Editing text on the iPad

Dear Cupertino,

Most concept videos on Youtube and other video sites are just pointless and stupid.  However, this one was brought to my attention today, and I think, you may want to pay attention:

iChat and Facetime, a match made in heaven

Dear Cupertino,

I have to say, the iPhone 4 is fantastic.  There are it's flaws, don't get me wrong, (like the fact that it doesn't have voice integration into the phone in every aspect, you know, like Android does), but it's a fantastic phone and I am glad you made it.

But there is one more thing.

Facetime is great, it works, you don't have to configure a bunch of ports to open on the firewall and through NAT devices, and the iPhone remembers which other iPhones are capable of holding those calls.  So, that's just great.  However, how much harder would it have been to put out a new version of iChat at the same time that allows you to call your iChat video capable friends (read: everyone that has a current Mac) with your iPhone 4?  That would be fantastic and would probably cause a lot more people to use iChat than they do now.

iChat could be rewritten so that all the video features of the iPhone's Facetime could be used to help iChat for transversal through NATs and the like.

Thanks,
Joel

iPhone Music Store Gifting?

Dear Cupertino,


I'd love to be able to give iTunes gifts from my iPhone. We can do it from the iTunes Music Store via iTunes on our computers, so why not from the iPhone version of the iTunes Store?

All we would need in terms of UI would be a button below the current "Buy Now" one, or a different interaction - say, hold down the "Buy Now" button to gift that particular song, movie, or TV show (but not App Store apps) to any of your contacts on your contacts list.

Gifting on the iPhone wouldn't just be handy if we wanted to give someone a song that we liked, or a TV show, nay, gifting on the iPhone would also come in handy if we needed to give someone a gift for their birthday at the last minute, or while we're out and about and can't find the perfect gift in a brick-and-mortar (that's a real store, folks, as opposed to an online store).

Gifting on the iPhone would also benefit those who don't usually have an internet connection at home, too. With the iTunes Store on the iPhone now available on cellular data networks, those sans-internet would be able to gift from the comfort of their homes, all without having to put on "real" clothes and go outside (shudder).

So yeah - iPhone Music Store gifting. Pretty please?

Thanks,
Pia Francisco.

Comments below, folks - and as usual, all DearCupertino wishes/improvements can be directed to:
joel [dot] esler [at] me [dot] com

iPhone + iTunes: A perfect combination.

So we've been doing a couple of iPod and iTunes improvements, but what about the awesome iPhone and iTunes combination?

There are just a couple of suggestions we have in mind...

Dear Cupertino,

• Folders for applications on the iPhone.
  Please, for those of us that are hitting your 144-apps barrier, we need these desperately! We'll not only be buying more apps from the App Store as a result, but also using our iPhones more if we can find these apps and store then in folders. Repeat app usage would also go up. I mean really, Apple. There are more than hundreds of useful apps on the App Store, and yet you limit us to only 144 of these?! Not to mention, the 9 page limit on home screens... needless to say, it's incredibly annoying to have to swipe through 9 pages of apps just to find that one you want...

• Ability to arrange Apps on the iPhone from iTunes
  Now - I hate dragging around apps on my iPhone. When you have full home screens, dragging around apps is a pain in the proverbial - for example, dragging an app from home screen 4 to home screen 2 - with a full home screen 3 inbetween. An app then gets displaced from home screen 3 (as you can't drag over more than one home screen at a time), and then you have to waste time dragging the displaced app from home screen 4 back to home screen 3... Seriously, have I lost anyone yet?! See how complicated it is?!
  If we could only arange our apps from iTunes - dragging with a mouse is so much easier than dragging with your finger.

• Some sort of interaction with iTunes when your iPhone is plugged in.
  Say you have your iPhone plugged in, and you get a text message. Instead of displaying that text message on the iPhone screen, iTunes would then pop up something on your Mac/Windows display saying that you've got a new message... Same goes for phone calls and so on.
  

There are a whole lot more fixes that we want - but they're far too numerous to list here. Leave a comment, though - any new material can be provided via Joel - shoot him an email at joel.esler[at]me.com with any ideas you have about Apple improvements, and we'll do our best to make something of it.

Oh Apple - one more thing. Where are my push notifications?!

Ah well, 2.3 it is, then...

Thanks,
Chris (with parts from Benny).

iPhone HD

Dear Cupertino,

For those of us with large music/movie collections, how awesome would it be to have an iPhone or iPod Touch that has a small flash drive so the OS can run smoothly, but have a massive 80GB HD for all of our media. Yes please.

Thanks,

Ryan Stellato

Song Search

Dear Cupertino,

In iTunes you can search for a song, artist, etc. In Contacts on iPhone/iPod Touch you can search for your contacts. How come you cannot search for songs and artists on the touch devices. I know I've been in situations where someone has asked me if I had a certain song and I had to scroll through to find it. I would really enjoy searching for my music especially in playlists where there is no specific order.

It's short, but you know you want it too.

Thanks Love,

Ryan Stellato

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.

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.

iPhone single inbox?

Dear Cupertino,

I love my iPhone. I love my Mail, I love my MobileMe (yes, I said that). However, I have 3 different email accounts on my iPhone that I have to check consistently. So here's my request. Please make a single Inbox. One Inbox for all accounts, just like in Mail.app so I can read and respond to all email all at once without having to constantly switch between email accounts on the iPhone.

You know, this is a short one, but a good one, and I'd like to see it just to save some time. That's be great.

Thanks!

Slavian + Joel Esler

The most advanced phone on the planet! Worst. Camera. Ever.

Dear Cupertino,

There has to be some sort of e-villainy going on here. 2.0MP? Really? No video? I mean, really?

Come on.

Come on.

It's really your fault. Your customers aren't the type that settle for anything but excellence and perfection. Why would we come to expect anything less than 110% from 1 Infinite Loop? We don't, that's why.

With that being said: What. The. Hell.

Your camera, sucks. 2.0MP in a world where we're seeing 5.0MP devices in the wild of which are doing video is completely unacceptable, especially for hardware graced with that half eaten biblical fruit. Let's stop kidding yourselves here, do what you know is right; for us.

I'd like to show you something that just might help out:

iPhone Camera done right!

Thanks!

Louis Harboe

More iPhone Please?

Dear Cupertino,

We had a bit of a rant awhile ago about Syncing To-Do's and what not.  While Omnifocus pretty much takes care of that, there is one more issue that does need addressing.  Notes.

Seriously.  You have this great Note interface in Mail.app, and you also have this great Notes app on the iPhone.  They walk alike they talk alike, they even have the same Marker font.

Hows about we chuck some kind of magic syncing action between the two devices?  Notes!

Now, I refuse to believe that you would let something slide like that, so I assume that you have something up your sleeve.  I asked for OTA Calendar syncing, Mail push, and Contact syncing awhile back, and you built MobileMe, which is a complete overhaul of the .mac system in order to be able to accomodate these features.  So I refuse to believe that you would let To-Do's and Notes not sync.  So what do you have up your sleeve?

Thanks!

Joel + 4 other Dear Cupertino Readers

Bluetooth Headphones

Dear Cupertino, 

I love the apple earbuds but, sometimes I want to destroy them because of the stupid wire that gets in the way! (especially when mowing the lawn). So why couldn't you create bluetooth headphones using basically the iPhone bluetooth headset? It shouldn't be that hard, just take out the microphone and label them L and R and you have great wireless headphones.

Thanks!  

Tyler

Editorial Note:  I don't really like the idea of wireless headphones.  I already have my jawbone that I have to charge, my iPhone that I have to charge.  What else?  I don't need more devices that I have to plug in on a daily basis.  I could see the novelty in it, but I'll just sling my earphones around the back of my head for now.  But I can see what the author is trying to do here, and this is a request that I have received alot since I have started the blog.  By the way, I am receiving suggestions all the time.  I just haven't had a lot of time recently to put them up.  So, I apologize.  Will get more articles up. 

Bluetooth is for more than headsets?!

Dear Cupertino,

We have the iPhone, we have the Aluminum Keyboard; can they be friends?

I mean, they both talk the same language. I'm sure they have a lot of catching up to do. Let's put them in a room together and see what happens, hell, we'll throw a bottle of cheap scotch in there too.

Imagine the possibilities of taking your keyboard/iPhone on a short trip and having an amazing amount of functionality within two pieces of equipment. Given the eventual enterprise applications built within 2.0 and the endless possibilities of the App Store; keyboard control of your iPhone is just, plain, sexy.

Sexy.

Thanks!

Dear Cupertino Reader.

Back to my Mac, from my iPhone

Dear Cupertino,

What would be really cool would be if it was possible to use your iPhone or iPod Touch to access all the files on your Mac, like a "Back to My Mac" style service. However, you would just be able to browse the Finder and access files, not so much VNC kind of app.  That would be so useful if you forgot something at home.  Combine that with OTA Bonjour network printing and compatibilty with Wi-Fi projectors, and you'd be set.

Thanks!

Will

iPhone General Enhancements

(Please read the entry inline, for my comments, in italics.)

Dear Cupertino,

Come home and set my mobile in its dock and have all of my phone messages available on my computer screen, both home phone and mobile.

I assume this reader is talking about his visual voicemail.  I could see how this would be handy, but it would be difficult to implement.

Answer the mobile and home phones on the home phone.

You might want to look into something like Grand Central from Google.

Have the transmitter antenna for my wireless phone outside the house far away from my head.

While I see this would be a good idea, I don't see an easy way to implement this in any fashion.

A button on my phone that could answer during meetings with customized answers such as: This is Mark, I see you have called, I'll call back soon, can I call you on this number nnn-nnn-nnnn? Or 'please send me a text/ email'.

What you should do is set your voicemail answering message to this.  Then if people call during a meeting, tap the top standby twice.  This sends people straight to voicemail.

When reaching an associates phone message, have available the ability to send a test.

I don't know what this means.

Schedule delivery of phone messages so that I could leave messages at odd hours that can be held until the listener retrieves then.

Yes, this would be ideal.  Basically having a way of delivering voicemail straight to a person without actually having to call their phone.  That way, you want to leave a reminder on your co-workers voicemail at 3 in the morning, and not wake your coworker up.  You can do this now, but it's not easily done.

Have auto attendant triage calls so that only emergency or family calls can disturb me at certain times, perhaps, limit the ability to ring through to certain address book entries or require caller to agree to a prompt such as 'Is this call urgent?' or 'Is leaving a message an acceptable choice."

You need to look into Grand Central from Google.  This may be able to solve your issues.

Thanks!

Mark (with comments from Joel)

Location based weather on the iPhone

Dear Cupertino,

One thing I'd really like to see is location based weather updates for the iPhone. I would have it so that the first location listed in the weather app would be one such that it would find your current location and then tell you what the weather is where you are. There, of course, would be the ability to add other locations like it is now, but one that would change based on your current location would be handy. This is just something I thought of earlier this week when wanting to know what the temperature was outside. It would have been nice if it told me what it was in the area I was. 

One extra thing to do with the weather app. I want it to update the icon like it does for the calender so that you always have an accurate representation of the weather.   There could be an option to have this change with location as well.

(Editorial Note -- I think this is a great idea.  You could even do it now with location based services such as AGPS and Wifi Triangulation services.  I don't know if you'd want to fire up the GPS everytime you checked the weather.)

Thanks!

Jeremy

Over-The-Air syncing with iTunes

Dear Cupertino,

Okay, you have figured out MobileMe, which figures out OTA syncing with iCal, Mail, and Address Book. Three things I actually filed a feature request for in the Apple Developer portal.

However, there is one part that you haven’t implemented yet. Syncing of Music with iTunes. Obviously you know how to do it, as the AppleTV does it. But it seems to me that if your iPhone comes into your house, and automagically joins your home Wireless Access point, bonjour should find the machine it’s tied to to sync, and sync its music.

Thanks!
Dear Cupertino Readers

MMS on the iPhone

Dear Cupertino,

I’ve had about 30 people write in with this one. Frankly I agree. Now I don’t know everything there is to know about iPhone and Cell technology, but it seems if every other phone in the world can send photos through MMS, why can’t the iPhone?

It’s great to be able to send photo’s via email, but you know, sometimes (read: never) I don’t know the email address of my friend’s phones. Please? MMS.

Thanks!

Dear Cupertino readers