iOS suggestions

3 minute read

Books

Make learning while reading delightful:

  • The dictionaries could be expanded to include more loanwords, obscure words, phrases, and slang. Presumably dictionary size is less of an issue now that they’re not printed on paper. If the Merriam-Webster word set must be used for prestige or reliability guarantees, use it but fall back to a larger dictionary when a query has no matches.
  • When the user queries words or phrases not in any dictionary, use an LLM to try to explain it. A prompt specifying the book, release date, and the plot so far can produce a much more informative explanation than a dictionary.

Avoid hawking and touting:

  • Searching for a book that exists in your library should match on that book before its Book Store equivalent
  • The landing page for Books should not be a store front.

Do not expose the user to unwholesome content before they ask for it:

  • The landing page for Books should not be a promotion for erotic romance novels and ephemeral self-help.
    • Perhaps the store front recommendations could be tailored to the books in your library.
    • Alternatively the store front could recommend books that the people at Apple would be happy to recommend to someone in their community.

Make things Just Work:

  • Add an option to download a book permanently, like you can with a song in Spotify or Music.
  • The automatic book download management makes strange (arguably buggy) choices for which books to make available and could be improved using a simple last-read-first-out strategy.
  • On the Library tab the triple dot menu should be aligned with the “Library” text, matching the layout on the Home tab.
  • The bug where the title of the book occasionally fails to disappears and overlaps with the text should be fixed.

No Slop:

  • Let users disable “Reading Goal.” Ideally they could disable the entire reading gamification feature set, but this one is especially unfortunate because it appears in pride of place in the first row of the landing page. When I see Reading Goal I’m reminded of highschool, and of how it feels to be encouraged to view your own experiences primarily as instruments of material ends. “You’re not reading a book, you’re accruing Reading Minutes™ which will make you smart and wise and secure and loved.” Let’s support peoples’ right to simply read!

The other thing about the Reading Goal is that by default it is set to 5 minutes daily, but I would honestly find this sweet and not insulting if only they let you turn the darn thing off.

Notifications

  • Enforce the ban on advertisements in notifications. Let users complain when a notification breaks the rules, and/or use an LLM to classify notifications as ads or not ads.
  • Apps should be required to add an option for turning off recommendation notifications (such as “x celebrity just posted.”)

Settings

  • Add semantic search (so “airplane” matches “aeroplane mode”).
  • Make category names searchable.
  • Don’t keep displaying the “Apple Music Free for 3 Months” option after the offer has been accepted.
  • Don’t present advertisements as options on a settings page (relocate the “Apple Music Free for 3 Months” offer).

Photos

  • Make “Favorites” accessible from the landing screen by default. Currently it is four scrolls away.
    • It is currently in Utilies which is an awesome block full of helpful features like automatically generated categories (“Receipts”, “Handwriting”). I think this block has been relegated to the second-to-last place because it contains the “Hidden” folder, which is supposed to be discreet. The Utilies folder should be broken up so that the “Hidden” folder is somewhere discreet, surrounded by boring utilites, while the most important categories like Favorites are allowed to shine.
  • You should be able to scroll down to get to older photos.
  • Honestly this app makes me feel a bit nauseous. I think it needs a professional’s help.
  • Feature request: tool to identify duplicate photos, select the best one/s for approval, and delete the others.