

Things I would love to see in iOS 5 - SwaroopH
http://shorts.adityamukherjee.com/post/1635264081

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bruceboughton
That the author suggests that, since the iPad has a landscape homescreen, this
could just be enabled for iPhone shows a lack of appreciation of Apple's
design sensibilities that pervades this article. Just because the iPad has it
doesn't mean it doesn't need designing for the iPhone.

Furthermore, the iPhone is primarily a portrait device. The iPad, not fitting
easily in one hand, is as much a landscape device as it is a portrait one. I'd
be surprised if Apple "enabled" a landscape home screen for iPhone in iOS 5.

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abstractmonkey
I agree that I would prefer they don't add in landscape home page. As it is,
most people have developed a certain flipping technique for rotating their
phone in their hand, which is much harder to do with an iPad. And once you
introduce a landscape home screen, then you can't use spatial memory to launch
apps anymore. Personally, I would prefer that the iPad used a 4 x 4 set of
icons for just this reason. Icons are always in different positions and I need
to search rather than know where they are using memory. In contrast, My finger
is on the correct icon instantaneously on the iPhone.

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Raphael
If the icons rotated in place, the icon positioning might not be too bad.

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cube
While I see the use of changeable text in icons, like the calendar app
employs, why would anyone want to have animated icons? Perhaps it would be an
"eye candy" thing to show off with for 10 seconds, but I'm sure it would be
annoying in the long run. Any ideas for reasonable uses of animated icons?

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tesmar
Yes, Statsheet was denied putting 345 apps in the store for each college
basketball team. If we are only allowed to have one app, then the user could
choose which team is theirs, and then the front Icon would change to represent
their team.

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aditya42
A static icon change would achieve the same thing. You don't need animated
icons for that.

To OP of this thread: It was another idle comment. The crux of the request was
in boldface.

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tesmar
Does the current version of iOS support static icon changes?

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aditya42
No.

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elblanco
In other words, "make iOS more like Android".

Just shortcut the entire process, [http://lifehacker.com/5693309/how-to-
install-android-on-an-i...](http://lifehacker.com/5693309/how-to-install-
android-on-an-iphone-in-six-easy-steps?skyline=true&s=i)

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vjk2005
"Dynamic Icons, API to fetch URLs in the background, Better Push
Notifications, Wireless Sync" « none of these will happen unless Apple gets
their hands on a much longer-lasting yet thinner and cheaper battery. Because
unlike Android phones which comes with a removable battery and thus battery
drain != a useless brick as long as a replacement battery is at hand, iOS
design/feature-set has to be very careful about battery conservation given
Apple's hardware design choices.

Having said that I fully expect, Apple, who has been in the business of making
software for close to 35 years, which is a full 5 years more than "90% guy"
Microsoft, already have these features either on their ToDo list or in
prototype form just waiting/working for the battery tech to reach that
threshold where they are confident of it holding up when used by the mass
market.

In short, I don't expect iOS5 to have most or even all of these features but
maybe by the time iOS6 rolls around, battery tech will have reached the point
when these features would have become practical. For iOS5, the flagship
feature( Steve calls them 'Tent-poles' )will be NFC, and joining this tent-
pole on stage will be the usual hardware improvements, Game Center/Ping
updates etc, but nothing of the sort that has the potential to 'leech away'
the battery.

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fharper1961
NFC = Near Field Communication, it is a short-range high frequency wireless
communication technology which enables the exchange of data between devices
over about a 10 centimeter (around 4 inches) distance.

From <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_Field_Communication>

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gaiusparx
\- API to run some form of background task as needed \- Revamp notification,
maybe notification centre \- API to change home screen icon. \- API for NFC as
it is rumored to be in iPhone 5 hardware \- Spotlight API for app content
searchable under spotlight \- AirPlay 2 - api to push screen to AppleTV and
convert iphone/ipad as controller, make it easy to support this functionality
in games \- API for social liking and following, Apple'own social networking
build into iOS 5 and Lion \- Apple Messages/Chat, telco independent sms?

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WiseWeasel
A big feature conspicuously absent from iOS is a unified documents folder
accessible by all apps, and some basic file management capabilities. It would
preferably be mounted as a virtual mass storage device when you plug in the
USB cable. Here's hoping this'll be one of the features of 5.0.

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jankassens
A unified documents folder just doesn't work as seen on OSX. Most filetypes
are bound to a specific application anyway, so there's no point in a cluttered
unified folder.

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extension
Why would it be cluttered? It could work just like Settings.

Apps with their own document type register as such with the OS. The
"Documents" app shows a list of those apps and each one leads to a list of
documents for that app. From this list, users can open, rename, delete, attach
to an email, and so on. Apps would not be allowed to dump internal junk in
their document folder, only stuff the user creates and knows exactly what it
is.

As long as this model was _enforced_ by the OS and by app reviewers, it should
be easy for anyone to understand. It would give iOS something fundamental that
Android doesn't have at all, which it really needs because it's playing catch-
up with most other features right now.

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haribilalic
If documents are categorised by apps, why have a separate browser for them
instead of keeping them in the app? If I want to view my Pages documents, I'd
open Pages not Documents or whatever it might be called.p

~~~
extension
Lots of great reasons:

1\. The user can manage all their stuff in one place with consistent
functionality across all apps.

2\. The OS can implement generic file handling features like search, share,
backup, sync, etc.

3\. It paves the way for standard file types that can be handled by multiple
apps, or apps that can work with any type of file, like Dropbox.

The power of filesystems is well understood and I'm sure Apple could create
one instilled with their magical UX and just-worksiness. But they won't do it
because I think they are afraid of 3rd party apps becoming _too_ useful. They
don't want anyone else creating an ecosystem that they don't control. But
Google and RIM are happy to do that and I hope they establish a higher
standard of utility that Apple is forced to live up to.

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checker659
"Better Push Notifications: Apple should just straight out copy Android’s
Cloud-to-Device API. That’s it."

Or, you could try my app, Jumping URL (<http://www.jumpingurl.com>), instead.

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c0d3t3m935t
hey buddy, i like your thing but umm your app won't download in the app store.
it says that it is no longer available.

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zyb09
> API to fetch URLs in the background

Oh yes please, that would get rid of the overly complicated workaround of
using PUSH-Notifications for that.

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amanuel
New API to handle calls inside an app and access call data such as history.

