Please. Fix. That.

iTunes Store: Don't download movies to my phone, please

Scenario: I'm at work and I have a date night planned with my wife. The kids will be staying home to see a movie and it's my job to find something for them to watch. "Hey, I'll find something in iTunes", he says. So I do, and I buy it. And now, the iTunes app on my phone is trying to download a HD movie to my phone.

What?

Maybe, just maybe, someone would want this to happen. Maybe they are near an Apple TV where they can play the movie back to a bigger screen. Maybe they just have to watch The Matrix again and are okay with seeing it on their phone. But surely, the majority of people buying movies on their phone would prefer to purchase it then, but view it later.

I really don't get why Apple would assume to download something of that size to my phone without asking me first. What's worse, the last time this happened, I saw no way to STOP it. I had to let it finish downloading the entire movie before I could delete it from my device.

This is easy to fix: ask the user if they want to download the media once the purchase has been made. And if you have a Mac at another location that watches for new iTunes purchases and downloads them, then it would pick up and download the content so the kids at home can see the movie without Dad having to authenticate in iTunes and download it manually.

iOS: Missing Modes

UPDATE: "Do Not Disturb" is available in iOS 6. Still waiting for an energy saving mode.

A while back, a highly-publicized faux pas brought some attention to the need to silence a smartphone without turning it off. Many of us carry these little noise-makers in our pockets... ready to embarrass us in any number of public situations. My iPhone is usually always switched to vibrate mode. This prevents most audible notfications. It will not, as Patron X painfully discovered, mute a scheduled alarm. So, perhaps there is a need here for some additional modes for iPhone and for mobile phones in general.

I wouldn't go so far as to say the silent switch on the side is doing the wrong thing. The existing behavior is well thought out. There are certain things that most people would want the phone to notify for, and an alarm (typically used for waking up) is one of those. I'd hate to have to remember to flip off the silent switch every night. And worse, if I did, any number of notifications arriving through the night (new email, GameCenter notices, etc., etc.) would keep me up all night long. But the silent switch silences everything, except for my wake-up alarm.

iOS (the operating system powering iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices) has this general setting called "Airplane Mode". When you enable this, it disables all of the wireless communications on the device. You can disable these individually through other settings, but this is a quick, convenient way to turn them all off at once. It also displays a helpful airplane status icon, replacing the wireless carrier icon and signal strength shown in the status bar.

I think a similar, convenient mode could be added to address this mute-my-phone problem. Perhaps, called "Do Not Disturb Mode". When enabled, it would prevent any form of audible sound from the device, including alarms. It would also prevent vibrations and incoming notices, preventing their pop-over display (they'd still be visible in the notification center you can drag down from the top of the screen). This mode would be perfect to use when reading a book. It'd also be useful when giving a presentation that's driven by your iPhone or iPad. You could also think of it as a "focus" mode where you can open up an app and get something done, without distraction from the device itself. Come to think of it, I could use such a mode on my Mac.

Another mode that I think would be helpful is an "Energy Saver Mode". I imagine this mode would ease the minds of many that want to close each app when they've returned to the home screen. Basically, it would prevent fast-app switching, by closing an application when you leave it (with one exception made for any active music-playing app). This would save power since apps wouldn't be allowed to continue running for up to 10 minutes after leaving them. Sure, app start-up time would be longer with this on, but I could see it being useful in situations where you are trying to make your battery go as long as possible. Perhaps when you want to read a book for a few hours and don't care if you aren't receiving email or push notifications or other things that chew at your battery all day.

Each of these modes (Airplane, Do Not Disturb, Energy Saver) could be combined in any way the user wants. Enabling Airplane and Energy Saver modes would be great for those long flights. Energy Saver and Do Not Disturb modes could be used together for playing that CPU-intensive game for a few hours straight without seeing popups for each incoming email.

But normal operation of an iOS device should never rely on these modes. Apple shouldn't be testing battery performance with Energy Saver mode enabled, nor should memory-hungry apps require any to be enabled for their app to run properly. An iOS device should never be that "fiddly". But such modes would be welcome for those that know to use them.

Of course, these modes could only be added by Apple — no mere app store app could influence the behavior of iOS system policies. So we're at the mercy of Apple to fix this one. While they're at it, it would be great to have more convenient access to these toggles. I'd love to see them exposed as a panel in the pull-down drawer used for notifications and other widgets (weather, stocks, etc.).

 

Things for iPhone: Crash data found

From my wife's iPhone, running Things for iPhone. She asks, "what does this mean?"

I had no idea. "Yes", "Always", "No"? Am I to dispute that crash data was found? Very odd. Oh, wait... (rotates phone)

Ah, that's better. But actually, the fix for this bug is to use Wunderlist instead.

 

iOS: Time zone selection

The iOS Settings app is a real mess. I could probably write a few dozen posts for it alone, but I ran across this again the other day and thought I'd note it. If you're traveling about and need to update your iPad's (or iPod touch) time and time zone, you'll have to use a screen where you select the proper time zone by searching for something. It turns out, you don't search for the time zone name, but a city that exists in that time zone. And not just any city will do — you need to choose a major city. The title for this selection screen simply says "Time Zone" (found under the Date & Time settings). For iPhone, you'll have to enable the option to set your time manually to see this. On a WiFi-only iPad, manual timezone selection is your only option. The iPhone screen looks like this:

So here I am, like a fool, trying to type "eastern" for my time zone, and all I see is "Easter Island". Why not let you search for both time zone names and cities? Or how about if the device is connected, allowing you to type in any city name or zip code and resolve that via an online service to a time zone? Or maybe it could use location services to let the user select from a short list of nearby time zones. Or, use a map interface to let you point at where you are (similar to the Mac's "world map" time zone selection).

At the very least, prompt the user to search for a major city in their time zone instead of leaving the user to guess at what is expected here. It isn't obvious.

Observed under iOS 4.3.3.

Words With Friends: Poor grammar

Maybe they need to make a Grammar With Friends app?

Observed in Words With Friends for iPhone version 4.02.

Netflix iOS App: Scrolling pain

Noted on December 17, 2011 that scrolling all better now. A scrollbar also appears while scrolling. Thanks, Netflix!

Fire up the Netflix app on your iPhone or iPad and go to the home view. Now, try flicking that list up to scroll to the bottom. Feel that? It's like flicking through mud. It's like having an Android simulator on my iPhone.

Now, I know the Netflix UI here is mostly a web app. Maybe there isn't a good way to solve this problem for a web app like this and make it behave like a native app would. But as it is, it's downright painful to use. Another problem that comes from this design decision is that there is no scrollbar to indicate where you are within a list.

These are glaring usability flaws affecting typical use of the app. If I were Netflix, I'd build a native iOS app instead. Don't cut corners on building a flagship app that brings millions of subscribers and potential customers to your business.

Also, please bring back the DVD queue management features.

(Last observed in version 1.2.1.)

Mobile Safari: The broken file upload field

FIXED: File upload support (for images, video only) is available as of iOS 6. It lets you either select an existing photo or video, or you can choose to take one right then. Hopefully, iOS will eventually support selection of other file types, but this is good enough to be considered fixed in my book.

Mobile Safari has never allowed you to select a file to upload to a web site. That's broken. Here's how it looks today (under iOS 4.3.1, on iPad):

The button is grayed out, suggesting that the function could work if only you knew some secret incantation.

I know iPhone and iPad don't have a traditional file system where the user can browse for documents that are stored on it. But at the very least, such a button should let you select from your photo/video library.

But eventually, it should be possible to select from any document that a user creates on their iPhone or iPad. A file upload field should specify a list of document types that it can accept. HTML5 includes an "accept" attribute for this very purpose (although I'm not sure how well it is supported yet). For Mobile Safari, this information could help identify the files that are appropriate to pick from. iOS applications can register the document types that they produce. Safari could then allow the user to select the application, then the file within that application that they want to upload.

Another way to do this is to use a UI similar to the Spotlight search interface on iOS. Basically, you would simply search for the document you want. Any resulting matches would be displayed and grouped by application.

I'm hopeful that we're near to some solution to this particular problem. In previous versions of iOS, this field has been completely hidden. So I'm at least hopeful that since it's now visible but disabled we're inching toward a functional file upload feature.

iPhone App Store: "iTunes Store" heading

Update: Fixed as of iOS 5 — this now says "Info".

Ran into this little bug last night as I was updating some of my iPhone apps:

This heading is shown when you are viewing the description of a specific application's updates. I don't know why it says "iTunes Store" instead of "App Store". You don't have a view like this on iPad — all change descriptions are shown on the Updates tab, which simply has the heading "Updates".

Yes, it's a small, small thing. But now that I've seen it, it bugs me every time I update an app.

Observed on iOS 4.3.

Mobile Safari and the auto-opening bookmarks menu

If you use Mobile Safari a lot on your iPhone or iPod touch, you may have experienced this one.

After closing all of your open sites, Mobile Safari leaves you with a blank, "Untitled" view. Now, click the home button to leave Safari. Now, relaunch Safari. Instead of just displaying that same "Untitled" view, it loads up your list of bookmarks. Now, that might be helpful to someone, but for me, I always end up tapping the "Done" button to dismiss my bookmarks, because inevitably, I already have a site or web search in mind, and it isn't in my bookmarks. Rather than tap the "Done" button every time this happens, I'd rather tap the bookmarks button on the off-chance that I do want to use my bookmarks.

Perhaps another way to fix this is to have the bookmarks display, but show not completely hide the address and search field. That might be a little too cluttered, though. Suppressing the bookmarks list is probably the better approach. It's notable that this is not the behavior for Safari for iPad, which behaves and looks more like Safari on a Mac.

If you too are annoyed by this, I do have one workaround to share for this. You can create a home screen icon for the address "about:blank" (just type that into the address bar, then use the middle toolbar button at the bottom of the screen to create a home screen icon for it). This icon will cause Safari to always launch and display a blank page.

 

This bad apple in the iOS App Store

This isn't a software bug, but a process bug. There's an app in the App Store called "All Phone Tracker Real Spy HD". This app claims to "Locate any phone in the world, on any network, anywhere in the world on iPhone/iPod/iPad". Sounds great, but it's completely fraudulent to claim such a thing. Yet, somehow, this app has managed to evade the iOS App Store police.

Worse, right this moment, it sits at pretty high on the App Store's Top-Grossing chart (minutes before this screen shot was taken, it was #12):

Perhaps it is top-grossing partly due to selling a few copies at a new price of $449.99 (it had been priced at $0.99).

And somehow, this app has managed to get 20 5-star ratings since releasing version 1.0.1, an update summarized as "BUG FIXED."

I'm afraid that simply being listed on that chart is drawing extra attention and maybe there are just that many iPad users who are willing to spend $449 at the drop of a hat?

This app is a total scam (the 60 1-star ratings and negative reviews of the 1.0 release make that plain). It is in the "Entertainment" category, but claims it works ("WE GUARANTEE 100%"). Please Apple, remove this thing from the App Store and ban "Bendary" as an iOS developer.

Also, Apple shouldn't allow App Store submissions that specify an "App Support" URL of "www.Apple.com".

UPDATE: It's been less than 30 minutes since publishing this post and the app's price is back down to $0.99. The developer must really be having fun gaming the system. And now there are 50 5-star ratings.