Everything Missing From iOS 9 Part 6 (or What I Want From iOS 10)

This post continues my list of  iOS 10 features I want to see. In case you’ve missed it from the start, you can start with Part 1. (Part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5.)

Notes

Allow draft working copies in Notes similar to mail app. You might think every note is a draft or no notes are ever drafts, but being able to classify certain Notes as works in progress is a bit of GTD. It’s obviously something you can do by tagging something @draft or some other personal system, but it’s really awesome to have something like that officially build in to show Apple being progressive. The ideas behind GTD would really benefit all.

One of the great features about Drafts 4 is that upon opening the app, you can choose to have a blank note show so that you can start taking notes rights away. It seems that for iOS, the Notes app prioritizes syncing over quickly getting ideas onto the page. Evernote was pretty terrible about that too. Maybe that was my fault for letting too many ideas accumulate before I thought “hey I need to get these down before I forget them” and sure enough one of them would go back into the ether by the time syncing was done making things laggy. Notes takes too long to respond when you have a lot of notes in your account. Start notes right away!

Making iOS Notes another social and collaborative app controlled by Friends rights is also something that can be a major step forward. Sure it would be great if there was sharing not just among your iOS pals but among the various others in your life. That’s what systems like OneNote and Evernote try to do; they are both systems I’m not keen on. The iOS notes app is where my ideas and notes live now. A standard that allows me to collaborate notes with other users regardless of their platform opens so many doors.

Handwriting recognition is still a niche but it’s in a better place than it ever was in the Newton days. With the advent of the Apple Pencil for the iPad Pro line, it makes more sense for iOS than ever before. This is available in some great apps like GoodNotes but having an system level SDK could let it hook directly into apps like Notes.

Voicemail

Transcribed voicemail first came on the scene with Grand Central before it became Google Voice. Years later, in typical Google style, it has not changed and the successful translation rate is very hit or miss. The poor quality of most calls, people not speaking clearly or even coherently, and over-abbreviated messages with repetitive poor information are to blame. My personal digital assistant needs to take a message for me while I’m out but most of the time my name is nowhere to be found even though most of my voice mails start out as “Hi Ernie”. Is Siri or any transcription yet up to the task? Apple has already gotten a black eye years back from the Maps app. This could be a horrible source of embarrassment but is a sorely needed feature. When will the breakthrough tech arrive?

If you’ve found this series useful or insightful at all, please share as much as you can. The extra clicks really do help.

(Continued in Part 7)