There’s no doubt that a team of Apple engineers have been working on the next major point release of iOS (5.0) for some time now. There is plenty to be done here, and I know a lot of enthusiasts and even developers are chomping at the bit to figure out what Cupertino has in store for us.
I have come up with my own list of current iOS shortcomings that I wanted to share, but I know many of us will be in alignment on these.
- Over-the-air syncing (this can include iOS updates and music/podcasting stuff).
- Overhauled notifications (a huge annoyance for many)
- Multi-touch gestures (the ones included in the dev builds of iOS 4.3 will probably end up in 5.0)
Those are three big ones currently on my mind. Of course, we can flesh out the details on how all of this stuff will work, however I’ll really only comment on two things.
Syncing
Personally I listen to a ton of Podcasts ever week, and not to mention music on my iPhone. Naturally I need to sync my device with iTunes on a very frequent basis (sometimes as often as every day). This clearly comes at an annoyance and inconvenience.
What I would like to happen is that either Apple supports over-the-air syncing so that I don’t have to be tethered via a USB cable to my Mac, or stuff like the Podcast updates just happen directly from my iPhone without having to sync to any sort of computer.
Sound good to you? It does to me.
Notifications
Right now notifications are kind of a mess. I have mine turned off in all apps, except for “Outside,” a third party weather app that I like which tells me every morning what the weather is like.
The problem with notifications right now is that they aren’t nearly as elegant as say WebOS. There was some news last year that Apple had hired the person responsible for notifications in WebOS, so one can assume work is being done in this area.
Rather than just have a single HUD style notification, I’d rather have multiple notifications grouped appropriately on my lock screen. An easy way to just glance and see if there is anything urgent, such as new email or alerts of calendar appointments. Also, one other thing I’d like to see is notifications of app updates. I shouldn’t need to open the actual App Store app just to know if I need to update.
The current implementation is very un-Apple like and we all know they can do much better in this area.
Wrap-up
If missed any huge must-haves for what we should have in iOS 5, let me know in the comments.