“Apple CEO Tim Cook didn’t divulge any secrets during his question and answer session at the D11 conference on Tuesday, but he did reveal one interesting nugget about a change in the company’s thinking,” Jared Newman reports for TIME Magazine.
“In response to a question from AllThingsD‘s Walt Mossberg about Apple’s tight control over iOS, Cook suggested that Apple may let apps do more on the iPhone and iPad than they’ve been allowed to in the past,” Newman reports. “‘I think you will see us open up more in the future,’ Cook said, ‘but not to the degree that we put the customer at risk of having a bad experience.'”
Newman writes, “So what could Apple, realistically, open up on? Cook didn’t say, of course. But we can make a few educated guesses, based on Apple’s principle of trying to make the right decisions on the user’s behalf:”
Apple opening up iOS: Four ways it might happen
• Opening Up Siri
• Notification Center Widgets
• Setting Default Apps
• More Background Upload/Download Privileges
Read more in the full article here.
The four listed are actually sensible…the first 3 highly useful.
What if Apple doesn’t do any of that or does all four plus more? Kinda makes Jared look ridiculous.
– They should open up Siri to be raped & plundered, for sure. It’s a useless piece of trash anyway.
– Not too bothered about widgets. Most are a waste of time & are rubbish. If I want to look something up, I open up the app. Widgets are for retarded Android spastics.
– I’m quite happy with the default apps. Chrome is a piece of shit anyway so why would I want to use that as my default browser.
– Background download/upload? What the hell is that? More battery sucking shit. Not interested.
It seems to me the writer of the article is an Android fan. I don’t need no Android shit on my iPhone.
which is the base line of user experience:
Less customization means saves times,
User didn’t have to customize, the OS did all the work.
“less and simple is better”
Awww… You’re not being fair to Siri. I use her all the time. First thing I talk to in the morning, and the last thing I talk to in the evening.
At night:
What’s on my calendar for tomorrow?
Wake me up at 05:00AM
Launch iHeart Radio
Morning:
Text LK “Watched all of Arrested Development, sad it’s over.”
Show my email
Show me email from Naked Security
Set appointment for Quincy and Vet Tuesday at 9
Where can I rent a car nearby?
Show me driving directions to [Insert Client Name Here]
Call [Insert Person’s name here]
Where can I see Star Trek?
Text {insert person’s name} “Did you see that the percentage of Netflix Devices viewing Arrested Development on Sunday were by far Macs and iPads?”
Text {insert person’s name] “Got your message about the gun show. Yes, count me in.”
night
Cancel all alarms.
When is my next appointment?
and so on.
I’m always talking to the thing.
In contrast, Google Now does searches really well but being able to use the general productivity aspects of the phone without punching buttons just isn’t there yet. Siri rocks.
Monk: Where’s the gun show?
Siri: Do u have a small penis?
Monk: Siri…where can I find a real girlfriend to talk to?
Siri: What’s the matter, is my headphone jack getting all stretchy again. Does this UI make my back plate look to 2007 ish?
– maybe you should talk more clearly, SIRI is amazing and saves a lot of time daily for me. But judging by your posts here maybe SIRI isn’t the issue?
– can be useful for some things where the app doesn’t need to be opened – ie quick weather forecast, current exchange rate etc. Sure the apps are easy to use but in some cases a widget can save you time AND battery life.
– Chrome is owned by info stealing (evil) Google so I agree with that – but in some cases a specific app is better than Safari.
– The least of the 4 for sure, but if you own apps that need to download a lot of data it is very annoying to wait without using the IOS device for anything else. Generally not a big deal though as only needed for initial installs.
Yeah Siri works better than you give her credit for. Could she be improved? Until she’s a saner HAL 9000 there is definite room for improvement yes. It seems though some science fiction ideas that look cool in movies don’t always translate to real life anyway. Probably takes a generation or two for those kinds of changes to become accepted, as opposed to overnight.
’cause your phone plays chopsticks, right?…cool
I used Siri the first week, but it didn’t understand more often than not, and the results were largely useless in the UK at the time. For what I want to look up regularly I have apps, I don’t like to have people hear me all the time, plus I can type whilst on a call or talking to someone which I can’t with Siri.
This is a good point. I use Siri very often. Almost all the time when using the iPhone or iPad but I’m almost always alone. If I were around lots of people I’d probably not do it.
WebGL
Allow users to delete Apple supplied apps we do not use. Maps Game Center & Bookshelf come to mind.
Ok, the Maps jokes need to end. It was a problem that was extremely blown out of proportion. If you live in an area that is well mapped you probably had no problems. If you live in a more obscure area, (Australian Outback) you might have had issues. Most people did not, a very vocal few did. In Los Angeles it has never given me incorrect directions. When I’d purposely look for areas that I thought it would have issues with, I was able to find mistakes. I could often reproduce the same errors on google maps.
I just asked Google Now, “Where Am I.” It gave me back a google search on Geolocation.
I just asked Siri, “Where Am I?” Siri showed my location in maps. Touch it I zoomed in, switched to 3D and got a stunning display of my current location.
With all due respect, Apple’s Maps application is nowhere near as bad as it has been made out to be.
Totally agree – except about the outback Aussie comment.
I’m not totally remote down under – but nearly. And every time I need location / route data Maps has worked better than CoPilot, TomTom, BING and Google (desktop and IOS).
I still use TomTom on iphone as it allows route planning with a number of addresses, and instant speed feedback which Maps doesn’t but Maps is more accurate than the lot
I mean no offense. When I look at the Australian Outback (via pictures) I see vast (with a capital V) unspoiled land. There’s not a lot of street signs and street numbers and stuff. It’s absolutely stunning. It’s other worldly.
I just wouldn’t think Maps would be able to locate much in areas like this:
Love the last pic – no offense taken either. Just responding that my Maps experience Down Under is still great.
In places it is other worldly – and probably why, to start with, I never thought the free ‘new’ Apple Maps would know things the other big (and expensive) contenders didn’t.
Just another way I under-estimated Apple.
It’s nowhere near as bad, but also not as good as it can be. My gripe before was a minor one, where a particular cafe couldn’t be found after half a year of sending corrections, but I found out last week that it can’t find more than a few of the dozens of branches a major bank (TD) has in my city, which is the capital of Canada, which is NOT an obscure area. It goes by slightly different names–TD Canada Trust, TD Financial, Banque TD, etc. But all have TD as a distinct part of their name, and Google has no problem locating every single one of them.
I get slightly better results if I type “td near me” or “td near ottawa”, but it’s still missing over half of them, still doesn’t find the one closest to me… and come on, if the current map view is of my location or city, it should be pretty clear I’m not looking for some place in the middle of nowhere, Chad–a country in Africa. I mean literally nowhere–it’s not a town or anything in Chad, it inexplicably plops a marker down for Chad the country, “td” doesn’t appear anywhere.
Apple Maps’ GPS directions are excellent… but only if it can find the places you’re looking for to begin with.
I don’t *want* to have to fire up the GMaps app, but too many times Apple’s maps app leaves me no choice.
Yeah how about more Google melted 3D maps criticism, jokes and parodies that hang on forever? What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. How lame are you going to look when Apple Maps are as good or better than anyone else’s (and they are getting there)? Only trolls and Fandroid will then resort to old tech stereotypes for vacuous, antiquated, irrelevant and disingenuous arguments.
Notification center is an unmitigated disaster. My kids installed “Blitz” on the iPad and I can’t get that app to stop sending me banner pop-ups for the life of me. Apparently notifications and notification center are two different things? I have no clue
No, notification center is not an unmitigated disaster. It is a useful shortcut to information you need but don’t want to have to go digging for periodically.
Try this:
Go to settings.
Select Notifications.
Scroll down you will see a list of Applications under the heading “Notification Center.”
( I found and installed “Blitz” to test.)
Blitz showed up at the bottom of the application list.
I tapped on it and got the standard Notification Center settings screen for the application. I turned Notification Center off.
Presto. Blitz is muted.
Hmm. That’s what I’ve done and checked ten times over the months and still I get banner notifications… Guess ill just uninstall.
I find notification center unintuitive. I’ll get a banner notification that disappears that I want to see again, so I go to notification center and it’s not there! Because notification center is actually not your center for notifications.
Sorry but that’s ridiculous.
You might also try, when you first install, telling it that no it can’t send you push notifications when it asks.
Yes! I bet that’s it. Thanks. Btw, I didn’t know Siri could do “show me my emails”. Thanks for the tip.
Have you actually turned off notifications for the app?
Go to SETTINGS > NOTIFICATIONS > Blitz and turn off.
Normally very simple
Open up Apple TV to third party developers, please!
More cool APIs I guess. That would be awesome.
They only thing I would want is to let other browser engines on the platform. I really want to use Firefox. They don’t reject apps any more because they “duplicate” functionality so open up for new browser I guess is a logical step.
But I don’t think Apple will open up in the way people think when they read what Tim said. There will probably be more thig you can do but not digg around freely like on android.