iOS 14 was great, but a lot more needs to be done. We still want Apple to address some of our old ailments.
The release of iOS 14 last year was one of the best iPhone updates yet. Apple didn't necessarily ship everything on our wish list last spring, but there have been big strides in a surprising number of them, with a massive home screen overhaul, big advances in privacy, and an overdue streamlining of the Siri UI. And subsequent updates have kept the momentum going, with the upcoming release of iOS 14.5, which is slated to bring Apple Watch unlocking, app tracking transparency, and a ton of other tweaks and additions.
Turning to iOS 15, we still wish Apple would address some of our perennial (Siri) complaints, but the addition of big changes like the app library and home screen widgets has come a long way to bring iOS to life to make a more modern and flexible mobile operating system. Still, we would like Apple to go one step further. Here are some of the features and changes we have most wanted for this year's major iPhone OS update.
Appearance
Lock screen
Aside from a few shortcuts that you can't customize, the iPhone's lock screen doesn't do much more than display the time and date, and (briefly) the battery level. Its main purpose is to show notifications when they arrive, but the lock screen really isn't the best place for that - they should flash when they're new, but seeing old notifications on the lock screen isn't much use that isn't as good as swiping down to reveal the notification shadow would be met.
It would be much better if we could put widgets on the lock screen. If there are security concerns about viewing data on an unlocked phone (although Face ID should be able to take care of it, as it is with notifications), another alternative might be for Siri to act proactively and Displays information that it deems useful based on our usage habits.
When you're coming to a calendar event, you might see it, but not if it's more than an hour away. If you always call your mom at 3pm on Saturdays, a “Call Mom” button might appear around that time. The current weather and the short-term forecast could be permanently visible. Tapping any of these things would unlock your iPhone (with Face ID) and take you straight to the appropriate app.
The up-to-date lock screen with time and list of notifications doesn't quite do what a modern lock screen should be - helping you get straight to the thing you wanted to pick up your iPhone for and help you with it to keep the device locked longer.
Always-on display
The Apple Watch has an always-on display. OLED Android phones have had an always-on display for years. There's no reason why the OLED iPhone models can't have a display like this too. An always-on sleep screen for iPhone should be similar to the lock screen, with a few tweaks. It should show the time, date, and battery level on a black background, but no notifications. Perhaps new notifications could appear briefly and then disappear again, but we need fewer reasons to pick up our smartphone, nothing more.
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| An always-on display would be good for the iPhone (c) EverythingApplePro |
I would love to see Apple take the idea of the complications from the Apple Watch and put them on the lock screen and always-on sleep screen. Maybe four of them, flanked by the clock, with standardized formats. Developers could create complications for their apps, and users could choose which four they would like to see. This would be a great way to get simple information without picking up your phone and opening apps. Much of what we need we could access without even having to unlock the phone. It would make the iPhone more useful even when it is idle, while also providing an important function in promoting digital health and wellbeing.
App library
The app library was one of the biggest and best new features in iOS 14. A place where all of your apps are and where you can remove rarely used apps from your home screen - Apple's answer to the app drawer that Android users have always had.
While the concept is great, the implementation leaves a little to be desired. The automatic app grouping is confusing - it's unclear which apps are in which group if you can't see the icon, and it's hard to understand why tapping the larger icons in each group opens the app, but this Tap on the small group of four icons in the lower right corner to open the group for exploring. The automatic ordering of groups is also frustrating - core UI features shouldn't be rearranged every time you visit or you'll never get a sense of where to find what.
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| Using the app library isn't as intuitive as it should be, and its constant rearrangement goes against all good interface conventions (c) IDG |
Apple could change each group in the app library to show four large icons and open the group when you tap anywhere on it (instead of launching the app directly). The group arrangement should be static and editable (using the usual tap-and-hold wobble mode). And there should be an option in Settings that defaults the app library to list view instead of dragging down the app library screen or tapping the search bar at the top.
Apps
Weather
The weather app is stuck in the past and has changed little since the redesign in iOS 7. It's time to completely revise the look and get rid of the Weather Channel as a data source. Why else did Apple buy Dark Sky?
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| This is a very three-year-old app design (c) Apple |
Weather is one of those things that everyone has different priorities, so the new weather app should focus on adaptability and customization, in addition to bringing the interface up to a modern standard. We'd love to see live radar, more info, an actual seven-day forecast, and weather service alerts, not to mention a design that doesn't look like it was designed three years ago.
Home
Speaking of apps in need of an overhaul, the Home app feels like Apple doesn't care about HomeKit at all. A simple grid of squares with minimal information, with no direct feedback on what happens if you tap or long-press on one? Lights that are set individually instead of in groups?
Home needs bigger widgets for various HomeKit-enabled devices that show more information about their current state and have smarter built-in controls. HomePod needs its own tab that shows recent queries and the results of Siri questions that need visual assistance. The entire app needs a fundamental change in design philosophy that gives the impression that smart home technology is indeed important to Apple. The current home app has very minimal product character, and that's not a good look.
Shares
The stocks app might have been useful in the days when you had to call your broker to make trades, but these days smartphone trading is all the rage. Manually adding stock symbols just to get data you can't really do anything with feels like a waste.
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| Imagine if all of this data could be pulled into and linked to your stock trading apps to take action (c) Apple |
Apple should allow finance apps like E * Trade to integrate with Apple's stocks app via an API so that your stocks are always up to date with your accounts. And if you want to take a trade, the Stocks app could deep-link to that very stock within a supported app. With these changes, we could actually open them up at times.
Standard apps
With iOS 14, Apple made it possible to choose a different web browser or email app as the default, so clicking links and sending emails will automatically open the app you choose, rather than always Safari or Mail.
A later update taught Siri to ask which audio app to use when you ask them to play a song, artist, album, or podcast. While this isn't exactly the same (you can't go into Settings and change preferences), it's a start. Just go ahead and let's choose real presets.
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| There's no reason for Apple not to go much further. Imposing Apple Maps when asking for directions or typing an address is protectionism that benefits Apple, not its customers (c) IDG |
Why not let's assign a default camera app? There are plenty of good choices on the App Store, but the camera button on the lock screen only ever goes to Apple, and when you ask Siri to take a picture, she does too. Messaging should also get standard app treatment. In some parts of the world, WeChat is everything, and the fact that Apple always wants to use Messages must be a constant frustration.
Siri
Last year we found that while Apple is continuously making improvements to Siri, it still has a long way to go before it can measure up to the Google Assistant or Alexa. We wrote the following about my hopes for Siri in iOS 13:
Siri still lags far behind Google Assistant and Alexa when it comes to answering common questions and taking actions with third-party hardware and services. There are so many obvious shortcomings; You can do a Spotlight search for a flight number and get detailed flight information, but ask Siri and you get just a web search.
Siri needs better speech recognition, faster response times, and more fun activities like trivia and games. It needs to provide more precise answers to a much wider range of questions.
Two years later, all of this is still true. Siri still fails at pretty basic things it should be able to do, such as: Flight status, for example, and the ability to link commands together without having to say “Hey Siri” every time should have been added years ago. Why can't I tell Siri to stop or snooze an alarm that is going on? And it's utterly absurd that Siri would need a network connection to do anything at all. For a privacy-conscious company like Apple, local tasks such as setting timers or reminders should work completely offline.
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| The new Siri on-screen ad was a long-overdue improvement, but Siri needs to get dramatically smarter and more powerful, not just prettier (c) Apple |
Apple tried to make it look like Siri got a big boost in iOS 14 by stating that it knows 20 times as many facts as it did three years ago. I'm sorry, but 20 times more facts than it was in the days of iOS 11 isn't the bar Apple needs to overcome. That number should be two orders of magnitude higher!
Apple likes to tout its 25 billion Siri requests per month as an impressive number, but that's just a big number that sounds impressive. There are over 1.65 billion Apple devices in active use worldwide. That's a measly 15 inquiries per device and month. On average, users make Siri requests on each of their devices only about once every other day!
Security and data protection
App tracking transparency
Last year we asked Apple to make reliability and performance the core pillars of iOS 14, and the iOS 14 release has been remarkably solid. Of course, no operating system used by hundreds of millions of users with five-year-old iPhone hardware is bulletproof, but Apple gets high marks for the reliability of iOS 14.
What surprised us the most was the huge surge in privacy features. From the transparency of app tracking to the containment of hidden access to the clipboard, microphone, and camera to the labeling of privacy in the App Store - Apple seems to be fed up with the abuse of privacy that is found in smartphones - Apps is so widespread.
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| One of the privacy measures in iOS 14 is a notification when an app reads your clipboard. iOS 15 should do more! (c) IDG |
Privacy protection is Apple's great asset right now, and I would love to see iOS 15 go further to stop the unnecessary and greedy devouring of personal information. The average user has no idea how much personal information is being gathered about them, and they would revolt if they had it. Apple took a big step in in-app tracking transparency with iOS 14.5, but this is a war that Apple would do well to escalate.
2FA app integration
With iOS 14, Apple added the great ability to take codes sent via SMS for two-factor authentication and paste them into the correct request field with just one tap. That's a huge usability improvement compared to jumping back and forth between messages and the app or website you want to access.
But texting isn't exactly the best 2FA method - single-use codes generated by a coding app are much more secure. Apple should develop a secure API that allows apps like Authy, Google Authenticator, or Microsoft Authenticator to automatically fill in 2FA request fields. It could work in the same way as the automatic filling in of SMS, only with apps for generating one-time codes.
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