Apple is slowly losing ground to Android in most markets. The biggest defeat was when Samsung became the biggest phone manufacturer in the US, meaning that they surpassed Apple in the biggest world market, and when we look at the reports from China and Europe it seems that iOS is becoming the second choice for most consumers. In order to stay competitive with Android Apple has to bring some new, important, and long absent features to iOS. Since we are just a couple of days away from Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, this is the perfect time to look which features iOS desperately needs.
More Customization on iOS
Yes, iOS is a closed OS, meaning that you can’t change much around the UI, but Android has proven that customization choices are one of the best-selling points for consumers. In order to stay competitive, Apple has to open its user interface for customization. We want to see changes, iOS got pretty stale, and it is just too slow in accepting new features. UI is as simplified as it can be, meaning that there’s more and more advanced users jumping on the Android bandwagon. This is something expected, if Android stayed the same for as long as it was the case with iOS, it would have certainly saw a big drop in its user base. Although Apple allowed the use of third-party keyboard apps, this is far from enough. We want to be able to change our home screen, our icons and to just be able to enjoy a different user experience.
A Feature Allowing Users To Hide Stock Apps
Ok, this isn’t a big deal for most consumers, but for many of us, this is really illogical. We don’t want for Apple to give us a way of removing them, we understand that would be too much; even on Android, you have to root your phone before being able to remove stock apps. But an option to hide stock apps that aren’t used could really make a difference. The annoying thing of forcing users to do their work with stock apps has to stop; Apple, just accept that not everybody thinks that your apps are better than third-party ones. We’ll all be grateful and you’ll still get a tremendous amount of profit.
App Drawer
Yes, it seems that Android will ditch App Drawer with Android N, but this feature will make things much easier for us to organize the home screen. If we can’t hide, or uninstall stock apps, at least give us the way of removing them from the home screen, they will be inside the App drawer, yes, but they won’t take up the space on home screen. A win-win situation, for sure.
Split-Screen Multitasking on iPhones
Since technology advances in a furious way, we come to the time when even our smartphones can be used for a plethora of tasks. Editing a Word file (or even writing one), making fascinating results with mobile Photoshop app, watching a YouTube video while texting someone. Google saw how this feature got very popular on Samsung models and is now bringing this to stock Android. But Apple let us do multitasking exclusively on iPad, even though iPhones became powerful enough for split-screen multitasking years ago. And with the release of iPhone 6, they finally got a screen big enough for multitasking to make sense. Even on iPad, there are still some features that would make multitasking even better. As Brian Mueller, an iOS developer said, “The main thing that’s missing now from a developer’s perspective is an easy way to get information from one split-screened app to another, such as dragging and dropping content.”
These couple of suggestions are just drops in the sea when thinking about the new features that upcoming iOS 10 could incorporate, but they are very important and just by incorporating a couple of the most important ones, iOS could again become a number one mobile OS. If that not happens, Apple could get in a big trouble since Android is changing with every iteration, giving users what they want, constantly coming up with new ideas that potentially can get the user experience better. Yes, some of the features on Android aren’t perfect, or are just plain unnecessary, but at least users have a choice, and a freedom of choice is the biggest thing iOS lacks at this moment. We hope that’ll change, and since WWDC 2016 is just days away, we’ll find out is Apple is planning big changes with the release of iOS 10 very soon.
What Else Do You Think They are Missing ? Tell us below! or Do You Disagree?
