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Infinite Loop / The Apple Ecosystem

What Apple didn’t announce for iPhone OS 3.0



Better app organization



A more useful Springboard



Landscape mode for everyone


Exchange was mostly MIA


No to-do app


Video recording



Video section for the iPhone's iTunes Store



Other App Store improvements






Then again, maybe Apple isn't working with Adobe.

Plug-ins and any other runtime environments



Unified messaging



Nothing specific for new hardware





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49 Reader Comments

  1. How about folders? that simple enough, easily understood and would get the job done. i would rather drill down intoa folder than swipe 10 screens over.
    271 posts | registered
  2. I'm guessing you haven't used the SDK at all, because you'd know that "landscape mode for everyone" has essentially been around since the SDK came out, it's just that no one bothers to use it.

    UIView autorotation is literally two or three lines of code, and the OS automatically handles rotating the UI for the developer. It's not perfect, but it works well for simple UIs.

    Developers' laziness is what's responsible for the lack of a landscape mode in all apps, not Apple.
    1 post | registered
  3. When Apple previewed iPhone 2.0 they did not disclose all of the user interface changes that came when 2.0 was launched. They certainly did not literally show all 1000 API's. So their are likely still some features to come.

    Little was said about Safari 4 or HTML 5. There is certainly more info to come regarding the web.
    1198 posts | registered
  4. As A long time Palm User and a Moderator on a Treo/Centro centered board I have to wonder. . .
    What Where This is news to me :-\
    1 post | registered
  5. Another missing piece, unless it's there and they aren't telling anyone, is some way for applications to sync data or files between the iPhone and the desktop computer. The only option right now is to reinvent the wheel and write your own server.

    Apple seems more interested in games than in applications that require moving data back and forth. I don't see why they cannot provide this.
    1 post | registered
  6. Knowing how Apple does things, and I could be wrong but I thought some structure on this was commented on yesterday, but the Apps should automatically be organized the way the are in App Store.

    I personally would like to organize them in my own folders, but Apple will probably want them to be organized their way. My phone became full a month ago and now have just stopped from deleting and will wait until they fix this "problem" because that's what this really is.
    10 posts | registered
  7. The Landscape Keyboard comment is incorrect.

    Landscape keyboards are available in the current SDK and there are several applications already in the App Store that take advantage of them. So, it's pretty clear they are now supported across the board.
    5 posts | registered
  8. I'd love if they made support for Java available.
    Surely it couldn't be too hard to port the iPhone SDK to Java.

    I can't see how that would affect Apples business. If they created a Java SDK they woiuld get more developers creating apps and games for the app store + more developers paying the $99 per year. That will lead to even more revenue.

    I'm a Java developer and the idea of going to basically an OO C/C++ language would feel like a step back. I hated C/C++!
    1 post | registered
  9. Most of what's "still missing" in this list falls into the who cares category for most people I think. It seems to me that Apple really did address the concerns of the *actual* end user with this one (as opposed to just what the tech bloggers agitate for).

    A lot of the items here are things that are not needed at all and would only *diminish* the user experience like Mozilla getting it's rendering engine supported, or Adobe getting it's rendering engine supported, etc. Here's hoping that neither ever actually happen.

    As for video, the article really isn't clear if video apps are being disallowed in the app store or if it's just that no one wants to make them so it's hard to comment one way or the other. A discussion of the crucial problems involved might have helped there. It's certain that such an app can't be done *well* at this point, even if Apple did it, (which is likely why they haven't done it yet.)

    I would still expect beefier hardware sometime soon and possibly even new devices. It seems to me that they are following the model of not updating the software to do things that the hardware cannot yet support, so i would expect better camera(s) for instance in the next iPhone and video apps when those new devices have achieved significant market penetration.
    256 posts | registered
  10. While some of the stuff on your list is certainly fair (and other parts are silly), your complaint about to-dos stood out for me as it raises some fundamental questions. Really, why do you think this should be part of the OS? Don't third-party applications like OmniFocus handle this sort of thing much, much better then Apple could ever be expected to? It seems like the needs of end users can be extremely variable here, which makes it a fertile market but not something that should clearly be built-in.

    Now there is plenty of use for support functions built in to the OS, like common data stores to help third-party applications more easily work together. But putting that together (via Core Services or otherwise) in no way means Apple should themselves build something on top of it. At what point is the line crossed for application vs OS functionality I wonder? It seems to be a pretty perennial debate, but in this case I feel your complaint falls on the wrong side of the line. I think Apple should dump that from iCal and focus on making iCal function much better as, well, a calendar. It's poor right now at its most basic function, including both features and UI. Building something that other "to-do" apps could connect with better would be a more efficient and useful use of Apple's time in my opinion.
    6907 posts | registered
  11. I was generally pleased with everything announced. I would love to see a move to Unified messaging, but the still have little things todo before they get to that. I think they will release an updated iPhone 3G this year but it will be incremental. Maybe...

    iPhone 3G+
    Same size or 5-20% thinner, but no button changes etc.
    Faster processor (matching iPod Touch 2G or slightly better)
    32GB version
    Better Quality camera with Video support (3MP, uses Camera, MMS, Youtube apps)
    Better Battery Life (8 hour talk time & more video/net/audio time)
    Move to updated headphones with (+0-) mic and controls
    480p video output support via dock connector

    Basically a small upgrade refreshing a few features using newer silicon that also enables better battery life. I have a Touch 2G and playing a game with iPod audio in the background drains it pretty quick and the battery on the original 3G is not loved. Apple is big on battery tech these days and of course it will be 'more greener' for the environment.
    1 post | registered
  12. I haven't really followed the hype around this. Did they introduce tethering via bluetooth or not?

    Tethering is THE must-have feature I consider before buying any phone.
    733 posts | registered
  13. The landscape keyboard bit has been edited (but not removed entirely) to reflect my wrongness. Turns out I don't really use landscape view (I hate it) unless I'm in a game or something that requires it, so I was just out of the loop. Thanks for the heads up guys.
    1245 posts | registered
  14. quote:



    Scott Forstall acknowledged in Q&A that tethering is indeed now supported in the OS, but it is entirely up to the worldwide carriers, including AT&T, on whether to turn it on. Given the fact that the iPhone is so popular at the moment and owners are bringing down networks with just mobile data, I doubt many of the carriers are leaping at the opportunity just yet to invite such a greater network load until they have the right equipment in place to handle it.
    1245 posts | registered
  15. I think you missed how apps are supposed to be organized: they aren't supposed to be. Just find them via Spotlight like power users do on the Mac.

    Just put the 5 apps you use all the time on your first home screen and use SpotLight to find the app you use ever 2 weeks.
    46 posts | registered
  16. Could we at least sort apps alphabetically, or by popularity?
    151 posts | registered
  17. You forgot one: BACKGROUND APPLICATIONS. While push notifications are nice for some things, it is worthless for others: ie background audio. I wish they would just allow 1-3 user selected apps to be run in the background. Its easy to do (see Backgrounder on Cydia) and stupid not to have. The battery excuse is meaningless- the iPod app decreases battery life but that is allowed.
    2067 posts | registered
  18. Re: the absence of any sensible solution for an included ToDo App, I firmly believe that this is because anything like that would need to sync for it to be useful, and as the desktop ToDo as currently integrated into Mail and iCal is so poor that they would be better off waiting for it's replacement that will hopefully ship with Snow Leopard.
    375 posts | registered
  19. Looks like MacRumors is poking around with tethering support. Screenies and everything:
    1245 posts | registered
  20. I just hope that there is a message "centre" for all the alerts you will now receive, so that if you aren't able to deal with them on the spot you can go back and look at them later. In the current OS, if you press Cancel, you lose them forever which is annoying to say the least. With regard to that, they desperately need a "Defer" button as well as the Cancel and View ones.
    362 posts | registered
  21. This one would be easy: Separately enabled password protection for the email app.

    AFAIK right now it's all-or-nothing, and who wants to go thru the password pop-up every time they go to the iPod or Camera apps?

    On my phone at least, email is the only thing that needs strong protection... it'd suck to have the phone stolen and someone maliciously muck around in my email accounts.

    30 posts | registered
  22. I thought they should add more pages, in the various compass directions from the homescreen. Up, down, left. It would open up the number of quickly available applications by a substantial number. (Technically 4 pages + would be 1 swipe away.)

    (Lets say 8 screens in each direction, that's 32 screens of apps, double-tap to bring home; never mind doing a full array of screens in each direction as a 16x16 grid.).

    A good interface, to a large number of applications is going to be a real challenge though, with Folders, or things like it being the worst possible solution to the problem. Digging for apps would get to be a real nuisance.

    Java verses Object-C/C++ If you can't pick Objective-C basic syntax up in about 2 hours you shouldn't be programming in Java either. Seriously, Objective-C is pretty sweet. The API is very different in many ways, but they isn't going to change even if they did decide to support Java as a language. The API is well designed and highly functional.
    12973 posts | registered
  23. I would not mind a tweak in Mail - to mix all Inboxes of multiple accounts into one, like it's done in Apple Mail on Mac.
    Checking all three accounts takes way too many clicks now.
    Noted that more than year ago! Here
    1 post | registered
  24. In the summaries I've read, I didn't spot improvements to mobile Safari that I'd like to see, like "open link in new window."
    3332 posts | registered
  25. I usually really enjoy your articles, David, so I'm amazed to find myself thoroughly disagreeing with so much of this one. From the little things like "no new hardware" (would Apple really be dumb enough to give away secret new hardware features in a software demo?), through the medium things like "unified messaging" (just a repulsive idea to me, as things like email, SMS and Facebook have completely different priorities in my life), to the big ones like Flash (good golly no, on so many levels).

    To-do sync seems like it would be logical for OS X, though, even though I don't use it at all. And whilst better app management would be useful for some users, I think Apple's version of the 80/20 rule (plus their usual unilateral approach to things) probably means it's an unrealistic hope.
    70 posts | registered
  26. uhhh ok...

    I read through half of this article thinking that you were revealing more features that they didn't unveil at the 90 minute presentation. Then I realized that this is just a complaint article.
    1176 posts | registered
  27. I think that the iPhone OS and its UI is for Apple (and for us) now what the very first Mac and its OS was for the users back then many years ago. I absolutely and totally give Apple all time they may need to slowly and carefully develop and try out features and UI elements which the users express a need for and I give them any freedom to toss out and to not implement all features that may be nice to have, but not really necessary. This is *not* a system that will be replaced by some new fashionable flashy UI two years from now. It will stay with us for decades to come, so be careful what to wish for.

    Now that it seems that Apple is very much listening to the customers (landscape apps, c&p, MMS) I rather give them time to work it out.

    And you can now bet on a tablet (aka Apple "netbook" or "iPad") coming soon, the OS for it is shaping up nicely. They would've never wasted their time on landscape mode for Mail and other apps if they weren't preparing for a tablet. I'm looking forward to it. The world has already more than enough laptops shrunken to unusable size.
    2123 posts | registered
  28. quote:
    Originally posted by Andy Allcorn:

    Don't mistake my listing of these things as a personal wish for each one to arrive. I hope the likes of Flash and Java never come to the iPhone. In fact I'm willing to pay for a version of the iPhone OS that does not have them. I was mainly aiming to hit the major features that all camps are looking for in the iPhone—regardless of my personal opinion of them. Thanks for enjoying my work though. It's very appreciated.

    As far as Apple being "dumb enough" to hint at new hardware: the company does it all the time. In fact, it actually did hint at something even in the iPhone OS 3.0 beta:

    It's incredibly vague, though, so I didn't include it in this piece. Nevertheless, stuff like that has happened plenty of times in the past, and in various ways. Products get marked as EOL (End Of Life), references to new hardware appear in plist files, new products have been "accidentally" published to the Apple Store.

    As far as unified messaging, I guess that may come down to a personal preference and differences in work. I use Facebook, mail, and SMS for very different purposes as well, but having to switch between all those apps just to keep up with correspondence can become a pain. My wife may send me an e-mail one day, a text when she's coming home from work the next, and then comment on one of my Facebook status messages (which is powered by Twitter). I don't want all that correspondence tied to and strewn across all those apps—I want it all threaded together with a unified UI to my wife. Since I also use things like Facebook and Twitter to communicate with readers so I don't have to give away my personal contact info, this compounds my wish for something like what Palm did.



    Yea, this is a simple case of Apple missing a basic necessity. Tracking tasks along with events has existed in PIM apps since before the dawn of time, and some validly argue that a smartphone isn't very smart without them.


    You're probably right, but users are still clamoring for it. Shifting apps around on an iPhone is a PITA, plain and simple. It's frustrating as hell for me since I have seven pages, but I see people with only two or three complain all the time.
    1245 posts | registered
  29. The biggest missing things are Background apps (e.g. for GPS trails) and Turn-by-Turn local content GPS maps.
    9165 posts | registered
  30. global (as in works in any app) support for bluetooth keyboards. I want a thumb board integrated into a wallet like case and I'm sold
    6294 posts | registered
  31. I really hope there is some kind of smart notification management system. Let's say you leave your iPhone alone for a few hours and come back to 20 notifications. Do you have to click through all of them, can you dismiss all and go back later to review them and react to some of them (like the notification "curtain" in Android)? Questions over questions.
    115 posts | registered
  32. You forgot Disk Mode and unfettered filesystem access without needing to jailbreak (we can dream, right?) in the list.

    Here was the feedback I sent to Apple after watching the keynote, requesting improved app/Springboard organization and some sort of unified Documents folder with Disk Mode access:
    I just finished watching the iPhone OS 3.0 announcement, and although I am extremely happy to see the progress you guys have made, and the new features implemented, I did notice one glaring omission in particular that is critically needed ASAP, along with another change (maybe for iPhone OS 3.1) that would be nice to see. I've been using my first revision iPhone since August of '07, I have only minor experience with Mac application development in general, and none for the iPhone in particular, so these suggestions are mostly from an end user's perspective.

    My first and most critical issue is that my iPhone is now filled with the maximum of 148 apps, and I'm having trouble deciding which apps I can delete and live without, to the point that I have severely reduced my purchasing of new apps, and my frequency of checking for interesting new apps to get. Not only that, but it's gotten extremely tedious to page through nine pages of apps to get to the one I'm looking for.

    A somewhat related additional significant improvement needed is to allow multiple applications to access the same files, and to consolidate saved files into a "Documents" type directory, one which would be accessible from your computer when you sync your iPhone. This would empower users to more easily edit documents from the iPhone, access standard file formats from the desktop world, and potentially cut down on wasted storage space as different apps are each forced to store their own copies of their documents. We could optionally save a Notes document or picture there, for example, and then another app could access these and modify them or make use of their content. We could sync a MS Word doc to the Documents folder, and some apps might be able to open and edit it, or we could then sync with our work or home computer and transfer it to there. The current "workaround" of using email for transfers is sub-optimal, to say the least, not even addressing many of these usage cases.

    For the first problem, what we need is a solution that allows us to install >148 apps total, and to better organize our apps than by placing them on different Springboard screens. I think the best solution to this would be a method to add meta-tags to files and applications on the iPhone, and then empower Springboard to consolidate apps based on meta-tags; in short a database filesystem metaphor, similar to iTunes Genre organization. When you click and hold on an app in Springboard, in addition to an "X" button at the top of the app icons, there could also be an "i" button at the bottom that would open a sheet where you could enter a "Tag" string. Any unique strings you create in the "Tag" field show up as a "folder" in the Springboard named with the string, with all the apps tagged with that string inside it. When you click and hold on the "folder" icons in Springboard and click the "i" button for it, you are given the option to modify the name (which would modify the current "Tag" value for all the apps in that folder), and to set an image icon for that folder, which would let you choose from a list of default icons with typical themes, to select an existing picture, or to copy and paste your own image in.

    For the second issue with unified documents, we could use a similar "Tag" system to organize the documents within, and apps could set the Tag value for the documents they save as well. For the interface, I would see little alternative to putting tabs at the top of the Springboard, right below the status bar, for "Applications" and "Documents". I'm having some flashbacks of AtEase already (in a good way : P)... For the implementation/security, it might be a good idea to leave optional access to the "Documents" directory up to the app developers only if they want it, and if a 3rd party app does request access to this directory, maybe have the user confirm that they want to give that app access to the docs directory, with a brief mention of the security implications, the first time they run the app (if the user declines, the app would automatically revert to using the app-specific Documents folder inside the .app package). Ideally, this "Documents" directory would be mounted as a virtual read/write USB Mass Storage Device on your computer when you plug in your iPhone (maybe labeled as "[iphonename] Documents"), and you could just drag files to and from there or delete them in the Finder or in Windows Explorer rather than having to use iTunes for that. This transfer method, if possible, would also give the incidental benefit of being compatible with Linux, and maybe with various equipment capable of interfacing with USB Mass Storage Devices, in addition to giving the user a very powerful, widely compatible and fail-safe method of accessing these sometimes critical documents. An additional security precaution would force all the contents of the Documents directory to be non-executable from the iPhone OS, only allowing read and write access to them, hopefully using a method that preserves the original UNIX file permissions as those files get transferred to and from the iPhone (so an executable Mac app would remain executable after you transfer it to and from an iPhone, but an unencrypted iPhone app transferred to the Documents directory from your computer would not execute from the iPhone itself).

    Thank you for considering these changes to iPhone OS X, which would greatly improve the usability of the iPhone for me, and hopefully for a few other people as well.

    @xoa: The problem is that iPhone users are meant to use the Calendar app to manage their schedules, and 3rd party apps can't write to your calendar. So if you did install OmniFocus on your iPhone, it wouldn't be able to integrate directly with your calendar, which is weak. If Apple is going to provide things like email, calendar, etc. standard, and not allow direct competitors to these apps in the App Store, then they need to find ways to make these extensible by 3rd parties in useful ways, or we end up with a crippled device. Ideally, Apple should let the user choose to allow certain apps write access to their calendar, contacts, etc.

    @apple4ever: There is a difference between the iPod app being backgrounded and something like Pandora being backgrounded, as the latter is constantly requesting network access. This might have a much more significant impact on the performance of other foreground apps than the iPod app would. I'm not familiar with the details, but is it possible that the iPod app uses a separate backend daemon process to handle the music playback, and when you quit the frontend, the backend process remains running? Maybe App Store apps just don't have the option of structuring themselves in the same way so as to free up most of their memory when they're running in the background, allowing other apps to run acceptably. About the only way I would see Apple making any progress on this front short of massive hardware upgrades would be to have some sort of advanced (read: costly) validation available to 3rd party devs that want to be certified to run in the background.
    1083 posts | registered
  33. What about being able to use different ringtones for SMS or E-Mail messages? That is still missing.
    4 posts | registered
  34. Suspiciously missing from mention here is email certificate support. You can't read encrypted email, or sign/send encrypted email from the iPhone. But you can on Mac OS X...
    381 posts | registered
  35. I'm still looking for a couple features that make it easier to use iPhone as a phone. Quaint, I know.

    Specifically, some kind of system-wide, always-aware voice dialing would make using iPhone while in the car easier and safer. Some of the third party apps are reasonable, but Apple needs to implement dead-simple voice dialing, including touch-to-dial with Bluetooth headsets. With the improved Bluetooth support in 3.0, I'm hopeful, but didn't see or hear it mentioned yesterday.

    On the same front, some way to touch-dial someone from the home screen should be a default. The lack of physical buttons makes this hard, but there should be a way to put a contact on the home screen (beyond the current hacky ways) and touch to dial.

    Beyond that, there wasn't much said about Exchange support beyond policies (which is a big one for IT departments). They need to beef up the calendar support, in particular.
    600 posts | registered
  36. I was glad to read that most of these are not your opinions, because a lot of them are terrible ideas.
    I agreed with the video, to do (exchange request may be included in CALDAV), better listing for trial version of the app store, and perhaps springboard enhancements.

    All Minor things really, accept the to do and video.

    I really think there was no video or camera announcement because that will be the "hardware improvement" for the next version of the iPhone. The current easiest enhancement is the iPhone Video (you can't call it the iPhone v3)

    (I also strongly disagree with that statement that apple doesn't embrace web trends, since they make the software that is how you see the web, and in their newest mac software has links to facebook and flicker. I will agree that they are slow to uptake, as they should be web trends change frequently)
    126 posts | registered
  37. The chattering class has a fetishistic indulgence with smartphones bordering on techno-porn.
    While analysts and competitors were busy making feature-level comparisons (of mostly hardware), Apple consolidated its platform lead and laid the foundations of a new growth engine the likes of which the mobile industry has neither yet seen nor fully comprehends.
    While [the iPhone OS 3.0] garnered a collective yawn from the features-fetishists, barring a product introduction disaster, the iPhone OS 3.0 will do to iPhone-killers what it did do to iPod-killers half a decade ago. Apple consolidated its gains, marked its territory of 30M users+25K apps+800M downloads and built a very deep and wide moat around it. A moat so formidable that there’s not a single smartphone player capable of overcoming it.
    By the end of 2009, we expect the virtuous cycle to kick in and the moat strategy to reveal just how difficult it will be to compete with Apple’s touch platform, thereby ushering in consolidation in the rest of the smartphone industry.

    iPhone OS 3: The moat strategy vs. features-fetishism
    13 posts | registered
  38. Does anyone else wonder why Apple aren't going for wireless syncing? To sell more accessories like docs and cables to replace broken ones, perhaps?

    I don't think video will make an appearance until a new model arrives. Given how poor the image quality can be I think a video would be a blurry mess.
    1189 posts | registered
  39. I'd like to see mobileme sync opened up for 3rd parties on the iPhone. A good example of an application that could really benefit from this is Things from Cultured Code.
    2 posts | registered

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