to CUPS servers and/or linux machines. The linux boxes can all use each others' printers, and the few Windows boxes can use them, too, so it's apparently not CUPS that's failing.)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
You might want to try iFunbox, I don't think it needs a jailbroken iThingy.