Things That Need To Be In iOS 5 | Hacker News Reader

Things That Need To Be In iOS 5

mobilecrunch.com

37 pointshimaniamoli23 comments

If they bring in a better notification system and lock screen, that itself would be a good enough reason for me to upgrade to iOS5/iPhone5.

The writer's on crack though, if he thinks Apple is going to reverse their decision about sideloading 3rd party apps or integrating Gmail features into the mail client.

I don't think it's a definite that there will never be sideloading of apps from 3rd party sources. At a certain point — perhaps when every carrier, every country carries the iPhone, or perhaps when there are a full range of iPhones (similar to the current iPods), or when the hardware innovation stagnates to the point of ongoing incremental improvements with occasional substantial improvements (like the the MacBooks) — being able to offer sideloading from the non-Apple app store may bring in a whole bunch of "advanced" users who wants to achieve what isn't possible at the moment.

At that point, the Apple app store will be so established and prevalent and known to the masses that unless you really needed to, you wouldn't use sideloading: not unlike how Apple app store and the JB app stores exist now, but officially.

Who cares about 'advanced' users? There's so many less of them than normal users.

Do normal users actually pick devices based on being able to side-load apps? If yes, then I'd eventually expect to see it in iOS. If no, then I'd not expect to see it.

For what little it's worth, I think the answer is 'no', but that's based purely on my personal experience and could well be wrong.

i.e. 10 ways to make iOS 5 more like Android.

I have never heard of MobileNotifier. Pretty Cool, but covering up a row of the icons will never fly with Apple. For my purposes the notifications work fine, except for when you are a phone call and you get an alert, you have to respond to it - to end the call.

Seems like the writer technical ignorance forgot something important: a real html5 browser.

The iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows Phone browsers doesn't support designMode/contentEditable on their browsers. So, there is a limit in doing WYSIWYG interfaces like Google Docs.

Not to take anything away from your comment, but Google Doc's are not build using contentEditable as far as I know. I think they are capturing every input and building the DOM "by hand".

This is from a new Google Docs Document:

Obviously they can do other tricks, but doesn't work without changes on mobile browsers.

Full support for the HTML5 Audio API is also necessary.

Seems like you somehow attribute being "a real html5 browser" to supporting contentEditable. Not sure if technical ignorance plays any part there, but just for your interest: contentEditable/designMode first appeared in IE5.5: that's the summer of 2000. WHATWG was formed in 2004.

Seems like you must recheck others ignorance:

http://blog.whatwg.org/the-road-to-html-5-contenteditable#hi...

Also you can see latest commits about it. Or you want a comment saying: contentEditable was working since Google Chrome x.y.z.d, Mozilla Firefox a.b.c.d, Opera t.y.u.i, unknown browser p.l.m.n, etc?

I am generally happy with iOS but here are the three things I would like to see:

1. The option to encrypt ALL user data. 2. Get rid of the iTunes requirement. A post PC device shouldn't need a PC to operate. 3. Multiuser support so I can let someone use my device without giving them access to all my stuff.

That said, I don't expect to see any of these from Apple (except for, maybe, number 1).

Hopefully someday I will be able to do more than swipe left and right to navigate the system. How bout releasing a whole new look and feel to iOS by swiping upwards/downwards, which'll bring you to an open and customizable feel. Widgets I suppose.

I want the ability to have app updates (per app choice) installed automatically that can be scheduled during my sleep time.

No. "Sideloading of Third-party Apps" Whatever your opinion of it, Apple has shown time and time again that this will not officially happen. I would be extremely surprised if it were to happen. I am sure some of Apple's devices are sold at a loss to be later made into revenue by app and music sales. Third party applications would defeat this strategy.

Apple does not sell their devices at a loss and make them up with the app / music store. You can see that this is false from their financials.

but this is possible already.

from the business section of apple's homepage: "Wireless App Distribution

iPad enables enterprises to securely host and wirelessly distribute in-house apps to employees over Wi-Fi and 3G. Apps can be updated without requiring users to connect to their computers. In-house apps can be hosted on any web server accessible to users. Users simply tap on a URL to install apps wirelessly without needing to connect to their computers."

The company I work for distributes its iPad app through this to all our customers. No app store required. And yes, this is a full blown, native iOS app.

Yes, but Apple sets terms and conditions, when and how can you do it (it involves being company of over 500 employees and assk-kissing when handling the certificates).

Basically, you can't do any skunk works in your company, because when you start talking to all people necessary to handle Apple terms, some manager will come and tell you to not do anything, because the standard corporate phone is XYZ and that's it.

You can auth up to 100 devices for testing, and use TestFlight (http://testflightapp.com/) or similar to distribute them over the air.

Yes, adhoc distribution doesn't scale out, but if you've got 100 eager users you can probably get them to convince management to sign the forms.

Except for number 9), the rest is not gonna happen.

I don't see why Apple wouldn't do #1. It's pretty much the most requested feature/improvement.

OpenCL

So basically everything that's in Android 3.0 and most of which is in Android 2.2. Apple starting to play catch up now.

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