Please to add my own Widgets?

Dear Cupertino,

I've had this post marinating for awhile now, just haven't had a chance to write it up.

We have Stocks

We have Weather.

Why can't we add our own widgets to the iPhone interface? It's a little piece of code, we have the SDK for the iPhone, we know the criteria, why can't we create a little widget just to pull information from the internet without having to write an entire app to do it? Yes, there is a ton of apps to do what I want, but I don't want to pay for a widget I can create myself with DashCode. Can't I do that?

Thanks,

Dear Cupertino Reader

iTunes Improvements, Part One

Dear Cupertino,

I love iTunes, really I do. It's the one app that handles all my syncing to iPhone, AppleTV, iPod, (unlike some other mobile platforms we know) and on top of that, it manages my entire music collection at the same time! It's completly awesome.

However, I do agree with people who are saying that iTunes is becoming far too bloated (code wise), and feature wise - I've seen iTunes 8 gobble up lots of RAM due to it's new grid album art view. Some people say it's now trying to do too much - but damn, it does it excellently!

Anyway, here are a couple of things we'd like to see in the next version of iTunes...

In the Maintenance category, we have:

1. Find songs without artwork - while iTunes sort of does this, it doesn't do it particularly well, often stumbling on tracks that have ID3 tags that differ from the iTunes Music Store tags. There are apps out there that do it (or pretend to, and screw everything up) but what we'd like to see is an Apple alternative. We love good quality album art, and the iTunes store provides.
2. Find dead songs - OSX has a all-encompassing search tool called Spotlight, no? And metadata indexing? Why doesn't Apple combine to two in some way to let iTunes find your dead music, those tracks which aren't where they used to be.
3. Rescan/normalize soundcheck and gapless values - for songs, this would be great as an option we could preform ourselves. This way, we'd have complete control when a song stuffed up our soundcheck values, or was playing with a gap. Rescanning it would then play the song, sans gap.
   

But wait, there's more! In the metadata section, we have the following suggestion:

iTunes is great for managing a large music library and I’m constantly using the search feature to find a song or album of interest. However, I think that the program needs to allow room for some new metadata fields:

1. Ability to tag/label songs as clean or explicit. Currently, songs downloaded from the iTunes Store come with these labels but when you import your own music from CDs you own, the tracks come in sans clean/explicit labels. You also can't see the tags for existing media in your library, nor edit them. This would be nice for parents to be able to restrict the music younger children could access in the library. Adding this feature would become akin to adding stars to songs - instead, how about you give it a clean/explicit rating?
2. Automatic lyrics import - iTunes already supports the addition of lyrics but this must be done manually on a per-song basis which can be annoying. There are many widgets and programs that automatically fetch lyrics for currently playing iTunes songs - so surely it'd be just a matter of querying some database for the info?
3. Better and more fields, eg: an "Original artist" field - for those excellent cover songs, when we just have to hear the original, more fields for catalog number, music label, and release type (i.e. bootleg, deluxe/special edition, EP, promo, remaster, single). Yet more fields for original release date and/or re-release date. Those of us who like nothing more than to look at our epic collection of 999,999 ID3 tags (per song) would appreciate it.
4. Subtitle support - for remixes and alternate versions.
5. The ability to modify play/skip count values, including batch addition and subtraction.
6. Ability to replace existing album artwork with art downloaded from the iTunes store. The current method of doing this requires manual removal of existing artwork before downloaded artwork appears.
7. BPM and key detection.
   

Phew, we're almost there! Apologies for the long-ish post. In the Video section, we've got:

Apple has started selling videos on the iTunes store and the program has evolved from a music jukebox to a complete solution for music and video management. However, it is lacking some critical features, such as:

1. The ability to purchase high definition 1080p media from the iTunes Store. 'Nuff said.
   
2. The import of unencrypted Blue-ray, DVD, HD-DVD media (AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS directories) or conversion support to H.264 - which has excellent scalability for viewing on our 1080p LCD TV's.

If there's anything else I've missed, or something you'd like to add to the list, leave 'em in comments.

Thanks,
Ian Rawluk.

Advanced IP Firewall Options

Dear Cupertino,

I have but one very short request.

Can we please have more advanced options for the built in IP Firewall?

We understand that security is paramount in OSX, but if we'd feel so much better if we had more options for the IP Firewall. GUI options, at that. We love sexy tick boxes and aqua-luscious radio buttons.

For those of you who don't know what an IP firewall is, read the ipfw chapter into the FreeBSD manual here.

If you're after the man page for OSX's built in ipfw (and the command-line arguments you need to pass to configure more options), you can read all about them here.

Thanks,
Zach / quine.

Editors note: If this is post is a little short, my apologies. Truth be told, I'm a little out of my depth here.
Expect more posts soonish. In fact, I've got a great iTunes improvements one coming right up...

iTunes App Store Gifting

Dear Cupertino,

I'm a huge fan of the App Store. Lots and lots of great quality apps are found there, but there have been the odd one or two...

One thing that is missing, though, is the ability to gift apps. Dear Cupertino, if we can gift movies, TV shows, entire TV seasons, and any music track we desire, along with custom playlists, I'm at a complete loss why we can't gift apps to friends who deserve good quality iPhone/iPod Touch apps.

Don't get me wrong, the App Store is a huge part of the iPhone/iPod Touch OS, and it's confusing why you're not letting us give the gift of a great app.

I'd love the option to gift App Store apps.

Thanks,
Benny Ling

Editorial note: If you're wondering why National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets is more for me than it is for you, it's because I'm Australian. For The Win.
While I don't have a US iTunes account, I'm fairly sure that doesn't allow App Store gifting either.

Improved iPhone Contacts Seach

Dear Cupertino,

I love my new iPhone 3G. I love iPhone OS 2.0, and with the release of 2.1, I'm a huge believer in the fact that Apple are dedicated to their products - bug fixes, more stability, less app crashes, improved battery life, and faster backups are all features for the win. So far people have reported that 2.1 fixes SMS and Contacts lag, so I'm glad.

I love how Address Book on my Mac automatically syncs to my iPhone. It's great.

However, a lot of my friends and people I know go exclusively by a nickname. People that I've met through online forums, Digg, and other social networking sites also go by nicknames. The iPhone Contacts program needs an overhaul of it's search features, though.

It'd be great to have search ordering, ala iTunes ordering by album, artist, size, bitrate, etc - in the same way, I'd love to be able to order my contacts by nickname, email address, mobile number, home number, and so on.

At the moment, Contacts search doesn't seem capable of displaying results for those with only an email address (for those of us with Exchange address sync), or only showing those contacts who don't have an email address attached to their vcard.

Different options for sorting contacts would also be welcome - it'd be cool, for instance, to be able to display those contacts that only have email addresses, or those contacts which have both an email address and a mobile number.

But most of all, Contacts search doesn't parse and/or return results for the "Nickname" field. I would love it if it did - handy for those internet acquaintances.

Editorial note -- as a matter of fact, all fields should be searchable!

Thanks,
Dan "Pete" Clark.

Welcome

I would like to thank Joel, Chandler, and Benny for allowing me to assist them with the site. I can't wait to continue posting and hope to bring many fresh and new ideas to the table. I am a High School student from Toronto, Canada and I love Apple. Yeah thats it.

Love,

Ryan

iPod Classic 240GB

Dear Cupertino,

I was extremely excited today as were all the other Apple fanboys about the “Let’s Rock” keynote presented by King Jobs himself. I was extremely impressed with the new iPod Nano and cannot wait to see it in person. Although the iPod Classic didn’t necessarily get an upgrade rather than a price drop and a capacity downgrade.

The new iPod Classic comes in a 120GB (Silver, and Black) size as a standard.. No high end, no low end. The Previous iPod Classic came in an 80GB version and a 160GB. So why the downgrade? Well other than the major price cut there really is no explanation.. Those of use with large music libraries (I have over 150GB of music and 300GB of movies) want the largest capacity for our music players giving us our media where ever we go.

The sad part of this is that Toshiba (the suppliers of the iPods hard drives) have just announced a 240GB hard drive that happens to have the same dimensions of the previous iPod’s 160GB drive...

So Cupertino would you mind explaining to us why we have to suffer the pain of having only 120GB of our glorified Media with us at a time rather than a whopping 240GB?

Wouldn’t it be nice having ALL your movies, music, and photos with you where ever you go?

Please Cupertino, pretty please...

Thanks Love,

Ryan Stellato

Wireless Keyboard with Multitouch trackpad?

Dear Cupertino,

The beloved Apple Bluetooth Keyboard. It has its phenomenal design, matches the iMac and the rest of the Mac family beautifully with its Aluminum casing. It’s easy to type with, and has been named one of the best keyboards on the market. Its nearly perfect. Although I believe, and many agree with me, that its missing some pretty major features.

For starters... Backlit Please! The Macbook Pro has it, the Macbook Air has it, why can’t us desktop users feel just as special? Haven’t you ever stayed up until 3AM trying to finish an english essay but don’t want a light on in the room and struggle to see your keys? I know I have! This would really be able to bump Apple’s aluminum keyboard to the next level of usability.

Trackpad. A major flaw with Apple’s keyboard that disallows you to fully utilize Leopard’s Multitouch capabilities. Haven’t you always wanted to use the same capabilities as your iPhone on your iMac? I know I have! Why should I have to click my way through photo albums when I can gracefully take 3 fingers and swipe them across a smooth surface? This trackpad would also act as a screen. So say you were listening to music a virtual scroll wheel would appear, or if you needed the numeric pad say for a spreadsheet it would virtually appear on the screen. You would also be able to use this as an Apple TV keyboard. It could be used for a future Apple TV browser and could use the screen as a virtual remote.

Not so much a big concern, although I would like to see this new keyboard with the same keys as the Macbook Air, black keys show less dirt and match the black on my iMac. Sounds like a done deal to me.

So please can you give us a bluetooth keyboard just like the wired one, except instead of a numeric pad how about a giant trackpad? Give me backlit keyboard with black keys and you have my purchase!

Thanks,

Ryan Stellato

Apple Bloggers Network

For those of you that haven't heard of it, there is an aggregated RSS feed for several "Apple" Blogs. The link is here. If you have an Apple related blog, or know of one that would like to be added to the feed, email me here, and i'll get you an invite.

It used to contain several popular blogs, but one of the biggest ones, fakesteve.blogspot.com has quit blogging. So that sucks.

I'd like to light some fire under this, so subscribe if you'd like, and submit some other blogs to me as well!

Welcome, Ryan!

I'd like to take this time to welcome a new addition to the team: Ryan!

He's a welcome addition with a fresh new insight and already has a .me account so you know Joel adores him. Kidding, Joel (no I'm not). Look for his submissions shortly and please continue to enjoy dearcupertino.com!

Warning: Soap Box Alert!

DC Readers; sup?

I'd like to first and foremost apologize for my lack of presence on the site. Personal and professional obligations have gone and kicked my ass. I'm back-ready to not suck once more and continue to give you some random speculative nonsense about Apple Inc. and the products we love.

Apology over, I've seen a lot of criticism on various blogs/comment logs about how we don't update frequently. I'd like to speak on that:

We update as often as we get solid material. Remember, we're the voice for you, the consumers. Sure, we could pepper the site with our own ideas, thoughts, feelings, etc but then it feels disingenuous. We can't stress enough that this site is as good as you all make it. So, criticize if you'd like, but only if you're willing to take up the effort to let us know what's on your mind.

With the DNS nonsense dying down and the end of the fiscal year approaching, those on the team who work in IT can get back to doing what we do best; slacking off at work while writing DC posts. Solid.

Thanks,

Chandler