“There is no sugar coating it, iOS 8 has had a rough start,” Gordon Kelly writes for Forbes. “Ongoing problems on older devices have resulted in the lowest adoption levels in the platform’s history (Apple quotes 64% of compatible devices after nearly 4 months, including new iPhones and iPads running iOS 8 out the box).”
“This is a great shame because on paper iOS 8 is one of the best releases of iOS to date,” Kelly writes. “It is Apple’s most open software yet, expanding interoperability between third party apps, adding long awaited features like support for widgets and third party keyboards and bringing Apple HealthKit and Apple Pay all the while remaining slick and fast in use. So how does iOS 8 improve its public image? It isn’t a lemon but frustration is growing and changes are needed to reinstall confidence.”
So here is what I think should be top of Apple’s iOS 8 hit list:
1. More Considered Releases
2. Homescreen Overhaul
3. An App Drawer
4. Reachable Back And Next Buttons
5. Phablet Specific Apps
“The free nature of iOS upgrades means Apple is never likely to face a ‘Windows Vista’ moment with iOS 8 and the surety of iOS 9 launching some time in late 2015 means it won’t hang around for years polluting the brand either,” Kelly writes. “That said Apple could do with some good iOS 8 PR right now and ticking off some of the items on this list would be a good place to start.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related article:
Open letter to Tim Cook: Apple needs to do better – January 5, 2015
Add to the list Newstand. Many have written about the shortcomings. Hasn’t been updated in who knows how long. Needs a good revision to bring it in line with the new iOS standards.
Newsstand needs to die.
I hate apps for publications. Hate Adobe Air for publications. Just let us download a PDF and read it wit Good Reader.
I totally agree with these suggestions. My complaint, along with several non-tech savy users that I know, is that “back and next” buttons are unintuitive along with some other user-interface operations.
Safari on the iOS is so hard to manipulate for many. Click on one item in Safari, something pops up that is wrong and it is almost impossible to go back. Where is the back button?
The user interface in “phone” requires scrolling while the functions that are way below (such as “send message”) need to be at the top in a menu like setup.
I know that young people and tech people will think this is trivial but the Mac’s whole user interface and purpose was intentionally designed by Steve’s teams for the purpose of making computers accessible to those who were not techie minded and to make the computer as transparent (as a piece of technology) as possible.
It was the MS mindset to elevate the tech minded and create dependency upon the tech personnel as well as creating jobs on this alone. There is also the feel of “power” that some IT and tech people enjoy. Steve’s purpose was to liberate the masses from this in HIS products. I spend far too much time helping people on what should be more intuitive.
Another longstanding issue with Safari is pinch-zoom-CRASH! I notice too on my iPhone 6 Plus while in Safari going from Portrait to Landscape also often results in crashing. Hello!! Pretty basic bug fix needed!
These crashes are most likely NOT OS problems. Most likely caused by idiot page designers who don’t know squat about the difference between vector & raster images, so don’t flatten graphics before adding them to a webpage with even the POTENTIAL of being pinched or zoomed or changed via rotation of the display.
This problem of idiot web designers is not an Apple problem. It goes back to Adobe illustrator choking RIPs (the equipment that prepares printing plates for presses) as early Macs made their way into printing facilities. Adobe bought out FreeHand (which printers LOVED and handled graphics beautifully), and killed it. These crash problems lies most likely with the company with the Red LOGO starting with the letter “A” (not Apple).
Hmmm. Well it’s very widespread. Between Flash and this issue it seems Adobe houses are really glass houses and every click is like a brick thrown at it.
Agreed I have noticed that that famed ease of use seems to be less of a priority of late with inconsistencies and awkwardness creeping in though in this regard I think 8 is generally better than 7 which was so full of compromises. 8 just feels a bit more complex with the new functionality often not revealing itself well though as I have an older iPad sometimes its a matter of finding out it isn’t actually available to you.
Can you explain how the back and next buttons are unintuitive? At least Back does exactly what it says — goes Back to the previous pane you were at in the same app.
IMHO, the description I’ve heard of a _vaguely_ similar thing on Android is really confusing.. I think Back can switch you around apps, sometimes, and is not always consistent?
At least in iOS, Back is consistent.
Um WIFI? I had to downgrade a mac mini back to Mavericks as streaming video would simply puke out on Yosemite….
Wifi has been around for HOW LONG?
come on apple, VERY Microsoftian…..
Yes wifi is now a complex PC like function whereas before I barely gave it a second thought. I used to laugh and cry at my Partner as happened last week when she couldn’t get our intranet though I could. Laugh at its illogical performance on a PC the moment it auto updates its OS and cry because I had to spend time to try to sort it out because of her refusal to accept its her PC because all the settings ‘seemed’ right (when has that ever stopped a PC from not functioning). However having a little taste of that now on my iPad and the Mac I updated to Mavericks which now can’t communicate on Airdrop with my other on Mountain Lion I am laughing a little less and crying a little more and daren’t update my Newer Mac just in case. Have never in 20 years worried much in that regard.
1. More Considered Releases: always.
2. Homescreen Overhaul: I like the home screen the way it is. I put all my often used apps there and the rest on other screens.
3. An App Drawer: wtf is this?
4. Reachable Back And Next Buttons: no extra buttons only in software!
5. Phablet Specific Apps: nonsense!
1. RTFA, moron.
2. RTFA, moron.
3. RTFA, moron.
4. RTFA, moron.
5. RTFA, moron.
This guy basically wants Apple to make him an Android phone.
What Apple needs to do is squash bugs now and make sure iOS 9 is stable as a rock when it first ships, even if that means going lite on new features.
I’m starting to associate Tim Cook’s face with the software issues.
Tim is the face of Apple these days. While I don’t expect him to know enough to fix even a single problem with the look and function of iTunes, for example, I have to wonder these days if he cares.
Does Tim consider the poor state of Apple software -compared to what they want us to believe about it- an acceptable price to pay for high growth rates?
For example, I’ve deleted half my subscriptions to podcasts because of ITunes not synching them properly across my machines. Instead, I download the MP3 file to my desktop and listen there. Not elegant, but at least I know where I can hear it.
And let’s not forget Mail. Why do I have to delete the same doggone emails on EACH of my devices??? Small issue, but annoys me several times a day.
Sounds like you’re using a POP email service, like Earthlink. IMAP email servers update everywhere when a change is made on one device.
Maybe you need to switch to an IMAP server instead of POP. I am now all IMAP and I no longer have this issue.
Mail didn’t reliably sync one of my three IMAP accounts. Switching to a third-party email client fixed the problem. Some IMAP servers have slightly nonstandard flags. Apple, I think, is only concerned with iCloud email.
Maybe it’s just me, but I personally love the way the iPhone is laid out. Unused apps? Simple, just create a folder and drag these apps there! What’s the problem? I have an iPhone 6 plus, chosen only, After! I did a size and useability check, so, no issues with reaching either extremity! Safari? To go to a previous page simply select the pages icon on the lower right, then select, or, delete whichever page you want to go back to, you’ll find most every page you’ve ever visited there!
I use an Android mini tablet and believe me when I insist that it’s truly the most frustrating experience in my entire day!!! So please, do not wish any of that Android crap on my iPhone experience… If you want an Android, just buy an Android, no hard feelings. You have a choice, exercise it! Just don’t choose my platform of choice and then try to morph it into an Android device.
One thing I would like to see is the option to have icons stay where they are when a switch between portrait and landscape on my iPad. Why can’t they just rotate in place and not reflow to the same sequence. The way my brain works, location is more important than sort order.
iOS 8: Apple’s 8 ball.
No, iOS8 is Apple’s attempted recovery following its iOS7 disaster. That was the worst iOS ever. iOS9 needs to give the user better control – font and color selections, a better Safari, etc. The user shouldn’t have to deal with panels sliding in and out at random, and the icons need to be intuitive. Move Ive back to external hardware design and get a real GUI engineer to fix Apple’s messes.
I just wish Apple would return to its roots and put out a beautiful, user-friendly user interface. Comparing Mavericks to Yosemite, the icons are the same but in Yosemite some icons are missing detail, some are icon smudged, and some have changed to garish color.
I took the icons out of Mavericks (show package contents, contents, resources, find kind:image) and put them in the corresponding places in Yosemite. I changed everything in Coretypes.bundle, dock.app, finder.app, and in all the apps. I still couldn’t make it obvious that one window was really two windows on top of each other. Eventually, Yosemite looked like it came from Apple. I mentioned what I had done to an Apple Store employee, and he wanted to know all the details. He said he was going to do it at home.
iOS 7 and 8 are an assault on the eyes. Jony Ive thinks that people with normal vision are handicapped, so all the settings for normal vision are under “accessibility.” OS X’s UI is degenerating.
If only someone could restrict Jony Ive to hardware and stop him from inflicting his design stylings on us. There are people who like his design stylings, strangely enough, but his real accomplishment is that he has created the most unpopular UIs that Apple ever put out. Never in the history of Apple have so fanboys—and employees—hated the UI.
Seems like the wishlist is yet another catch-up with Android list.