Now that iOS 4.2 is out and we've lauded its best features, it's time to take a look at its biggest omissions. (It's only fair, right?) We took an informal survey of Macworld editors to determine the most-hoped-for features that still aren't here, then whittled the list down to the top ten.

Better notifications

      Push notifications were a welcome addition in iOS 3, letting applications and services notify you--via alarm tones and onscreen messages--of events, updates, and other information. But let's be honest: iOS's notifications feature is mediocre at best. Only one notification can appear on your device's screen at a time--if you don't get a chance to read or act on a message before another one comes in, you usually end up losing the first. And don't forget those times you've taken your phone out of your pocket or bag and performed the habitual unlock swipe...only to realize there was a notification on the screen that you'll never get back. Or those times when you're watching a video or playing a game and a notification pops up--if it's something that requires an action, you usually have to stop what you're doing and switch to another app, because if you just dismiss the notification, you can't go back and review it later. (Did we mention that notifications are modal, meaning you must deal with them when they appear?) As we noted in our iOS 4 wishlist earlier this year, Apple would do well to spend some time with a few webOS and Android phones, which handle notifications much more elegantly.

Improved multitasking

      Perhaps the biggest improvement delivered by iOS 4.0 was multitasking, which let you "run" more than one app at a time. But we use the word in quotes because, for the most part, only one app is actually running at any moment in time. Other apps, most of which are essentially sleeping, appear in iOS 4's multitasking shelf (accessible by double-pressing the Home button) for quick task switching. Apple does provide a few API hooks to allow limited background tasks--such as letting a photo app finish uploading pictures to Flickr, or enabling an audio app to stream music--but apps that don't fall within a narrow range of functionality are left out in the cold.

      Apple hasn't provided true multitasking because of concerns about performance and battery life. And we get that--in fact, we appreciate it. But now that we've had a taste of multitasking, we'd like to see Apple extend the feature to allow for a few other types of tasks. For example, we'd like apps for consuming downloaded content--RSS readers, Twitter clients, news apps, and, of course, Instapaper--to be able to periodically download updated content in the background, rather than making us wait each time we launch them.

      Also, the current implementation of the multitasking shelf leaves a lot to be desired. For example, apps stay in the shelf--even if you haven't used them in days--until you manually remove them. If you tend to use many apps, the shelf becomes little more than an endless string of icons, making it less useful than switching between apps using the Home screen. An option in the Settings app to "Remove idle apps from the multitasking shelf after # hours/days" would go a long way to streamlining the process.

More Mail features

      It's great to see the iPad finally get the best new features of iOS4 Mail: a unified Inbox, multiple Exchange accounts, threaded discussions, notes syncing, and MobileMe alias support. And Mail on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch continues to be a solid app that gets the most important things right. But we can't help but wish that--over three years after Mail first debuted--Apple would bring a few more oft-requested features from Mac OS X Mail onto iOS. Just a few examples include the capability to mark all as read and delete all; send to e-mail contact groups; flag messages; and choose between multiple signatures. More ambitious wishes include on-device folder editing, junk-mail filtering, smart folders, and more control over text when viewing and composing messages.

Better application data sharing/syncing/access

      One of iOS's most significant barriers to productivity continues to be the lack of a robust way for applications to share data and documents with other apps. Apple has taken a few baby steps in the right direction--with iOS 3.2 on the iPad and iOS 4 on the iPhone and iPod touch--by letting apps register themselves for particular types of files (for example, PDFs, Word docs, and text files). That way, when you receive one of those types of files in, say, an e-mail message, you can open the file in one of the apps that supports it. But this is more of a kludge than a solution--for example, if you want to open a Word document in two different apps, you need to save a separate copy of that file in each app. As much as Apple seems to be trying to avoid it, iOS needs some sort of central file-storage area where applications can share data and documents with each other.

      Similarly, getting documents and data onto your iOS device is still a pain, and the process differs wildly between apps. Some require you to drag documents in and out of iTunes when your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch is connected via USB; others sync via MobileMe, Dropbox, or another online service; still others include some sort of built-in Web server that mounts a volume on your Mac or Windows PC for transferring files; and a few support only the e-mail method mentioned above. Apple needs to make this process simpler and provide a way for app developers to incorporate this new-and-improved method into their apps, so that getting documents onto your iOS device--and, just as important, being able to do something with that data once it's there--is as easy as it is on a Mac.

Source from Computerworld

www.todayisp.com

Todaynic.com International Limited

ICANN CNNIC HKDNR Accredited Registrar