Last month’s introduction of iOS 6 gave iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users many things, like Do Not Disturb, new call features, and increased Siri capabilities. iPhone 5 and 4S users now have a cool new Panorama mode in the Camera app, there’s Facebook integration where once there was only Twitter, we can sync Reminders and Notes over iCloud, privacy controls have received a complete overhaul, and Passbook is showing some promise.
We also had some (major) things taken away from us with the release of iOS 6. The most obvious of these things is a consistent, built-in transit experience in Maps—or pretty much anything related to iOS 6 Maps at all. But Maps seems to be just about the only thing people tend to name when thinking about iOS 6’s shortfalls—or is it? A number of Ars readers wrote me with their own stories about favorite features that used to be part of iOS 5 but were since removed in iOS 6. So, I reached out to the Ars staff and Twitter in order to see what other little things users were missing.
It turns out there are a number of smaller things that people really liked but can no longer access. There are also a few features that people would’ve liked to see Apple take just a little further. Below is a list of the most commonly mentioned items that are either no longer part of iOS 6 or should be part of iOS 6.
Bring back app gifting
iOS users used to be able to gift apps to other people right from inside the device. When you navigated to a particular app through the iOS App Store app, there was an option to “Gift This App” underneath the ratings and next to “Tell a Friend.” This was particularly useful when it came to giving fun or interesting items to friends and family to check out, or for companies to gift apps to employees as a “thank you.”
This is unfortunately no longer the case in iOS 6. As noted by Apple’s own support document on the matter, this feature was part of iOS 5 and earlier (reverting is “usefully” listed as your only option if you want to continue to gift apps). This is undoubtedly thanks to some of the major App Store changes Apple has made since the release of iOS 6, but we can’t see why this feature had to be taken away. Users can still gift apps to other iOS users, but it has to be done through iTunes on the Mac or Windows.
iTunes Match and deleting music
Users who subscribe to Apple’s $25/year iTunes Match service were quite happy with the ability to delete specific songs from their iOS devices when the mood strikes. That was, of course, how things used to be with iOS 5.x, but it’s apparently no longer the case with iOS 6. Who would want to delete individual tracks anyway? That’s a fascist anti-album attitude there, son.
It turns out that this omission is quite irritating to iTunes Match users, though there is an inconvenient workaround for those committed to deleting music they don’t want from their devices. Users can turn off iTunes Match altogether on their iDevices and then delete the track from the Music app—but this only works if you’re trying to delete a song that was actually downloaded from iTunes Match. Turning off iTunes Match removes all other music that is available to you whether you want it there or not. You also have the option of going home and deleting it from your iTunes library. But then this wouldn’t be a very post-PC world, now would it?
Podcasts and music: no longer living together in harmony
Not everyone likes to mix podcasts and music into one playlist, but those who do liked to do it—a lot. I’ll admit that I’ve done this myself, especially when planning out a long flight or road trip. But since the introduction of Apple’s new Podcasts app—which has had its own challenges when it comes to usability—Apple has continued to separate podcasts from the rest of the pack.
It’s no longer easy (or possible, for that matter) for users to create on-the-go playlists within the Music app that include both music and podcasts. It’s not even possible to create a playlist within iTunes on the desktop that has a mixture of music and podcasts to sync—you can make the playlist alright, but once you sync, the podcast won’t show up in the same playlist on the iOS device.
Don’t cry for me, Google Street View
Aside from built-in transit, it turns out that a lot of iOS users made use of Google Street View as part of iOS 5 (and previous) Maps. This was by far the most commonly mentioned item when I asked about missing features on Twitter. Users apparently liked being able to see exactly what a specific address or street looks like when they’re navigating around on their iPhones. And some people (such as myself) have a poor sense of direction, so actual photos of the location you’re looking for can be a huge help.
Some would argue that 3D flyover mode within iOS 6 Maps is meant to replace this feature, and to some degree, it can. The 3D flyover feature does allow you to see what certain buildings look like at different angles, but it doesn’t quite fill in the gaps when it comes to walking or driving down an actual street at human level. What does a specific storefront look like in 3D flyover mode? You can’t get close enough to tell. Additionally, many iOS users don’t own devices that support 3D flyover mode—it’s only supported on the iPhone 5 and 4S—meaning that iPhone 4, 3GS, and original iPad owners have now lost useful features as part of Maps with no real gains.
Give us a YouTube app that can run in the background again
One of the benefits to Apple’s default YouTube app was that it could run in the background. Why would someone want to play YouTube videos (emphasis on videos) while doing other things on an iOS device? Sometimes videos show up and—in the case of video blogs or indie bands—all you want is to listen to the audio and you don’t necessarily need to see someone’s cat in order to get the full experience.
Apple got rid of its own YouTube app as part of iOS 6, however, which wasn’t quite seen as a huge deal by most users. This was mostly because Google was quick to release its own YouTube app to replace it, along with a few new features that Apple had been sluggish to implement. But Google’s new YouTube app can’t run in the background like Apple’s YouTube app did, which makes YouTube aficionados sad pandas when using their iOS devices. This is on Google’s shoulders, not Apple’s, but it’s a point that was made often enough by iOS 6 users that we thought it was worth including.
Details that should have been implemented, but weren’t
There will always be wish lists a mile long for features that aren’t part of iOS 6, but there are some features that are just baby steps away from being great. We don’t know what Apple’s reasons are for not adding some of these things, but we hope to see them in a future update. They’re not “pie in the sky” type wishes either, so Apple, if you’re listening, this is what we’d like:
- Allow us to add contacts to groups from iOS. You can create and manage groups from the Contacts app on the Mac, and you can use your iOS device to interact with groups when it comes to the Phone app and Do Not Disturb. iOS is clearly aware that the groups exist, but when you find yourself adding new contacts into the device itself, there’s no way to add them to any particular group. If you want to group those new contacts, you have to sync the data over to your Mac and manage the groups there. Again, this is not very post-PC-friendly.
- Shared Photo Streams should actually be sharable. I spoke highly about Shared Photo Streams in my iOS 6 review, only because I felt Photo Stream by itself was largely a pointless feature. But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect—the main problem with Shared Photo Streams is that Apple treats them like one-way blasts from one person to others. There’s no way to add other parties to a shared stream so that they, too, can contribute photos. If you have a group of friends who like to share photos, every individual with an iOS device would have to create his or her own shared stream to push to everyone else. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could add your siblings and cousins to one stream, and everyone could share in the fun?
- Third-parties want hooks into Siri. Siri gained some great new features as part of iOS 6, like the ability to look up movie facts and times, and it gained a plethora of sports-related features too. You can now launch apps through Siri, and make Tweets or Facebook posts. But third-party apps still can’t plug into Siri directly—apps that do plug into Siri (such as Yelp or OpenTable) are only able to do so with Apple’s blessing for the time being. Some developers have been using a proxy server called SiriProxy to achieve this on their own, but it’s less than ideal when compared against the potential to make direct API calls to Siri.
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