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Birchtree
By Matt Birchler
I've been writing here since 2010! Back when personal blogs were all the rage. Kids, ask your parents.

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.

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