Grading Apple on My iOS 12 Suggestions

Apple doesn’t answer to me, so this is of no concern to them, but I wanted to take a look back at my iOS requests to see how close Apple came to meeting them.

Performance

I asked for: Performance improvements, especially on older devices.

Apple delivered: ✅ Exactly this! iOS 12 is notably faster on all devices and was the first new feature they talked about on stage.

Battery

I asked for: Better battery life.

Apple delivered: ❌ No mention of battery life at all.

Notifications

I asked for: Grouped notifications, more compact display, and better controls from the notification itself.

Apple delivered: ✅ Basically exactly this! They grouped notifications on a per-app basis and they allowed for some settings to be changed (including blocking apps entirely) straight from the notification screen. I have my concerns with the specifics of this implementation, but it’s a great move.

Work and Home Apps

I asked for: The ability to mute apps when they are not relevant to me.

Apple delivered: ❌ Nope, all apps are treated the same.

Siri

I asked for: Siri in the cloud, so it works the same on all my devices.

Apple delivered: ❌ Not this at all. They enhanced Siri a bit, but not like this.

iCloud and Backups

I asked for:  Better iCloud behavior when it comes to device backups.

Apple delivered: ❌ You’ll need to upgrade your storage to back up a single iPhone and you’ll like it.

Files.app

I asked for: More power, especially when it comes to external storage.

Apple delivered:  ❌ Literally not a single mention of Files.app.

Picture-in-Picture on the iPhone

I asked for: Do it.

Apple delivered:  ❌ They didn’t.

Messages

I asked for: Better suggestions and RCS support.

Apple delivered:  ❌ They did neither. I even checked the expanded release notes to see if RCS was there, but to no avail.

OLED

I asked for: Support for OLED features such as always on screens and dark UIs.

Apple delivered:  ❌ Nope, nothing. This was a big let down for me since they could totally do this and everyone would be happy, but they put their energy elsewhere this year.

Stay tuned for a piece on how they did compared to my watchOS 5 proposal.