5 reasons to hate iOS… sort of

Many people seem to be overly enamoured with Apple’s mobile operating system. In fact many fan boys (and girls) refuse to admit that there is anything wrong with iOS and that the iPhone is the greatest invention since electricity (which was essentially only invented to power iDevices).

I like to think that I’m impartial to operating systems: I work on an iMac running Mac OS X, I have a Windows 7 laptop at home, I have an iPad as my tablet of choice, I use a BlackBerry as my primary cellphone and I’m currently reviewing phones running Android and Windows Phone 7.5.

iOS is the most popular tablet operating system on the planet and the second most popular operating system for smartphones in the lucrative United States market. Being the biggest though doesn’t necessarily mean you’re the best, so here are the 5 reasons I hate iOS, kind of, sort of, whatever.

1. The App Store: Apple’s App Store is probably the single best feature of iOS. With hundreds of thousands of apps, the App Store is the repository for everything that makes an iOS device more than just silicon and glass. The problem in South Africa is that we don’t get any of the best parts of the store. No music, games, TV shows or movies. This means that the only way you can access content is by specifically breaking the terms of use of the iDevice that you are using by saying that you come from the US or another similarly well-endowed market place.
2. The keyboard: This hate stems directly from the iPhone. If you own an Android phone, then you have likely downloaded a third-party keyboard like Swype or SwiftKey. The ability to control your input method allows you to be comfortable with how you interact with your cellphone. Apple’s keyboard is great on the iPad, but on the iPhone, the keyboard is too cramped (unless you have toothpick fingers) and often results in a slowed typing experience as you spend time correcting your errors before you send you message.
3. Autocorrect: You know something is going wrong when there is a website dedicated to how badly your autocorrect feature has screwed up people’s messages. The iOS autocorrect can cause you some serious emotional strain when your message doesn’t say “tucking your kids in bed”.
4. Siri: The personal assistant that you can talk to was essentially the only reason to upgrade your phone from the iPhone 4 to the 4S. The problem with Siri is that at least half of the features are only available in the US. The other big problem, unless your accent mirrors one from the US or the UK, is that you are frequently left having to repeat yourself to Siri so many times that you may as well have typed everything in because it would have been faster.
5. The notification dock: Apple was under the hammer from Android in 2011. The Google-owned operating system was soaring into the lead in the smartphone race in the US and the rest of the world for that matter. The Cupertino-based company released iOS 5 showing off the new iPhone 4S and along with it a new notification dock. The addition mirrored similar functionality in Android and even in certain Symbian phones. The problem I have with it: it’s clearly not an Apple idea, from a design and operation standpoint, it’s messy and only resulted in every single application getting a banner and a pop up to distract from your user experience.

In a large screen application like the iPad, iOS seems to be by far and away the best operating system. It’s easy to use and easy to teach. But in the iPhone they have a lot of things to fix to convince me that it’s worth my time.

Later this year we’ll undoubtedly see the introduction of the next iPhone and iOS iteration. Until then though, I will continue to hate iOS, sort of… on the iPhone that is.