Comments on: 5 Tiny Tweaks Apple Could Make to Improve the iPhone BEFORE 3.0

By: chezbot

chezbot — Thu, 21 May 2009 20:52:53 +0000

Snooze for appointment alarms. If they go off and you have a bunch of other notifications, most times you don’t even see them and when you unlock your phone, they disappear. I am constantly forgetting to do stuff that I want to be reminded of. Also, the ability to mark messages as “important”. Not sure if that exists, but I haven’t been able to figure it out.

By: scott

scott — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:09:14 +0000

The scrool down feature could be fixed this way: Press the top of the screen, HOLD down your finger, drag it to the bottom. Or, anywhere you want to stop. No more flick, flick, flick. Takes too long, and REALLY smudges up the screen……

By: Wolfmore

Wolfmore — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 05:39:58 +0000

This is why I’m just gonna keep jaol breaking. The ideas posted here are more likely to come out on a jailbroken iPhone near you. Apple’s way of thinking is to keep things simple. For this reason it is like pulling teeth to get them to gives us toggles users can turn on and off like autocorrect.(after a bunch outspoken users complained and petitioned Apple) They don’t want to confuse and intimidate the less tech savvy. Sucks for people like me who love to tweak and personolize. I say check out this site to read about jailbrokens apps available: http://www.installerapps.com/

By: jailbrokeho

jailbrokeho — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 02:07:22 +0000

I find it truly annoying to hear notifications while on a call. Disabling notifications should have been offered since day one. Then again, so should the rest of your list.

By: Wyatt

Wyatt — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 01:24:19 +0000

While those 5 are good and so are the ones contributed by readers here is what aggregates me the most. Why van the Calendar app create appointments by multiple days by the users choice like the Alarm app does. If they would bring that functionality to the Calendar app my user experience would increase like 10 fold alone.

By: The Digital Alchemist

The Digital Alchemist — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 00:53:13 +0000

Allen,

 Jailbroken phones have an app that animates the weather icon... works well too!

By: travis

travis — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:35:15 +0000

I agree 100% with ana where is forward SMS I would rather that then stupid copy and paste I don’t see why this is so important to everybody work on mms before that

By: Captcesarin

Captcesarin — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:44:00 +0000

Please, for the Love of God, fix the calendar app!! Make it so we can input appointments much quicker, like in a blackberry or palm! Just tap on the time of day, and start writing, and with a preset alarm, of course!!

By: Marc

Marc — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 18:35:57 +0000

Definately have always thought someway to go straight to bottom would be great and i agree with tom, ifwhen you touch the screen you already see the scrolling bar on the right, why cant we just grab the darn thing and move to what part of the page we want. Someone mentioned using two fingers to scroll faster, i have noticed that some pages( like when searching for tickets on stubhub) there is a scrolling area within the webpage as a whole, and if you want to scroll down it, tha is what you do , use two fingers instead of one.

By: Ana

Ana — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 17:23:45 +0000

APPLE should be embarrassed that i even have to say this but…..the ability to forward a SMS text message, please

By: Cjay

Cjay — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 17:09:31 +0000

there shud be a cancel sending a text message instead of clearing a text message

By: Rick

Rick — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:57:48 +0000

I don’t think it’s currently possible, but I would like to use Maps in landscape.

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:56:08 +0000

I would also like the maps application to have a “new directions” button so I don’t have to click edit all the time and then X away the old thing and I wish there was a button I could use to click so it would put in current location in either to or from automatically

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:51:40 +0000

I would love to be able to scroll to the bottom with one tap but what I would love even more is to be able to grab the little scroll bar on the right and slide up and down so I can quickly scroll to the middle of a very long page too. It’s probobly gonna take some more work for that though because it would be pretty useless unless the full page was loaded in advance so I could see where to stop and that would probobly take more free memory

By: Aaron Matthew Kaiser

Aaron Matthew Kaiser — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:48:50 +0000

A small addendum to #4. In my experience, it’s also important to turn off notifications during video playback (of any kind: QT in Safari, YouTube, or directly in iPod). I am in entertainment and use my iPhone to show off my work (short films, commercials, demo reels, etc) in an effort to drive work. I don’t want to worry about a message popping up in the middle of the video, ruining the experience and possibly embarrassing multiple individuals based on potentially personal content.

By: Nnk

Nnk — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:23:29 +0000

Something I have been missing:

(multi-letter) search feature in iPod song or artist lists, similar to what is available in contacts. Just selecting the first letter only just means too much flicking to get to what I am looking for.

By: Eric

Eric — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:03:02 +0000

I don’t sync much, so it really bothers me that the ‘edit’ screen for calendar events is so limited. I can’t change the label (work, home, etc) and can’t setup any oddball recurrances (every other Friday, 2nd Tuesday of the month, etc). These are easy to setup in the desktop app, but impossible on the iPhone.

By: Markus

Markus — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:48:46 +0000

Hi,

Great article as always! I agree on all 5 subjects but would just like to add one thing aboun #2:

Holding the home button down for X seconds is already used for performing a "force quit" when an app for some reason crash. Mail & Safari are also running somewhat in the background and can be 100% closed buy holding down the home button for a few seconds (I forgot if its 3, 5 or whatever seconds).

Keep up the good work. Can't wait to hear what Apple has to say tomorrow.

By: Jonathan Wilbur

Jonathan Wilbur — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:12:44 +0000

Funny how simple suggestions like this make you think about how you could be using your iphone more efficiently. Great list!

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:10:26 +0000

How about a search and/or sort feature feature in email? That’s really the only thing I miss from my Blackberry.

By: Allen

Allen — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:03:49 +0000

I would like the weather app to just show the correct weather on the home screen like the calander app shows the correct date. Simple as that. No need to open the weather all unless looking up another city.

By: Jon

Jon — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:58:20 +0000

I’d love it if location services didn’t ask me every time I launched an app whether I want to use/allow it or not. Let me set this in preferences either globally or on an app specific basis (both would be better) and the apps could just then use on launch without bothering me.

By: Gary

Gary — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:57:12 +0000

Nice suggestions. The Home button click and hold is currently used for force-quitting apps, so it would be interesting if they changed that.

What I'd like to see is implementation of some finger gestures for shortcuts, similar to the MacBook trackpad. Tomorrow can't come any sooner!

By: Dirk

Dirk — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:51:31 +0000

I would like to see the option to navigate back to the first view of a navigation-based app with a double-click on the left navigation button.

For example in Mail, with many Mail accounts, I always need to tap 3 times from any mail to get back to the accounts and go to the next unread mail. (Actually, adding a 'Unread mails' folder on top level in Mail would be even better)

By: Manuel R. Ciosici

Manuel R. Ciosici — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:49:07 +0000

I found a cool shortcut a few days ago. If the iPhone is locked, in the screen with the “slide to unlock” thing, if you press home twice you get iPod controls.

By: Wesley

Wesley — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:19:10 +0000

The item 5 could be simpler: we want our iPod app more like the Remote app, where you can use search AND create and edit playlists (not just the lame “On-The-Go”, that’s for iPods with no good controls).

By: Omari James

Omari James — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:09:23 +0000

I've thought about most of these things.

1) I've thought about this deeply since I use safari heavily. It's one of my most used apps. I thought that maybe if you hold two index fingers down and scroll down , it would make the scroll go faster.

2) also. I would like a short cut to return to the most recent app ! Maybe three clicks on the home button to return to the recent app.

3) For this , maybe they cab implement some of the MacBook trackpad technology used to rotate images in iphoto to rotate apps to lock in either landscape or portrate. I'm not sure how you would UNlock the position. Maybe press the home key and a a little note will come up as the same way the volume and slient / audio on note comes on.

4) + 5) are great points. I agree. Could not have said it better.

By: antonioj

antonioj — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:02:11 +0000

3 is available for jailbreak iphones via handy SBSsettings toggle widget

By: David

David — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:59:09 +0000

Completely agree about turning off notifications during a call. Not only is it annoying to hear it buzzing throughout a call, you can’t END the call until you click through all the damn notifications.

By: Jimmy

Jimmy — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:58:15 +0000

Well, I’d really like to be able to edit the text library and chose which words replace others.

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:52:14 +0000

Often, I go to Maps only to be reminded that my Location Services is off. Why give me that link to the Settings app to turn it on when the link itself could be a Location “ON” button? One tap… BOOM!

By: kyleshankles

kyleshankles — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:49:59 +0000

Hey guys, great Podcast (your latest) just got through listening on my way to work.

If there's any smalI tweak I think the iPhone should have, I would say a Volume button Camera Capture feature for self photos to send to dear old grandma. Maybe more than just "small" but needed.

By: Chris Oldroyd

Chris Oldroyd — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:44:55 +0000

I didn’t even realse point one, that is a great tip

By: Mercerwrxer

Mercerwrxer — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:44:52 +0000

I think the email and text apps in landscape mode would be a nice Lil update