My iOS 5.1 Wish List -- An Open Letter to Apple

Posted by Chris | Labels: apple, iCloud, iOS, iphone, tech

Dearly beloved Apple,

I love my iPhone. I downloaded iOS 5 on day one. I was giddy excited.

Now....not so much.

It's not that it's bad. There are in fact, quite a number of things I love about it.

Notifications are considerably better. The Twitter integration that has been added is useful. The ability to organize my photos right on my phone is great. It's those tiny changes that make iOS 5 worthwhile. You fixed hundreds of those little frustrations with the iPhone that have hung in there just a bit too long. For that, thank you.

A few of the major changes are great. The absolute best feature is wireless back-up. Finally, no computer needed! iCloud has some great features...unfortunately they're the ones that were already working with iOS 4. Music, books, apps. I'm never confused or worried that I'm about to lose my paid for content when I sync (which I don't have to do at all!). Sweet!

However, I still have quite a number of... Why??!!s

Why can't a share the calendars I already use over iCloud. I don't have time to manually retype my Exchange Calendar, which I'm required to use at work like millions of other Americans--including my wife. That isn't helpful! That's more work. I can much more easily exchange screenshots of work calendars with my wife. Apple started to integrate the two in reminders, so shouldn't it be able to do so in Calendars?.....which brings me to my next point.
Contacts. Why can't I create folders on my phone? I have to log-in to iCloud.com to set them up? Isn't this the same issue you just fixed with photos? Even worse, why can't I decide on-the-fly whether I want to add a new Contact to my Exchange contacts or my iCloud contacts from any app, especially the OS apps? Don't you know that most of us add contact from the phone app ten times more often than any other way. Familiar conversation?, "Call me real quick, and I'll add you to my phone!"
Why is the integration of Reminders (iCloud) and Tasks (Exchange) so complicated to use? Let me keep them in one place and integrate them back and forth.
Why doesn't Reminders with Geo-location work on my iPhone 3GS? I can only forgive you if that's a hardware issue. I was soooooooo excited about this feature, and most of your customers have to wait for their contracts to run out before they can upgrade. We don't all have $600 laying around. Honey! Now I can stop forgetting to take the trash out on Wednesday and stop disappointing you in 100 other ways every week because I have the memory of a goldfish! Oh wait....not yet. Sorry honey. It's Apple's fault. One of you should have had to come to my house and had that conversation for me.
Why no support for SnowLeopard with iCloud? That's just criminal. Yes. Lion is only $30, and it's cool. However, not everybody is free to do what the will with their tech. Many of us have work rules we must follow, such as, "Don't upgrade your operating system till we're 180% sure everything on our network will still work." And you have to realize that the debacle with Office:Mac support on Lion is keeping a significant portion of your customers from upgrading to Lion. Yes, Microsoft steals your ideas. Don't punish me for it. For both these reasons, my wife is still stuck with SnowLeopard, and thus, no iCloud.
And guess what! I'm stuck with Windows XP at work, and.....wait for it......no iCloud support. Productivity apps should be designed to work with business people's needs in mind. If you can't make your productivity apps play nice with an Exchange server, don't bother. Microsoft still owns the business network market.
Why doesn't PhotoStream make sense. It's a great idea....with a few missing pieces. Important ones. Once I take a picture, it's stuck on PhotoStream for 30 days or 1000 pics. Now, I don't regularly take pictures I'm ashamed to share, but let's be honest. It happens. Give me a delete button for Christ's sake! And let me manually add photos to PhotoStream, please. You know that hilarious picture my buddy just tweeted? I want it on my computer. It was supposed to be easy. And....I can view my Calendar, Contacts, and documents on iCloud.com, but not my pictures. Didn't it occur to anyone that I might like to be able to pull up iCloud.com at my mom's house and show off the newest pictures of her grandson? duh! (smack yourself in forehead with palm) I don't want to beat a dead horse, but I truly can't believe PhotoStream works on my Windows 7 PC, and not on my wife's SnowLeopard Macbook Pro. That's crazy. But thanks for making my PC better than her mac in at least one way! New score: Windows 1 : OSX 300....Their coming back!
Why no iCloud support for the rest of my iTunes purchases? Movies? TV? podcasts? radio?........pretty please? I have a two year old. I need Diego and Dora and Little Einsteins on all my devices. Help me. I'm begging you.
Why didn't you give full iCloud to developers earlier? Wouldn't it be great if we could shut down Angry Birds or Words with Friends on our macs or iPads and pick-up where we left off on iPhone in bed? Or vice versa.?
Why can't I open a link in Twitter with Safari on the first click? Thank you for finally giving me Reader and My Reading List in Safari on my phone. I use Safari on my PC because of how great those features are. Why does Twitter need its own browser and a 4th party reading list integration? When you tell me your going to integrate Twitter across the entire OS, do it.
Why Twitter and no Facebook? Many of us use both,.and they don't really play that nice with each other. I would like to be able to stay in contact with my Twitter only contacts and my Facebook only contacts just as easily.
Why, oh my God why, did you tease me with iTunes Match? The feature I'm most excited about delayed again. I have hundreds of gigabytes of music I won't, and never will, sync to my iDevices because syncing still scares the crap out of me after my iTunes purchases were destroyed during my first sync. You were nice enough to restore the hundreds of dollars worth of music my wife lost the first, and only, time she made that mistake, but you had the gall to tell her you wouldn't do it again! Most people I know won't sync music they didn't purchase on iTunes. Finally, it can live on the cloud and I can get what I want, when I want it! I can stop having to plug my laptop to my external terabyte drive to play my music!...a set-up, which incidentally, keeps iTunes's Home Sharing feature from working at all so I have to plug my laptop into my stereo as well. I wanted to stream music to my bedroom...... I'm literally praying that this service doesn't have as many kinks as the rest of iCloud. Please bring it soon.

With Windows, I've almost always been smart enough to wait for the first Service Pack to update. I already know that they rush to market and screw it up, and I'm prepared to wait a few more months. Since the revitalization of Apple, I haven't felt like I needed to wait with you, because I could trust you to get it right the first time. (To be fair, there's nothing so wrong that I want to "roll-back" like most Vista victims did. I was just disappointed)

As I watched the Apple keynote for iOS 5 and iCloud many weeks ago, I was completely won-over by the phrase, "It. just. works."

Well, it doesn't.

All the ideas really are great, and I have every confidence that you will get it right eventually. But, please don't rush to market before you product is ready again, and please start working on the first update! When that update comes in over WiFi and installs itself while I'm asleep in my bed, and I wake up in the morning, and it just works; you'll have a happy customer again.

Your customer,

Chris Helms