Dear Apple – My iOS Improvements

Hey Tim, if you’re reading this feel free to hook me up with a job

As you may know, I tweet quite a bit about Apple and it’s products/services.
Tweeting about the products means I read a lot about them, but more importantly, use them.

When using any product from any manufacturer most people will see various ways they could improve the device, be it through physical design changes through to software/interface improvements.

Now, I’m certainly no design graduate. The closest I ever came was getting a shitty grade in my High School Art exam.
One thing I can do though is look at something and see where it can be improved or added to.

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So, here’s a few things that I believe could improve iOS5 (specifically on iPhone).

1. Find My Friends App integrated in to Contacts
   Other than locking it with a password, I’m really not sure what possessed Apple to wrap this feature in a new app. Integrating it seamlessly in to the contact card would be a much more elegant solution in my book.
2. Ability to add/remove a contact in iMessage conversations
   Group messaging is a winner, no argument. I recently used Huddle on Google+ for this very task and I must say it worked a treat.
   Imagine your arranging a round of Golf with a friend over iMessage, you want to invite your other friend, Paul. Just add him to the conversation, ask the question and you can kick him out later if you need to carry on in private. Simple, yet effective.
3. Ability to remove Photo’s from Photo Stream directly on device
   I was genuinely surprised this wasn’t available out of the box. I use my iPhone camera for work now and then, and don’t want those photo’s being mixed in with personal photo’s in Photo Stream. I know you can turn off Photo Stream, but that leaves the potential to forget to turn it back on. Being able to delete Photo Stream photos directly from the device surely makes sense?
4. Tweet a person directly from Contact card
   If your friends have a Twitter account – the details of which are listed within their contact card – when you tap on their Twitter name it takes you in to the Twitter app to see their profile. This is pointless, I know who they are.
   This should do nothing more than initiate a Tweet to that person.
5. Tweet directly from iOS – without having to open Twitter App
   I was looking forward to the Twitter integration in iOS5, but was somewhat dismayed when I found I couldn’t Tweet directly from the home screen in anyway. Yes, I can Tweet a Photo etc, but I’m talking about a normal, everyday Tweet. Not entirely sure how this could fit in to the design, maybe something in the notification center? Going in to the Twitter app is one tap of the screen further than I want.
6. Swipe up from bottom to open task bar
   Since using the 4 and 5 finger gestures on the iPad2, double clicking the home button to bring up the task bar just feels…. well, old.
   A nice thumb swipe up from the bottom of the screen would add that little bit of flair back to the process.

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