Apple Music’s Worst Feature? You Can’t Delete It.
I am not the first person to complain about the permanence of Apple’s preloaded apps. APPLE HAS REVEALED that 85 percent of iPhone and iPad users are running iOS 8, while Google is keeping mysteriously quiet on Lollipop adoption figures.US Airways scored the lowest of any company, with an aggregate score of 5 out of 100, according to Applause, a service that rates smartphone applications.Apple and IBM’s enterprise partnership has yielded 10 new apps, including one that targets business travellers and others that make use of predictive analytics and iBeacons.
Apple, as it does monthly, has updated its iOS developer portal to show that more and more people are updating to the newest version of its mobile software. It was closely followed by Hertz (9) and Southwest (18). “Consumers love apps that deliver clear value, optimize efficiency and simplify presentation,” says Ben Gray, the report’s author and a digital experience analyst for Applause. “Unfortunately, delivering consistently great experiences across both iOS and Android platforms is rare in today’s burgeoning apps economy.” 1. The enterprise apps for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch are released under Apple-IBM MobileFirst for iOS partnership — which was announced last year in July. Even if you’ve been carrying an iPhone in your pocket since the first day the handset became available back in 2007, you still don’t know everything there is to know about all of the phone’s features, because there are just too many things baked into iOS to remember them all. The figures don’t yet reveal how many iDevice users have signed up to Apple’s Beta Programme to give iOS 9 a spin ahead of its likely release in September.
You might remember a similar wave of complaints after iPhone owners woke up to find a meaty iOS update had landed a Watch app on their phones, regardless of whether they owned or wanted to own or had even heard of Apple’s shiny new $350-$17,000 accessory. Like Apple, the firm typically updates its adoption figures monthly, but a quick visit to Google’s Android developer portal shows that the firm hasn’t done so since 1 June. Hertz (9, Android) – This “improving” app still continues to fall far short of customer expectations, particularly when it comes to elegance and interoperability. 3.
By replacing inefficient paper schedules with analytics and intuitive dashboards, Shift Track makes it easy for managers to stay on top of staff schedules, time-off requests, shift exceptions, and employee hours. Smart and observant writer folk rightly called out Apple’s “junk drawer” problem, their increasingly overstuffed iPhone folders labeled “Apple Crap.” Let’s think about this from Apple’s perspective for a minute. Southwest (18, iOS) – Travelers are often unable to change their existing reservations and their reservations are frequently lost, resulting in a manual re-entry of their confirmation code. 5.
There are four in a new category called “employee experience.” The Travel Plan iPhone app helps workers plan business travel by reviewing their calendar and identifying possible trips. It’s not hard to imagine why it might want to highlight its own wares, in the same way you don’t wonder why Legoland doesn’t feature a “World o’ K’Nex” installation. Whether you’re a self-proclaimed iPhone expert or a novice, and whether you’ve owned every iPhone Apple has released or the iPhone 6 was your first iPhone, you will learn something here today. The almost two month old figures also show that Android 4.4 Kitkat is still sitting pretty on 39.2 percent of Android devices, while Jelly Bean has a 37.4 percent share.
It’s just good business. “Music, Photos, anything that ties into the cloud, all of these things are ecosystem plays,” explains Forrester mobile analyst Michael Facemire. “We’ve seen that just having a good device isn’t good enough in mobile… For Apple to maintain its stranglehold on the markets it enjoys, the higher-end markets, it needs to make sure it has that complete ecosystem buy-in.” It’s true that Apple has the strongest (though not the largest, thanks to legions of perfectly decent, inexpensive Android device) smartphone and tablet ecosystem in the world. Drag up from the bottom of your screen to open your iPhone’s Control Center, and then tap the bottom-left button to turn your iPhone’s flash on and use it as a flashlight. Staff members can use Shift Sync’s easy, intuitive dashboard to view and interact with their schedules, accept or decline schedule changes, submit vacation requests — and even keep track of sick leave and paid time off. Getting iPhone owners to use Music instead of Spotify, or Apple Maps instead of Google Maps, is a hypothetically terrific way to ensure that dominance continues. CouchSurfing (31, Android) – Broken notifications, frequent sign-outs and app crashes frustrate users who expect a digital-first startup to get better than its traditional hotel competitors that are slow to evolve from web to mobile. 10.
Everyone loves using the built-in panorama feature in the iPhone’s camera, but most people don’t pause for a moment to realize that panoramas don’t always have to be done in landscape. Powerful analytics scan Calendar events as potential trip suggestions, recognise frequent destinations, and automatically factor in trip parameters to provide personalised travel recommendations. Apple Maps, which arrived on millions of iPhones in 2012, was so outrageously bad that Apple CEO Tim Cook penned a public apology (since deleted from Apple’s web site) that included the unthinkable act of suggesting iOS users rely on a competitor instead: “While we’re improving Maps, you can try alternatives by downloading map apps from the App Store like Bing, MapQuest and Waze, or use Google or Nokia maps by going to their websites and creating an icon on your home screen to their Web app.” Apple Music, the latest size-14 first-party footprint to land on iPhones and iPads, isn’t nearly the same category of trainwreck as Maps. If this laundry list of complaints sounds demanding, it’s because, well, it is. “Consumers have incredibly lofty expectations of their mobile app experiences,” notes Gray. Stalwart Apple advocate and editor of the Loop Jim Dalrymple called Music “a nightmare” this week, after it gobbled up 4,700 songs from his music collection; he’s going back to Spotify. “Nightmare” was also the pejorative of choice for iOS developer Cezary Wojcik, who wrote a lengthy breakdown of Music’s usability, or lack thereof.
Travel Track for Business Travelers (iPhone, Apple Watch): It integrates everything from flight itineraries to local service recommendations in a single app. TouchID is rumored to be getting some pretty big improvements on the upcoming iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, but you can make Apple’s fingerprint scanner work faster on your iPhone right now. They check availability, compare prices, book tickets, check their status, and select seats. “These transactions need to work the first time and every time,” he adds. “Because if they don’t, consumers will find a competitor’s app that’s able to serve their mobile needs.” 1.
This is taking off your sock and chirping “Look at my gout!” And because users can’t delete it, for many it’s just a constant reminder of that thing Apple tried once that they didn’t particularly like. “Let’s say everybody buys into Facebook Messenger and leaves iMessage out of the loop,” says Facemire, describing what Apple’s undeletable apps are safeguarding against. “All of a sudden that’s a crack in Apple’s ecosystem that’s very hard to get back. Alaska Airlines (87, Android) – Newly redesigned Android app that simplifies the traveler’s experience at every physical and digital touchpoint along their journey. 3. Once you have that crack, one or two more cracks, now I don’t need an iPhone anymore.” All of which makes a strong case in favor of preloading apps.
Booking.com (85, Android) – Continuously tests for functional defects as well as localization issues using real world devices and professional testers around the globe. Loan Advise for Mortgage Officers (iPad): Loan Advise for iOS helps mortgage officers provide personalised recommendations to clients more efficiently than ever. Now mortgage officers can collect information about their clients in real time, offer accurate product recommendations, and make it easier for borrowers to select and apply for mortgages.
If I’m pushed toward Music and find it unbearable though, I get closer to thinking an iPhone—or at the very least, anything iCloud-related—is something I might not even want. Asset Inspect, an iPhone app, uses predictive analytics to suggest why a piece of industrial equipment, like a transformer, isn’t working and offer repair advice. Expert Resolve for Field Service Professionals (iPad): Expert Resolve shows field service professionals relevant historical data and typical device issues so they can quickly diagnose problems. Just over 3GB, which combined with how much room iOS itself takes (and the vagaries of measuring storage capacity) left him with just over 8GB of usable space on a 16GB iPad Mini.
An inspector can use the iPad’s camera and microphone to document inspections, and the app recommends actions based on data from previous inspections. The question becomes, then, when do our Apple Crap folders suck up so much oxygen that we can’t just ignore them anymore? “I would contend that the point is probably here,” says Facemire. “There can’t be another Music that comes out, that’s for sure. Until we get to a space where network connectivity is ubiquitous, and I don’t have to store anything at all locally, the space that’s already taken up is about the max that I would want to continue.” But why would anyone expect that sort of restraint? Field technicians can collaborate with other experts via FaceTime, leverage Camera to scan assets, and use the built-in microphone to record equipment sounds for operational analysis.
One customer is the Japanese government, which is providing iPads outfitted with customized apps to the country’s elderly population to help them manage their health. On any screen no matter where you are, double-touch on the iPhone’s home button to shift the entire screen downward briefly, thus allowing you to reach things near the top of the display without having to use two hands. Apple does clearly put thought into the apps it preloads, though, in a way that’s somehow more galling. iPad owners, for instance, aren’t saddled with Watch, or Calculator, or Stocks, or Compass, or a handful of other in-house apps, presumably because they don’t fit the imagined tablet use case (and don’t, importantly, feed into iCloud). While you can’t delete them, even the most entrenched Android apps can be easily disabled, locked down to their smallest form and blocking any future updates. With any luck, though, we’re nearing a point where Apple finally asks itself how much intractability is really worth, and how much it ultimately costs.