My iOS 7 Wishlist

Apple's software, iOS, was first born six years ago and since then it hasn't changed much. I'm sure we'd all like to see some new features packed in there. Word on the street says Apple's refresh of its mobile operating system, iOS 7, is already in the works. Come June 2013, Apple will allegedly showcase iOS 7 at its World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC). The number one item on my list is home screen improvements such as widgets. They would give a fresh and new look to iOS as well as making it easier and quicker for users to keep up to date with the latest news, as well as checking social networking notifications. I would also like to see a refresh for the app icons. Enough users have jailbreaking tools at their disposal to modify the look and feel of the home screen icons, but an official change would be a welcome addition. A dynamic home screen that can be personalised, just like Windows 8's Live Tiles, would breathe in a fresh lease of life. The second thing that I would like to see is the multi-window view, which would bring a whole different view to multitasking. Apple could one-up Samsung and make this feature applicable for several apps and not limit it to some. In case you're thinking the iPhone 5 can run apps in the background and the push notifications are helpful enough, with a bigger screen and higher resolution on the Retina display (e.g. on the iPad or iPad Mini), the Multi-Windows experience would be phenomenal. The feature would enable apps to be run side-by-side in the portrait or landscape mode. What's more, Apple should make the apps resizable so that if a user prefers single tasking he/she can do the same easily. A preview option for the apps could be the icing on the cake.

The third thing I would love to happen in iOS 7 would be improvements to Siri, the virtual voice assistant. We all love Siri but you'd agree that the aging voice assistant could do with an image overhaul. Siri is perfect when it comes to scheduling alarms, appointments and reminders, but there's room for improvement. Imagine if Siri could keep track of your search history and preferences on Safari; and then in the future recommend relevant information based on this data. Siri could even scan the emails in your inbox and sort the spam from important messages. Siri could track shipment notifications and remind you that you have a flight to take or a movie to catch, and perhaps even integrate your movie or flight tickets into Passbook. Moreover, having third-party app integration would be a step forward for the digital assistant. Users could then simply ask Siri to dial in from Skype to make a call.

No. 4 on the list are shortcuts to settings. There's no reason that Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Brightness controls are so buried on an iPhone. It would be easier to reach them if they appeared in the notification bar or in widgets. Wouldn't that be great? The fifth thing on my list is alternate password options. Android's gesture passwords are great, and those photo passwords that Microsoft uses are pretty cool, too. Lots of options are out there, all a tad bit more secure than "1111." No. 6 on the list is auto-updating apps, this would reduce the extra hassle in visiting the App Store. Some app updates don't matter at all, others are vital. It would be good if you could choose which apps should be auto-updated, or at least which ones should be able to notify us when an update is available. Number 7 on my list are moving pictures. Yes, the GIF craze is well underway, but the options for making short moving images on iOS are slim, so, in iOS 7 there should be an option where anyone can create their own GIFs with ease. We love Panorama ... let's keep those novelty camera features coming! The 8th and last point is data/power usage and alerts. We pay for every megabyte of data these days, so why not have smart tools for managing them? Android wowed a lot of people with its Jelly Bean data and power management controls — why can't iOS have something similar, to tell users which apps eat up most data and battery juice, and to get alerts when you have little data left to use.

I hope Apple include some or most of these features into the upcoming version of iOS, which should come this summer. A complete refresh of the software would see more and more people being interested in the legendary iDevices. What are the things that you would like to see in iOS 7?