Setting up a new iPhone/iPad? A brief How-To…

Back in 2010, I had listed out some of the apps I was using and recommended the same. A lot has evolved since. It’s not just the apps, its also the devices that have changed giving rise to better and more powerful apps. I will try to cover the basic setup options for a new iDevice running iOS 7. iOS is currently at version 7.1.1 and, ideally, one should upgrade to this version, if not already on it.

I will focus on the iPhone here since that is the most commonly used iDevice. Most of the following also applies to the iPad. You can find tutorials for the iDevices on Apple’s site as well as YouTube, if needed.

Apple iOS 7 – GM & iPhone 5C and 5S

Well…after trying to come to terms with the “nothing” Apple event of September 10th and a day with the GM of iOS7, I can probably echo the thoughts of many Apple device users and the stock market…Apple has lost it.

While most people would agree to the fact that Apple has some of the best talent in terms of developers and designers, they alone, cannot really do much. The current Apple “leadership” has to shoulder the responsibility for this.

They legacy that they (Apple) inherited is so strong that the momentum will continue to make money for some years to come. Given the fact that the other mobile OSes are not really anywhere close to the iDevice ecosystem, the current Apple “big guns” will continue to make money while the company faces a downtrend.

In an earlier post, I had mentioned the fact that if Apple brings out another cheap variation of the iPhone, then, we could be sure that the company had lost it.

When the rumours of the iPhone 5C (I still call it cheap, even though it’s not) surfaced, it was disturbing. Then, there was the thought that…why not? People who had not used an iPhone because of the price barrier, would probably go for it. The drawback might be that Apple might not be able to deal with the massive traffic caused by a cheaper iPhone variant.

Alas, that was not to be. The Apple “leadership” had other ideas. The iPhone 5C is not cheap by any standards. Then, one has to wonder as to why the 5C was even created…? Logically, it would seem that the 5C was created to make a lower end iPhone 5 so that the 5S would look like a premium option. If we compare the iPhone 5 and 5S, I have serious doubts that the majority would pay a premium for the 5S. To be honest, I would wonder why people would pay a premium for the 5S since the 4S would be free on contract. If all I wanted was a faster device to play games, I would not be purchasing a phone.

Again, I already mentioned in an earlier post that for the majority, a phone is a phone. People who go after the latest and greatest will pay for the 5S, but, people who use the iPhone as a “smartphone”, will probably skip it.

If we look at the track record of Apple since Jobs, it has gone just one way…down. The iOS 6 and the so called Apple “Maps” disaster continues even in iOS 7 GM. iOS 7 itself, was a disaster to begin with. Although somewhat toned down to be just about usable now. The UI might be acceptable just because it needed a change, the UX remains terrible. The built-in apps are completely inconsistent in terms of UI and UX. The calendar app remains unusable. The choice of colours is absolutely atrocious, specially in the case of calls.

While some people, myself included, would have accepted any incremental change in the UI simply because it was needed, the iOS 7 UI was not it. It lags iOS 6 in terms of usability and consistency.

While Apple claims to have added “n” number of “new” features, they forget to mention the fact that all of these “n” number of features existed in the 10+ year old Nokia phones. Of course, the usability of these “new” features is questionable. For example, none of the lists in iOS 7 GM are indexed even now. You can keep scrolling up and down even in the notifications under settings and spend a lifetime there. The block list is scattered across 3 different locations with no navigation/grouping or anything to make it usable…not even stats of blocks! Pathetic!

The entire history of Apple devices, since Jobs, reflects the same pattern. The same applies to the laptops and OS X. A company, once known for it’s attention to detail, design and innovation, seems to be going off on a tangent now.

For example, take iTunes. Even though the iOS 7 has reached GM, there is not even a beta that supports the folders in iOS 7. Never before, in the history of iOS or iDevices, has this happened.

To summarize, given the fragmentation of Android, the state of affairs of BlackBerry and the similar state of the Microsoft-Nokia combine, the iDevices and iOS, despite their faults, will continue to rule the premium segment for sometime to come. The only hope of something better, might come from Microsoft, if at all. Of course, there is a slim chance that it could come from a completely new source.

Lastly, like most iDevice users, I can only hope that there is some serious re-jig at Apple which would change it’s current direction and go back to being the company we all admired and invested in. Not a company that goes into selling leather jackets/covers and docks for devices just to try and make some more money…

Apple iOS 7 – Beta 4 – Minor UI updates, all older issues remain!

After having spent almost a day with the new beta 4 of iOS 7, I am somewhat disappointed. The only changes seem to be UI related like some more work on improving text overlaps, some app icons that were not displayed properly earlier, are now as they should, the notification centre now shows the clear button, a new animated download of attachments in mail, some cleanup in the phone call buttons etc. There is also a new “Bluetooth Sharing” option under Privacy.

There is no change in the UX that I could see excepting the addition of the age old text “>” on the lock screen before the “Slide (nothing) to unlock” message. The calendar remains as useless as before. The disaster of the so called “Apple Maps” remain, no control over the control centre etc etc. Effectively, all the earlier issues remain as they were.

There is a also a beta 1 of iTunes for the Mac, which, like the first beta of iOS 7, seems to be more of a “do nothing” developer preview than a real, feature complete, beta.

Let’s wait and watch if there are any visible or usable changes/improvements in beta 5…

Apple iOS 7 – Beta 3 – Finally some UI changes

After a day with iOS 7 B3, I do see some changes to the eye jarring UI. Although the changes are minor, it does show. The UI is somewhat less hurting on the eyes, but, it still needs a lot of work. Some of the completely atrocious icons remain as they were as also the colours in various apps. Most of the “translucent” nonsense of the UI are gone including in the notifications and the control centre making them more visible. All “visual” UI elements, like buttons etc, which are actually non-visual in iOS 7, still remain in the form of plain text.

The UI and the UX remain as inconsistent as earlier. If I go into the normal spotlight search, I see a dark background keyboard, but, if I am typing a message etc, it’s still the white background keyboard. The inconsistency shows even within a single app. For instance, if I search for an app in the AppStore, I get a white background keyboard, but, when entering the password for the AppStore in the same app, I get a dark background keyboard. Interestingly, it did not ask me to switch stores this time, only the password for the other store.

I got a couple of calls while the iPhone was locked and this part of the UI seems to have become worse. I simply could not see any visual clues. The text on the “slide to answer” was invisible. The only reason I could pick the call was because I am used the overall iPhone UI.

Still no photos in the contact list, only in the favourites. iMessage, and perhaps other apps, have a changed drill down to reach the actual contact detail. I was not able to send/share a vCard on iMessage even though typed text messages went out fine.

Some more apps now work with B3, although a lot of the beta kind of bugs remain. The notifications can still be a bit off at times. Still no “home” or “lock device” or any custom options for the control centre which would would make it far more useful. No notifications for GMail as yet either.

The overall UI remains the same, talking up far more space than iOS 6 to display the same amount of data. The visual clues still remain absent.

The biggest, acknowledged disaster, of the so called “maps” by Apple remains as it was, nullifying most of the applications dependent on location and actual maps.

Let’s wait and see if B4 has any more improvements in the UI/UX and if Apple will actually try and fix the first biggest disaster to hit iOS…the so called “maps” from Apple.

Apple iOS 7 – Beta 2 – The disaster continues…

Well, as expected, excepting for the regular bug fixes, not much has changed. iOS 7 B2 still has the same eye jarring UI and the overall bad and inconsistent UX. All of the earlier flaws in the UI/UX remain as they were. The Apple “maps” disaster also remains intact.

This time around, I updated the iOS 6 on my iPhone 5 instead of a fresh restore to check out what else I could find. To my surprise, Find my iPhone works from a secondary iCloud account even though there is no such option in that iCloud account under Settings.

Some more apps now work with B2. The text fitting issues seem to be fixed for the most part. I was able to receive a call on Skype right after the update, but, it crashed when the call ended and I have not been able to get Skype to work after that. A re-install fixed Skype. Viber lost it’s authentication for some reason, but, works after a re-authentication.

The panorama mode of the camera still works only in the vertical mode.

I can no longer update apps from multiple ID apps from the AppStore on the iPhone. It forces a switch to the other store before one can update. So, all is not as it seems with the Auto-Update “feature” as it breaks earlier functionality.

Notifications are still dicey. No push for GMail accounts so far forcing the use of another app just to get GMail notifications.

Still no photos in contacts, only in the favourites. The contacts still take up far more space to display the same information as before, not to mention the fact that the layout does look ugly by comparison.

The notes get synced, so, this is one bug fixed. The calendars remain as they were…un-usable. The “Slide to Unlock” with nothing to “Slide” remains as also the extremely bad colour combinations. The folders also remain as they were, showing a lot less and taking far more space than iOS 6. I also tried B2 on an iPhone 4 and it was exceptionally sluggish.

Overall, the major issues of the UI/UX and the so called Apple “maps” remain as they were. The control centre still does not have a “Home” or “Lock Device” button or any options to add your own controls and therefore a button-less experience still does not exist. On the other hand, a lot of attention seems to have gone into the enterprise side for better device management.

When people said that Apple has lost the talent or will to innovate, I often wondered if Apple lost only that. I think Apple lost the vision, direction and the leadership that brought it to the level where it is today. Innovation was just one of the components of the overall picture. A company identified and known for it’s design, comes up with the worst possible, eye jarring, “design” today.

I had mentioned in an earlier post that if Apple keeps coming up with multiple devices, the downtrend, along with all of the above points would be more than confirmed. So far we see only incremental updates and more devices. The iPad mini was the first such example. While this approach would carry the current momentum for some more time, it cannot really last. Apple already has issues with iCloud and iTunes. As the scale increases with the number of devices, one has to wonder if Apple can really keep it all working and retain the seamless experience.

Although we are still a few months and betas away from a formal release of iOS 7, given the state of B2, I still have hope and will reserve my judgement for some more time…perhaps, even till the formal release.

Apple iOS 7 – After more than a day of experimenting!

Well, after checking some more, I am back to iOS 6 as the beta or pre-beta or the developer preview of iOS 7 is not really usable as it stands.

For one, it does not sync notes and calendars. Events are not marked out on the calendars that you can see at a glance. Besides other issues, It also has problems with notifications. The UI changes will make a large number of existing apps practically unusable. The battery life is also down substantially.

So, I would agree with the term used by the Apple iOS developer site and say that this is just a developer preview (DP) and not a beta as mentioned in the WWDC 2013.

iOS 7 DP takes a lot more space to display the same information as iOS 6 and the folders also shows lesser apps than in iOS 6. In short, the iOS 6 UI is far more efficient in normal usage. The lack of visual indicators in iOS 7, specially considering the high resolution retina display, is definitely a step backwards. The text, on the other hand, seems to be far better done in iOS 7.

If you are like me and organise your apps into folders, then, iOS 7 can look really terrible compared to iOS 6. You cannot really make out the icons inside the folders. If that was not enough, the transparency also contributes to making it illegible. There is also the issue of the bright, new icons. Now, you would be hard pressed to figure out between a variety of apps. For example, I could no longer just pick out between “Photos”, “NewsStand” and “Game Center” offhand like in iOS 6. Now I have to squint to figure it out. Of course, since I organise the apps into folders, I would know which is where, but, just looking at these app icons, you really need to squint, more so if you have a white wallpaper/background.

The all new FaceTime application I mentioned earlier, is actually the older Contacts app. It is simply renamed to FaceTime with a new icon and UI.

I came across an interesting comparison related to the “all new” iOS 7 “design” at “iOS 7 looks familiar – can’t quite put my finger on it“. Although Apple is known to “pick up” features from jailbreak tweaks in the past, this one is really interesting!

Let’s wait and see what the actual iOS 7 beta would look and feel like…

Apple iOS 7 – First impressions on iPhone 5

After using iOS 7 for almost one full day, I would not really call it a beta release. It seems more of an unplanned pre-beta. Unlike some of my friends and colleagues, I always do a fresh install and never restore from a backup. This gives me a far better idea as to what is actually happening.

In short, my summary of the current iOS 7 beta is that it is a step forward in terms of the technology and required feature sets, but, the UI is terrible and the UX inconsistent at best. Let’s hope someone at Apple wakes up before the UI/UX of iOS 7 make it an even bigger disaster than the iOS 6 “maps”.

For those interested in the details of my experience with the iOS 7 beta in a day, here it comes. Keep in mind this is a first beta and bugs are expected. Just ’cause I mention some of those, it does not mean that those will remain in the final release.

Starting up

So, right after a fresh restore of iOS 7 on my iPhone 5, I saw the all too familiar “slide to unlock” text. The problem was, there was nothing to “slide”. There is no slider and the default colour scheme makes it almost impossible to figure out anything around the message.

Okay, so I “slide” nothing anyway and get to the home screen. The first thing I wanted to look at was settings so I could set up my other email accounts and tweak settings to suit me. The moment I started the settings app, the brightness went down and I could not really see anything. No problem, a reset of the phone fixed the brightness issue.

Settings

EMail

Then I went into the mail settings to set up my email accounts so that email would start off while I configured the rest of the settings. To my surprise and dismay, Apple had removed the options that made my family setup  perfect. I use a common cloud account on all devices on which contacts, find my phone and bookmarks are shared, otherwise, all devices have their own Apple IDs as the main iCloud account. In iOS 7, when you add a second iCloud account, you no longer have access to the “Find my iDevice” or the “Safari” bookmarks in the second iCloud account. Effectively, you cannot control shared stuff from a common, shared, iCloud account anymore.

Anyway, I set up all my different email accounts and noticed that GMail accounts had contacts as well. Not that I need or use them, it is an addition. Unfortunately, there are still no notifications for GMail, at least, not in this beta. This is one of the most required updates for a large number of people. The other issue is that if one has to use a different app just for GMail, then, the unified experience of the email on the iDevice does not exist anymore.

UI/UX

Once I was done with the email setup, I started to look at the other options. The first thing that struck me was that there were no “buttons” or “frames” to visually mark out any of the “touch/click” points. It was just an angle bracket and text at the top of every option to go back, for example, “< Settings”. This literally threw me back to the good old console days with no graphics when we would do similar things. Either number options or use brackets, mostly angle brackets, to signify something different. It seems like the design team at Apple is trying hard to make the iOS UI a 17th century one just like OS X which has never been updated.

Although Apple designers seemed to have learned the use of gestures, the overall implementation is quite inconsistent. For example, although the slide-in gesture works in Settings and Mail, it does not in Photos nor in Contacts and maybe more. The overall colours and contrast make it very difficult to read and visualise apps and folders, unlike iOS 6.

So, instead of looking at more settings, I decided to set my passcode and wallpapers first. How I got the wallpapers is a separate issue since there were none on the phone, so, I just downloaded some of my white dog, a Lhasa Apso, and set the lock and home screen to 2 different photos. Then, I locked the device and guess what…I could no longer see or read the “slide to unlock” message since the wallpaper was also white and there is no “slider”, so, you cannot see anything! Very impressive “design”….

Control Center

The all new Control Center has only one option. Display on home screen or not. You cannot customise anything on the Control Center itself. The 2 options that I would really like to see on the Control Center are a “Home” button and a “Lock Device”. This would make the overall UX buttonless and take away the reason for a large number of Jail-breakers. Of course, this is only the functional part. The UI part for the Control Center can only be termed pathetic at best. It’s positively ugly and in-consistent with the rest of the UI. Compare this with the jailbreak tweaks/toggle apps like SB Settings etc.

Privacy

This also adds an option to allow or dis-allow the use of the microphone. Always good to have these kind of options and more so you know which apps needs to access what functionality.

Phone

This has a couple of really required options. One of those is only partially implemented. You can now see photos of contacts in the favourites list, but, not in the contact list. This is really a half hearted option.

The other, more important, is a “Blocked” list. You can add numbers that will be blocked for all FaceTime and Normal calls as well as Messages.

Although this “blocked” list will probably be a favourite for most, including myself, the design part has not really been thought out. This same option and list exists in 3, yes, 3 different places in settings. Extremely redundant and confusing at best.

Maps

Think most of the world would agree that we simply skip this one. Apple “maps” only exist in their dreams. With no option to change the default maps app, all location apps remain more or less dead since iOS 6.

iTunes & App Stores

One feature that needs to be mentioned is the ability to auto-update apps when on a WiFi network (default). Although I would never use this feature, but, it is a major step forward for the vast majority of iDevice users.

Integration

The two new services that are now integrated in iOS 7 are Flickr and Vimeo. Vimeo??? Where is YouTube? The divide between Apple and Google shows. Apple discards the best service in their interest, not in the interest of the iDevice users.

General

This has a new option to control the true multitasking offered by iOS 7. Most people would probably never need to fiddle with this one, but, it’s there.

Another interesting option that has been added is “Text Size”. As and when apps support dynamic text sizing, this will come into play.

Installing Apps

If you are like me, you would not waste time and bandwidth downloading apps on the device directly and arranging them manually. To my surprise, iTunes 11.0.4 is clueless about iOS 7 and there is no beta update for iTunes that understands iOS 7.

Although a buggy experience, but, you can install apps using the current iTunes. Don’t try creating folders for more apps than what iTunes think it is meant for. It cannot even deal with the normal number of apps in a folder on an iPhone 5 running iOS 6.

This was just one of the reasons why I said that this iOS 7 is more of an unplanned pre-beta. Do not be surprised if your phone boots/re-springs at random, specially when using iTunes. Actually, the re-boot will happen even when doing nothing. Given this is a “beta”, it should be expected.

The simplest way is to install all the apps, music etc you want, create and organise the apps into folders as much as iTunes allows you, then arrange everything else manually and do not sync with iTunes again. If you sync with iTunes after putting in a bunch of apps in a folder, it will pull all those apps out onto pages. So, till we get an iTunes update that works with iOS 7, sync with iTunes only once to install all the stuff you want. Do not sync again after you have arranged your apps in folders.

After installing some apps and arranging them in folders, I discovered the fact that I could see far less in a folder than I could in iOS 6. Once again, the UI/UX leaves a lot to be desired.

Phone

Well, after all, I am looking at iOS 7 on the iPhone, so, the favourites need to be setup first. Once again, I run into the same “slide to unlock” nothing scenario. There is no demarkation for the search entry field unless you really push up the brightness to an un-usable level, or, you are used to the iPhone and therefore get by.

This major UI drawback can actually be seen in quite a few places. You would be very hard pressed to figure out where a text field actually is and which one is the active one. Pathetic!

If that was not enough, try to look at any contact details, absolutely ugly layout. There is absolutely no way any designer could actually do worse. It takes up 2-3 times the space to show the same details as iOS 6 and adds absolutely nothing excepting to make it worse by the choice of colours and icons.

Lastly, the phone keypad. I have serious doubts if people have actually seen a more pathetic choice of colours and design than what exists in the current iOS 7 beta. The same applies to when you actually make or receive a call. I will have a comment on the overall UI/UX a bit later…

Control Centre

The all new Control Centre provides some of the much needed functionality, the UI could not be worse than what it is currently. Talking up almost the full screen on the iPhone 5, it’s quite ugly and inconsistent with the rest of the UI. I still hope that the design team at Apple looks at stuff like “Auxo” and “SB Settings” and try and come up with a better design.

MultiTasking

One of the great new features of iOS 7 is true, supposedly intelligent, multitasking for all apps. Although there is a new UI for the multitasking apps, it falls well short of the current jailbreak tweaks in terms of functionality and design. There is no kill-all apps functionality and since it also shows the home screen, it is also in-consistent in design.

Calendar

This needs to be mentioned since I could not see any visual indication of any even in the current iOS 7 beta. If this is by design, then, it’s absolutely pathetic like the rest of the UI/UX blemishes I have already mentioned. If this is just another bug in the current release, then, let’s see what the next beta comes up with.

App Stores

I mention the App Store for two reasons, a) It is quite buggy at the moment and b) it retains the button like appearance instead of using “angle brackets” for installing apps.

Battery & Charging

Although bugs are expected, I was surprised to see that it took my iPhone 5 almost seven hours to complete a 100% charge. Not sure if the indicator is the issue or something else. I also noticed that the battery drain in this beta is quite high. I should know more in a couple of days as to what the real issue might be.

FaceTime

This is a new app added to the iOS 7 iPhone beta. Although this makes it consistent with the iPad app and more accessible to users who had difficulty in figuring out how to FaceTime on the iPhone, it retains the lame issues of the iPad. Even though all registered FaceTime users are known along with their registered IDs, the app shows all contacts with all IDs. So, no real help excepting yet another redundant app since the Phone contacts would also show exactly the same information. Once again, we have a basic design issue.

Overall Technology and Features

Excepting for what Apple calls “maps”, the overall improvements on the technology side in terms of features and implementation seems to make iOS 7 a worthy successor of iOS 5. Personally, I am happy that I got the “Blocked” list and even the “Flashlight”.

Overall UI/UX/Design

This part requires some understanding. There is drawing and there is design. Both of these, combined with experience and technology go into the making of the terms UI and UX. In my opinion, the current iOS 7 needs UI/UX, what we have is just plain and simple drawings, flat, black and white, with no visual/graphical cues. The overall effect of this iOS 7 beta is absolutely pathetic.

Although existing iOS users would be able to figure out the UI, this would not be simple to figure out for new iDevice users.

Keep in mind that demos are demos are demos. They are carefully chalked out to present the best as they did at the WWDC keynote. The numbers in millions, billions and trillions mentioned at the keynote were not because of iOS 6, they were despite iOS 6 and the “maps” disaster. If the current iOS 7 beta is a real indication of where Apple is headed, then, it is a recipe for disaster. The momentum from the original iDevices and their UI/UX, the in-ability of Google or Microsoft/Nokia to consolidate, would probably continue this momentum for iDevices for the next few years, but, the trend would be downward.

As an individual, having invested a lot in Apple hardware and technology over the last few years, I would hate to see it all go waste. I can only hope that someone at Apple wakes up fast and takes concrete steps to arrest this downtrend.

Apple iOS 7 – The “maps” disaster continues…

After a year of the iOS 6 maps disaster, Apple worked really hard and managed to map out Paris as well! Now, you have another city where everyone should be living in since Apple managed to map it out…or…so they claim.

When you also consider the fact that the current iOS 7 beta is available for the iPhone only, one has to wonder what Apple has been up-to with iOS 7 after the iOS 6 disaster. BTW, for those who are trying the Apple dev centre site, nope, it does not work and is down.

Although, iOS 7 does seem to have some of my wish list, it does not seem to have the buttonless experience that people would still want to jailbreak for. Consider the fact that any half decent Android phone has touch buttons compared to the most expensive iPhone which still requires the use of a regular (read lame) tactile button.

The Apple “maps” disaster continues! Effectively, all location based apps will still remain useless excepting the two cities mapped out by Apple in 2 years, one in the US and now one in France. Notice the fact that even in the iOS 7 Paris demo, at no point did the “maps” move beyond the known Apple mapped points.

Excepting for the maps disaster that continues, and extends to the new OS X, the rest of iOS seems to be on track…just a year or more late. Wonder who gets fired this time around for continuing the “maps” disaster!

The new OS X, like earlier versions, retains the old 17th century UI although some UX improvements seem to be there. While the announcement of iBooks on OS X etc might seem exciting, it should have been there at least a year or more ago.

The new MacBook Air with all day battery life seemed a good step forward for the line, but, it was somewhat overshadowed by the new MacPro preview. The new MacPro seemed to be impressive in the preview. Let’s see how it performs when it is actually released.

Overall, it was a mixed bag of announcements. While the “maps” disaster continues and extends itself to the desktop, the rest of iOS 7 seems to be on track. The new OS X is just an incremental change in UI although the UX seems to have improved, but, it’s not what one would call a major update. There are simply too many issues with OS X that need to be fixed before it can be called a major update from a user viewpoint. The hardware that was announced, as usual, was way beyond the current software capabilities of Apple.

Let’s wait and see what happens when iOS 7 and the new OS X are formally released. Will the Apple “maps” disaster remain? Will the new OS X actually fix at least some of the long standing OS issues? Will iOS 7 actually includes a buttonless experience? Will the iPad 3G version of iOS 7 have SMS capabilities? Will Apple continue to artificially limit features on older devices?

We are still around 3 months away from the final answers…

Apple WWDC 2013 – My Wish List for iOS 7

With the WWDC around the corner, and banners for iOS 7 already up, let us see what major disaster(s) Apple has in store for all the iDevice users this time around. The last iOS release added almost nothing and removed Google maps and YouTube effectively killing all location/maps based services and apps, including Apple’s own apps.

As for me, I would still start my list with the basic Nokia phone features that iOS lacks even today.

1. Call/SMS black/white list. The DND and list selection of iOS 6 cannot replace the need for the same.
2. Caller name announce. I would like to know the caller’s name from my address book when I get a call or SMS. I would not want to pull out the phone just to look at who is calling or sending a message. Optionally, the ability to read out SMS text would be nice to have.
3. Dump the never ending Siri beta and get some functional voice recognition technology. Also make it usable, globally, instead of packing in useless “event announcement features”.
4. Look at the jailbreak tweak “Auxo” and learn more about how the multi-tasking tray/toggles should actually work. Combine this with “Zephyr” and then you have a buttonless iPhone experience. Of course, there are quite a few enhancements possible even after this combination. In short, make the iDevice UX a buttonless one! (Actually, the iPad already has some of this).
5. Allow changing and removing of the default/stock apps. If this was allowed in iOS 6, then, using Google maps or alternates as default would have reduced the impact of the Apple “maps” disaster. I would also like to replace the plain bare Safari with a better browser as the default. Incidentally, Firefox still remain the most “web compatible” browser after IE. While the webkit browsers like Safari and Chrome work for most sites, a vast number of older secure sites still work better with Firefox and some still require IE. Personally, the first stock app I would remove is the newsstand as it does not make any sense to me. On second thoughts, I would say that I would firstly delete the Apple “maps” app as that causes grief compared to newsstand which only takes up space.
6. Fix the GMail account notifications in the mail app. No user would want to use a separate app just to get email notifications for GMail accounts.
7. There has to be an option to attach files to email. How the attachment is implemented is a matter of discussion. It could be something as simple as having some API to access/copy files from any document management app and paste it into another app or email.
8. Show all fields in the address book that appear on OS X and make all fields searchable.
9. A flashlight option for the iPhone on the lock screen.
10. A SMS app on the iPad 3G. Essentially this would mean that SMS and iMessage would be integrated like they are on the iPhone. I have already mentioned why SMS is required on the iPad 3G in an earlier post.
11. Live icons to the clock and weather apps. At the very least, add the option to display the date/time/temperature on the status bar.
12. Have consistent applications across the iDevices. For example, there is no weather app on the iPad.
13. Remove artificial restrictions and bring FaceTime over 3G, Airplay mirroring etc on the iPhone 4 and tethering on the iPad 2. Perhaps also include Siri on the iPhone 4. I say perhaps since Siri is not very usable as it stands today.
14. Open up the call and related APIs to developers and allow the bluetooth stack to transfer files to other devices.
15. Allow registered developer devices to be downgraded to at least 2 prior versions of iOS.

Although I would be happy with this list for a start, there is a lot more that iOS really needs. For a far more comprehensive list of needed enhancements and features, take a look at iOS-7-Wish-List.