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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
It's not going to happen, but a single checkbox in the settings would do:
[ ] Allow installation of apps from unknown sources
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.
Perhaps what it really needs is a "NSA Prism" icon
Actually, not a bad idea. Why not let the NSA host your email for you? They will have access to it one way or another anyway. Taxpayers have already paid for all those super-duper NSA data centers, so give citizens access to all that computing power via a free NSA cloud.
It will save costs at the NSA, because they won't need a PRISM to refract your email . . . they will have direct access to it. And if you know that the NSA has access to your email, you won't need to worry about if they do have access to your email . . . because you know they do already. It will also be secure, because the NSA are the best professional hackers in the world.
So getting back to iOS 7 features, I'm sure the NSA has already supplied Apple with a long list of their requirements. Let's open up those hidden NSA APIs so that everyone can use them and the NSA's unlimited resources.
Once again, I have to ask myself, "Who's been sleeping in my brain . . . ?"
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Makes sense that a program called "iTunes" would deal with sharing files and getting apps.
Then you don't want an iPhone,
Mod parent up. iOS needs to keep doing what it's doing. It must be doing something right if /. consensus is that Android is "increasingly sophisticated". This is by the same group of people who don't understand why Linux does not have broad appeal.
As an iOS user and developer (as well as user and developer for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, MacOS and attempted but tired and frustrated user and developer for Android :) ) - I hope Apple continues with incremental and stable approach, giving users well thought out and tightly controlled new feature sets, while maintaining clean, simple and usable system.
Do *not* under any circumstances let engineers ruin this one.