iPhone

The iPhone, from the beginning when I started with the 3G then the 3GS and then the iPhone 4, and skipping the 4S to now the iPhone 5, has been so spectacularly amazing I have yet to plateau in my appreciation for the device. Form factor, display beauty, app quality, all of it have blown me away. And it's only going to get better! In the meantime, here are my list of annoyances with the device.

Annoyances

iPad

• • 2x looks horrible.

    • in iOS 7, there's no such thing as 2x mode. That is, all iPhone apps are doubled in size, with no option to reduce it to 1x.

    • the keyboard is the iPhone keyboard, and is doubled in size and therefore pixelated

    • text just doubles the pixels, doesn't bother with doubling the font size

  • iPhone apps on the iPad in general

    • (see above wrt 2x)

    • doesn't rotate in landscape mode

iPhone 5 and iOS6

• • you know how if you add a web page's bookmark to the home screen, and the web page is configured a certain way, it acts as a web app? On the iPhone 5 with the 4 inch screen, the resulting web app is letterboxed as if it were a 3.5 inch screen iPhone.

Annoyances

• • echoing @brownpau, Safari shows only the domain in the address bar, and it's persistent when viewing a web page

  • lack of landscape mode in following contexts:

    • locked

    • home screen

    • App Store app

    • clock, timer, etc. for when I want to put the phone on a stand

    • push notifications when screen locked and turned off

      • sometimes these come up as landscape. If the app you have open is in landscape?

  • some icons don't update like the Calendar icon

    • Weather says it's always sunny and 23 degrees C

    • Clock says it's always 10:15 In iOS 7, the icon in the dock and springboard are the current time. Still 10:15 (actually 10:10 now) when looking it up in Spotlight.

    • Can you imagine a public API for this sort of thing, where apps can update their icons on the home screen like the notifications system can?

  • Calendar shows birthdays show in Notification Center even though Facebook birthday notifications are turned off, the calender is disabled in Settings, etc. This is fixed in iOS 7. More details at tuaw.com.

  • lack of portrait mode in following contexts:

    • YouTube videos

    • MLB at Bat videos

  • after recording a video in landscape mode, one cannot rotate the video

  • low video quality while in 3G (not really sure this is true anymore in iOS 4.x)

    • let me decide if I should use more of my data plan!

      • seems to be better as of iOS 4: MLB video quality is reasonable in 3G. Does that mean app developers can decide what quality to stream?

      • can't really tell the difference on 3G in Netflix for iPhone anymore. Looks great in 3G and wifi.

  • brightness control is in settings, not accessible by all apps? iBooks has it inside the app, why can't other apps set the system setting, then return it to the previous setting when closing?

    • Apps have access to brightness now. Instapaper, Kindle, among many others.

  • turning on Personal Hotspot takes 5 taps (including home button to get to the home screen, and including the choice between Bluetooth+Wi-Fi and USB)

    • why not just keep it on? I do that for some stretches, and as a workaround to make sure wifi is preferred, my Macbook Air's network settings have my Airport on top in the service order.

    • why is Bluetooth not a separate option? I usually have Bluetooth disabled on the computer anyway and use the Wi-Fi

      • which takes most battery? On either the laptop or the iPhone? (Honest question.)

    • as of iOS 4.3: reduced to 5 taps. Also the blue bar at the top gives one tap access if it's unlocked.

    • as of iOS 4.0: same, but at least with fast application switching, Settings remembers where you left off.

    • as of iOS 4.3: a lot better, called Personal Hotspot now, and it's on the first page of Settings, reducing the amount of taps.

  • no ability to disable iPhone charging on laptop

    • useful while tethering, syncing

    • Maybe the setting can be in the laptop side of things? The iPhone does not charge when the laptop is turned off and not plugged in

  • no over-the-air syncing with my music collection. It requires a physical connection. I'd love to sync over Bluetooth or wifi. Or in the cloud.

    • as of 4.3: still no syncing over the air. One can play music from a computer while using Home Sharing on the same wifi network. but still can't sync from that computer. iOS 5 introduces over the air sync.

  • in-app photos:

    • don't store location, even when taken from a location sharing app like Gowalla. Can apps turn this on? Or assign the location that you're checking into?

    • no HDR

    • (untested in iOS 4) doesn't save date and time. What?

  • App Store will notify me, only via a badge on the App Store app, of updates. And only once a week, unless I visit the app directly Notification Center shows which apps are updated. I don't know what the frequency is. It bundles updates to multiple apps, so if there's more than 5 (say), it will show "5 updates". AppShopper still does individual notifications.

    • why not enable push notifications for that? Apple knows what apps I have installed, and should be able to push a notification to me instead of having to check twice daily, which I do like a schnook

      • http://appshopper.com/ which is a website and iPhone app, with email and push notifications for updates and triggers for price changes in wish lists, is a good workaround for this limitation. (AppShopper is currently not in the App Store.)

      • seems like the App Store is doing better with badge notifications in iOS 6.

    • in Genius for the App Store, after tapping "More Recommendations...", then looking at a specific app's description, then returning to Genius, the App Store returns me to the first page of recommendations, requiring me to tap "More Recommendations..." as many times as it take to where I was before looking at the app's description

• having to scroll up to the very top in a text message conversation in order to call that person. Should just have to tap on the person's name (maybe twice?) to go to the top.

  • • maybe it was there all along, but tapping the top bar, the one with the clock, goes to the top of messages, and therefore the call button

• • notifications, even if sound notifications are turned off, stops streaming music and video

  • Mail

    • quoting: replying adds a line in between the sender and the quote

    • top-posting: Mail puts the signature above the quote, not below

    • no ability to change which address I'm sending from (Multiple Senders is a thing in iOS 7, as it has been evidently for a while, but it's easier to configure for POP & IMAP accounts, evidently).

  • Copy & Paste

    • difficult (impossible?) to make specific selection in an individual message (e.g. confirmation code sent via SMS)

Things that iPhone OS 4 will definitely fix:

• • lack of fast app switching ("multitasking")

  • only one Microsoft Exchange account

  • lack of software orientation lock at the system level (for example, the Kindle app has it, but why not anything else?)

iOS 5 Annoyances

• • software orientation lock only locks in portrait mode

    • that said, maybe that's a good thing? Maybe, while lying down, you're less likely to go from landscape to portrait than the other way around?

    • with portrait orientation lock enabled, the camera still changes orientation

  • while in an app and using landscape mode, the fast application switching bar shows as if it were in portrait mode. Why not at least rotate the icons?

  • removed the feature to allow third-party apps to send photo's location when uploading a photo to Flickr bug fixed

  • double-click of the home button goes to fast app switching, not the iPod controls like it used to. Triple-click of the home button not configurable to Music controls.

    • going to Music app is 6 taps (including 2 for the double tap of the home button to get into the switcher) when phone is locked

  • less an annoyance with iOS but rather with websites and apps:

    • websites password forms seem to break Copy & Paste. This is probably because the website designers don't use a password manager like 1Password.

      • Offenders: Twitter, Branch

    • apps that don't recognize my keyboard shortcut for my email address as a valid email address

      • I type in 'rj' (lowercase R then J) and it 'autocorrects' to my email address. If I tap "Next", the form sees 'rj' and not the email address, and therefore flags it as invalid

iOS 4.2

• • switcher volume slider. Argh! Who wanted this? Should have been a brightness slider, since I can control volume on the hardware (either the side of the phone or the earphones with microphone). I can't believe I'd have to jailbreak my phone to get this instead. iOS 5 adds hardware brightness in the API, so maybe I can drop this now.

  • adding a track to a playlist within the iPod app (I have to re-learn how to do it each time) does not get synced over to the desktop iTunes, and therefore won't be set when I subsequently sync. Possibly an issue with the desktop iTunes app not syncing playlists from the iPhone. This bug is fixed as of iOS 4.3.2.