All Articles Tagged dear apple

Dear Apple: yesterday, as part of your huge pre-holiday product launch, you announced a new iPhone-inspired multi-touch Magic Mouse with gestures. It looks nice. It might even (finally!) be a decent mouse. But TiPb’s left to wonder — for those of us who already have iPhones and iPod touches, wouldn’t it be even nicer to have an official “Magic Mouse” app? Scratch that, given the greater functionality in the MacBook (and MacBook Pro) multi-touch Glass Trackpads, wouldn’t it be great if you could just give us that in the App Store?

We have the Apple Remote (no, not the new doohickey, the app!), true enough, but that’s limited to iTunes and the Apple TV (not even Front Row!), and we have the Keynote Remote, but again that’s limited to presentation software. And granted, there are some great third party remote apps that do way more than just Mac. But you make Mac. Why not just take that wonderful technology you’ve built into Snow Leopard, hook it up over Bluetooth (until you get WiFi Direct going), and let us swipe, pinch, rotate, one-finger, two-finger, three-finger, four-finger move our way around the Mac just like the Magic Mouse — or the Glass Trackpad — from anywhere in Bluetooth range?

Dear Apple, we have the device, you have the technology. Hit the “launch” button on this one already! Sitting 10′ away on a sofa, using our iPhone or iPod touch to seamlessly gesture through everything on our media center Mac Mini or massive 27″ new iMac… t’would be sweet!

(And hey, Microsoft and Windows 7 developers — feel free to hook us up for your phenomenal multi-touch support as well!)

Dear Apple, if you’re releasing a new wireless keyboard, why not take this opportunity to make it work with iPhone? If the rumor-mill is to be believed, you’re set to release new iMacs and Mac Minis (and hopefully a 27″ or 30″ LED display!) perhaps as soon as next week (hey, there was a Spotlight Turns to Notebooks event last October!). And if the FCC filings are accurate, you’ll have a new multitouch mouse and wireless keyboard to go with them. Apple, in the name of everyone whining on the internet for it — let that wireless keyboard work with the iPhone.

You introduced enhanced peripheral functionality last March during the iPhone 3.0 SDK event, including dock and Bluetooth access, but you didn’t add the Bluetooth profile or any drivers for keyboards. That led to many sad, irritated messages sent our way via comments, email, and tweets. Now, with MMS in the US finally off your miss-list, wouldn’t it be nice to scratch external keyboard off that list as well? Since we haven’t even seen a beta for iPhone 3.2 yet, mightn’t you not introduce said drivers there?

No need to answer now. We’ll just wait for your next event (which we’ll be liveblogging right here at TiPb, ‘natch) and hope for the best.

UPDATED: Dominik Balogh from PoweryBase, developers of the iPhone 3.0 Push Notification-powered NotifyMe reminder app wrote in to let us know:

We have just received (now, sunday morning in Cupertino) an apology from Apple App Store Staff.

It’s looking more likely that Apple is working behind the scenes to make sure their servers can handle the Push Notification load before they let 40 million potential users light up their network. Once they’re confident, however, will the push apps roll?

ORIGINA: Sure, some have trickled out of the App Store during the last week, but given the high profile iPhone 3.0 release, and given that we know some high profile push-enabled apps were submitted to the iPhone weeks ago, TiPb has to wonder — where are all the Push Notification enabled apps?

Due to server load and battery life, is Apple putting them through even more stringent and lengthy reviews? Is there some concern about Apple’s Push Notification server load capacity so they’re releasing them a few at a time so as not to suddenly have a MobileMe-style post-launch crash? Or are they just more seemingly random victims of the still-opaque, ever mysterious iPhone App Store review process?

Hopefully it’s reasons #1 and #2. We can handle minor delays now to ensure solid apps on a solid push platform going forward.

But please Apple, keep developers in the loop and — hey! — throw us a bone. Or push us a notification. Something.

Meanwhile, which Push Notification app are you waiting for the most?

I was just listening to Dieter and Mike’s latest PalmCast, where they were crowing in duet about how sweet it was that the Palm Pre has an app that can book movie tickets and automagically add the movie event information to the Palm Pre calendar.

I know, I know. If they love the Palm Pre so much, why don’t they just marry it? (Dieter is, in fact, looking for a state that may allow it…) But they raise an excellent point — where’s the iPhone version of that functionality? Why can’t we push a button on our movie ticket app, or concert tour app, or tradeshow app, or whatever and have that slice of time booked off for us in our calendar?

While the iPhone SDK allows access to the Contacts database to do all manner of glorious, 3rd party app-powered magic, Apple has thus far not surfaced any APIs to do the same for calendaring. I don’t believe the new 3.0 SDK has announced any improvements in that area either.

What makes calendar so different? MobileMe and ActiveSync push both. Apple’s even giving Calendar some much-appreciated CalDAV and subscription love, with no CardDAV that we’re aware of for contacts.

We’re sure developers would appreciate it. We know users would adore it.

Anyone have any idea why we don’t have this yet?

It’s summer 2009 and iPhone OS 3.0 has just been made available via iTunes. You have it up and running along with next gen Twitter clients, instant massagers, RSS readers, and all manner of Push Notification-enabled apps ready to alert you the very instant anything new is piping hot and ready.

Then it happens. 20 new Twitter DMs. 3 co-workers IM you. Every tech blog you follow updates about iTunes not crashing this time. You calendar reminds you about that meeting coming up. And your entire FPS combat team all invite you to come join their game. Suddenly Push Notification is trying to pop up 30 text boxes all at once — while you’re in the middle of an urgent phone call.

How will you handle this, Apple?

Right now a single SMS pops up a message box that you either have to deal with right away, and if you dismiss it, it’s gone. If you forget what it was for… well, that’s tough. Imagine 30 of those, all at once. Will you even be able to hang up your phone call before canceling out all of them? And if you do cancel out of them, what chance to you have to really see and process alerts #1-29?

Both the Google Android with its top-down slider and the Palm Pre with their bottom loaded notification area provide a far less obtrusive and simultaneously more persistent — and dare we say more elegant? — notification solution.

Could you, Apple, have an improved system ready to drop on us in a future 3.0 beta? At WWDC? Or is that waiting on 4.0? And if you do have a way of handling it, what is it? What can you do given the current architecture, gesture library, and frameworks of the iPhone to better handle the onslaught of notifications you’re about to drop on us?

Pull down the topmost menu bar a la Android? Create a dedicated Notification app on the Home Screen we can launch to see, like recent calls, what we may have missed?

Maybe our readers have some ideas that can help. They certainly proved smarter than us on the Bluetooth toggle question. What say you, readers, any ideas on how Apple can prevent the notification equivalent of “ping death” befalling us come iPhone 3.0 and Push Notification Service this summer?

A while back Dieter asked for a fast way to toggle Airplane Mode on the iPhone — a triple click of the home button, perhaps. Yesterday he and I were talking about all the new Bluetooth functionality in iPhone 3.0 and the same point came up — right now, to turn Bluetooth on or off you have to:

Wake the iPhone, Slide to Unlock, (type a Passcode perhaps), (return Home perhaps), tap Settings, tap General, tap Bluetooth, and then toggle the ON/OFF switch.

That’s a lot of overhead, in terms of mental “work” and physical interactions.

With Bluetooth headsets, Stereo Bluetooth speakers, Bluetooth connectivity for accessories, Bluetooth connectivity of tethering, P2P gameplay and P2P app exchange, etc. a much faster way to flip the Bluetooth switch would be really appreciated.

Triple-click may not work in terms of usability, but surely there must be some other way? Maybe surface the ON/OFF toggle on the main Settings page, just before the drill down arrow? Jeremy thinks letting users add Settings shortcuts as icons on the Home Screen (like we can currently do with Safari bookmarks) would work. Anyone have any other ideas?