12 ways Apple's iOS 5 falls short

As good as it is, the latest iPhone and iPad operating system misses the mark in several areas; here are my 12 biggest peeves

I like iOS 5 -- a lot. It has several strong improvements over the already-good iOS 4, such as notifications, improved AJAX support in the Safari mobile browser, and wireless syncing (both via Wi-Fi and through iCloud, which I believe will quickly make anywhere, anytime access an assumption iOS users impose on everything); thus, iOS extends its lead over Google's Androidand other mobile OSes. But it's by no means perfect.

Given that Apple keeps iOS updated regularly, here are what it should be working on for one of the next versions. Some of these are old requests -- odd omissions that seem less and less supportable, considering the other capabilities in iOS 5 and in the new iCloud service.

1. A "return to app" gesture. iOS 5 brings Mac OS X Lion-like multitasking gestures for navigating among apps without needing to use the Home button. For example, a four-finger sideways swipe moves you to the next or previous app that's running (depending on the swipe direction), and a four-finger swipe up exposes the multitasking dock that shows apps in operation and has controls over iTunes, AirPlay, and rotation lock or mute (whichever one is not set for control by the side switch). Then there's the four-finger pinch gesture to open the home screen. But there's no easy way to return to the app you were running before you opened the home screen. When the home screen is visible, the four-finger swipes simply scroll the home screens. How about designating the four-finger expand move as the "return to app" gesture?

2. Support for group creation and editing in contacts. One of the main uses of a mobile device in the field is communicating, which includes managing the information on the people at the other end of the line. It's very odd that iOS 5 still doesn't let you create and edit groups in the Contacts app, and it still won't let you send an email to everyone in a group by entering that group name in the To field; instead, you have to select each person in the group separately. iOS 5 imports groups from Exchange, Outlook, and Mac OS X's Address Book. You can edit every other attribute of your contacts and even link cards (such as for spouses who have different last names) -- so why not groups? iOS 5 finally introduced album creation to the Photos app, so I don't see why it won't do essentially the same thing for contacts.

3. Customized email signatures per account. As smartphones and tablets are increasingly used for both work and personal purposes, having a single email signature for all accounts handled in iOS's Mail app makes no sense. You should be able to set a separate signature per account, just as you can in Apple's Mail client in Mac OS X -- or in Outlook in Windows and Mac OS X.

4. Mail filtering. Still on the email front, iOS 5 does not support message filtering, such as to automatically trash all emails tagged as junk by your server or to move all emails from your boss to a specified folder. iPhones and iPads certainly have the processing power to do this, and Apple has such filtering tools in its Mail client in Mac OS X. At the very least, you should be able to sync those rules from your desktop (from Mail, Outlook, or Exchange) over iCloud or other mechanism, and eventually create and edit them on your iOS device.

5. Undifferentiated universal inbox. My last email complaint: When looking at the All Messages view of your inbox, iOS doesn't indicate which mailbox each message is from. It really should, so you can more readily see work email than personal, for example. Even better would be an option to hide some email accounts from the universal inbox, such as the account you might use for e-commerce and its accompanying spam mail. After all, Calendars can visually distinguish accounts for calendar entries and let you choose which accounts display in the universal view; why not Mail?

6. Voice-based search. Apple has rich assistive capabilities for the visually and hearing-impaired in iOS, which iOS 5 bolsters. So it's odd that iOS doesn't let you search the Web or the mobile device's contents via voice -- especially on the iPhone, where you are likely to be using a Bluetooth headset -- as Google's Android OS does. (You can do limited functions via voice, such as control the music player and call people in your contacts list.) Although I'm not a fan of talking to or hearing computers when working, I see the need for cellphones in some circumstances. Yes, the new iPhone 4S adds the Siri "personal assistant"-style voice-based search agent, but it's limited to just that one device, so I can't really count it as an iOS 5 capability.

7. iOS-only use of FaceTime and iMessage. I understand Apple's desire that everyone use its devices, and thus the impulse for making services like FaceTime videoconferencing and the newiMessage text messaging work only among iOS (and Mac OS X) users. But that approach greatly limits their utility. iOS 5's new iMessage client is rendered particularly useless due to this limitation: You might as well opt for email instead to be sure you can reach anyone you want (as opposed to using on the iPhone, anyhow, the carrier's high-cost SMS, an evil money grab that should be outlawed) or a third-party IM client that works across services (as most do these days).

8. Easier access to Bluetooth. In the Settings app, you can get right to airplane mode, Wi-Fi, VPN, and notifications settings, and on the iPad, you can also go directly right to the location, cellular data, and screen settings. So why not Bluetooth? Instead, you have to go down two levels to enable or disable Bluetooth and to connect to devices. On an iPhone at least, that could be problematic, such as when you're in the car. As an alternative (or additional) location for quick access to Bluetooth, the multitasking dock could be used.

9. Keyboard shortcuts for formatting. Now that iOS 5 lets you use boldface, italics, and othersimple formatting in Mail, there should be an easier way to access them than highlighting text and applying formatting through a contextual menu. Keyboard shortcuts -- ideally on both onscreen and Bluetooth keyboards -- similar to what we use every day on PCs and Macs should be added. That would also help editing and note-taking apps.

10. Inadvertent keyboard splits. The new ability to split or float the onscreen keyboard for easier thumb typing is a nice addition to iOS 5. But it turns itself on when I type fast, which of course means the keyboard I thought I was using is no longer where my fingers are. I can't figure out what combination of taps causes the unexpected split, but it sure is annoying to realize I've typed nothing for a few seconds and have to redock the keyboard. The good news is you can turn off the splity keyboard feature if this becomes an issue; do so in the Keyboard pane of the Settings app.

11. Unintegrated tasks in Reminders. I'm not a list person, but if I were, I'd use the new Reminders app for managing to-do items, as it works with iCloud, Exchange, and IMAP to-do lists as well as with local ones. But the fact that you can't see all your to-dos in one view is silly. You can see all your messages from your various email inboxes in Mail, and you can see all your appointments from your various calendars in Calendar, so why can't you see all your tasks in a unified view in Reminders? Here's a case where Apple is not being consistent with its own software.

12. Poor printing support. A year ago, then-CEO Steve Jobs disappointed us all when hispromises of easy printing from iOS 4.2 turned out to be overblown, as iOS 4.2 ended up just working with a handful of AirPrint-enabled printers from Hewlett-Packard. That limited support remains the case today, so printing is often impossible from iOS devices. There are several third-party printing apps at the App Store, but they work only with apps that send their content to other apps via iOS's Open In facility. That cuts out mainstay apps like Mail and Pages that can accept Open In-delivered content but not send their content to other Open In-enabled apps. Thus, their content can't be sent to the printing apps. In iOS 5, Apple really should have enhanced its printing API to create a hook from its ubiquitous Print menu to such apps via Open In. But it hasn't, and printing remains a mainly-miss proposition. (Yes, I know that Android and other mobile OSes also fall down here, but that doesn't mean iOS should.)