Back on March 1, I tried to imagine what we’d see in iOS 5. Unlike preview years, however, there was no iOS 5 event in the spring. Instead, Apple will now be previewing iOS 5 in June, at WWDC 2011. As in this monday. So I’m revisiting my list, updating it with the latest news and rumors, and wondering what Apple could do that’ll be big enough to make us forget the lack of a new iPhone introduction this time around.
So what will iOS 5 bring? We’ll give you our want list, after the break.
Apple ID activation (via iCloud account?)
Right now before you can use a new iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad you (or the store where you bought it) have to tether it to iTunes on Mac or Windows and “activate” it. How 2007. Android just needs a Gmail address. webOS just needs a Palm profile. Facebook phones (you know they’re coming!) will just need your @facebook.com address. Apple has millions and millions of iTunes IDs, Apple IDs, and MobileMe IDs. Let us use those — or better yet, unify those first and then let us use our unified Apple ID — an iCloud ID perhaps — to activate our iOS devices.
Moreover, just like when you login to MobileMe for the first time on a new Mac, let iOS immediately check the iCloud and download our preferences. Let us type in that ID and get our mail, calendar, and contacts accounts, Wi-Fi setups, and all our other Settings synced down to our device.
If we lose our iPhone or iPad, or simply update to a new one, we should be able to login with our Apple ID and immediately have our phone restored to a personalized, working state. Sure huge media, apps, games, etc. will still require iTunes tether to sync, but give us a basic on-device, online way to start.
(Seeing as how the facial recognition login is still likely a few years off…)
Contact and status aggregation (and Twitter integration?)
Once we have the one Apple ID to rule them all, we need a saner way of handling all the other IDs and accounts. Facetiously I’d say just copy webOS’ Syngery. Seriously, however, between email, IM, Twitter and Facebook status, contact information, and all the different online stores with often conflicting data it’s annoying and unworkable to keep them all sandboxed and separate. We’ve been asking for this on iOS for years now as well.
If we know a contacts online account, let us enter it. Then pull in their profile information and status, silo it so it stays internally separate, but present it back to us in a unified view.
Facebook is presenting email, IM, SMS, etc. in a unified Facebook message system now and while it’s still a little kludgy it shows how the boundary between different communication forms are breaking down. Apple is great at “hiding the pipes” (the backend data sources that bring information into their apps) and showing the user only a single clean, consistent UI. They’re doing that now with unified inbox in Mail — regardless of which account an individual message is in, we see them all in the unified inbox. It would be great to see Apple expand this not just across email accounts but across protocols.
If I bring up Leanna, let me see her latest emails, Twitter and Facebook status, IM’s, SMS, etc. all as “messages” (hey, let 3rd parties hook in so I can see Foursquare, Instagram, etc. if she offers them and I approve them on my device.) Then thread them and let me reply back to them automagically using the proper protocol.
We’ve heard rumors now that Twitter will be deeply integrated into iOS 5. An additional way to share photos, perhaps. A communication protocol to peer email and SMS, potentially. iOS’ answer to BlackBerrys BBM, even. That’s all fine for Twitter but Twitter isn’t the sum total of internet chat. We need more.
App state sync (via iCloud?)
Taking it one step further, right now if we use an app on iPhone and then go and use the same app on iPad — even if it’s a universal binary — there’s no persistency of state. Unless the developer is syncing on their own or with a popular web service like DropBox, there’s no way to get to your latest data from different devices. Apple could provide a consistent method for doing this.
We’ve asked for it before when it comes to games — let Game Center sync our game progress between devices. If we get to a certain level in Infinity Blade on iPhone we want to pick up iPad and keep going from that level. But really, a general app state sync API would be even better. When iOS saves the information locally, push it up to the cloud and the next time the app is launched on any device, check the cloud for the latest state.
Given Apple has now announced they’ll be showing off iCloud services, but haven’t uttered a peep about what those services will include, it could be a logical fit for state syncing too. (Like the Data Center, until we know what it’s for, it’s for everything, right?)
Untethered firmware updates (via Airport/Time Capsule?)
Wireless sync and software updates are the dream. Zune tried the former and Android and webOS already do the latter. The size of iOS updates — the entire firmware re-installed each time — require such a solid internet and power connection that tethering to iTunes is often the right choice.
But rumor has it Apple might be using their Airport Extreme + hard drive combo, Time Capsule, to stage firmware updates. Since they’re plugged in and on ethernet, much like the Apple TV, they could presumably load up and make firmware updates available on-device, like Apple TV already does.
Even more interesting would be a trickle update, where tiny binary files containing the just the updated bits would constantly become available when online. A bad trickle update could kill your device, so there’s a lot to be concerned about still, but that certainly seems like a better future, and one Google’s Chrome experiments with today.
App store upgrades
Originally I wanted App Store trials, subscriptions, and upgrades. To be able to download an app or game, try it for a short period of time, then decide to buy it and if the developer offers a really compelling upgrade, pay for it without having to buy a whole new “2″ app would be fantastic for users and developers alike. Over time, with freemium and $0.99 apps with in-app purchases the need to demo has lessened for me. And Apple has already announced subscriptions — to much controversy — but upgrades are still needed.
iTunes knows what apps we’ve bought. We know it knows because when we try to buy a paid app we’ve already bought, iTunes tells use we’ve already bought it and that we can download it again for free. Why can’t the same system be used to determine, for example, that we’ve already bought Tweetie 1 and hence we can download Tweetie 2 at an upgrade price. Apple could allow developers to set that upgrade price in iTunes Connect, an extension of how they can set universal sale prices today. We’ve seen some strange screens pop up that seem to indicate Apple is at least experimenting with the idea, but why not pull the trigger? Again, it’s more overhead for Apple but the customer experience boost would be enormous.
Note: With Lodsys now filing suit against developers for using in-app purchase as way to upgrade from free/lite to full apps, the need for real, App Store handled demos is back.
Media streaming/re-downloads
Apple has been all over the news with iCloud and it’s music element — all labels on board, movie studies in negotiation… but for what? Will we simply be able to stream and re-download everything we’ve bought on iTunes, like we can re-download apps today? Or will it be a locker like Google and Amazon offer, and amnesty for everything who’s ever “shared” a file?
I’m guessing the former, at least at first.
File handling
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