What I’d Like To See In iOS 6
I won’t surprise anyone if I say I love my iDevices. I’ve tried many smartphones and tablets, and I keep coming back to Apple’s products, because the fit my mobile needs best.
“Best” isn’t “perfectly” though, and there are a few compromises I’d love to see revisited for the next version of the OS. Here’s my list:
- Background downloading
I understand why applications aren’t allowed to multitask. Battery life, security, yada yada, I agree with all that. But I’d love to get a way for applications to silently download content even if they’re not active; RSS feeds, podcasts, emails, etc. It could be limited in different ways: only when the device is plugged in, or only once an hour per app, or only for apps that have been used in the past week… Or all of the above. Bottom line is, batteries are probably good enough now that if Apple allowed for a limited version of background downloading (not background processing), it would be more of a benefit than an issue.
It works with NewsStand, I think it should be expanded a bit beyond that. - Live icons
By that I mean icons that can change to indicate different statuses. Again, it could be limited to preserve the aesthetics of the OS, and I’m sure Apple would check for every app that requests that Lordly privilege, but some apps could definitely use something like that: in some cases, having to launch an app just to get half a second worth of information is counter-productive, and there has to be a way to tackle that issue without compromising iOS’s advantages. I think. (more…)
