5 Things Apple Should Have Fixed Before the Bagel Emoji

Opinion
By published

Thanks for the cream cheese, Apple, but maybe you should concentrate on what really matters.

Well, the so-called #bagelgate is over: The latest iOS 12.0.1 update swaps the sad factory made bagged bagel emoji for a real bagel made in Manhattan. With cream cheese. Great. I wish Apple were so diligent for the real problems it needs to fix.

Credit: Emojipedia

(Image credit: Emojipedia)

Apple can do whatever it it wants, but I can’t help but wonder what would happen if the company put all that attention to detail into the things that really matter. Like these six issues:

1. Fix the iPhone’s battery life. It’s sad that, in this digital age, an iPhone can’t last through an entire day without dying. Meanwhile, Android phones last hours longer, thanks to 4,000-mAh batteries and higher. Granted, the size of a battery isn’t the only way to measure endurance, but other phones simply outlast the iPhone, as we’ve seen on our web surfing test.

2. Fix iCloud now. Photo albums that take ages to synchronize (and just crap out most of the time). An iTunes matching song service that stops working for no apparent reason. Messages that go to the wrong person. Glacially slow access to any cloud-stored files. And, to top it all, you only give 5GB for free. Are you kidding? Google’s cloud works a million times better.

Credit: Tom's Guide

(Image credit: Tom's Guide)

3. Fix the default app situation. Why are we forced to use your default applications every single time we click on an street address or a URL? Why can’t I set Google Maps and Google Chrome and Gmail as my default apps across the entire operating system? I get it, you just need to keep people in the walled garden, but I thought you guys were all about being “personal”. Not letting us choose our default apps is not personal.

4. Fix the calling screen. This is 2018. Why is a call more important than a message or any other type of social notification? There is absolutely no reason for a incoming phone call to take over my entire screen, stopping me from doing whatever the hell I’m doing. At least give us the option to turn calls of any type into banners that doesn’t intrude. And learn a thing or two from Google’s call screening while you are at it.

5. Stop enlarging your phones and provide a small phone option. Remember Steve Jobs? Yeah, the guy who actually made you? He used to say that huge phones like the ones you are selling are stupid. I’m not saying that you should stop making surfboards for hamsters but, for the love of god, give people an option that fits in any pocket and can be operated with one hand. An iPhone 5-sized phone with a full screen will be just perfect for the rest of us.

Anyway, who I am to say anything? I spent two years whining about Apple’s off-center 1 in its Calendar app — and the company actually listened and fixed it, switching from gross geometric-based centering to optical centering.

But I digress. Just fix the important stuff, Apple, OK?

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Jesus Diaz
Jesus Diaz

Jesus Diaz founded the new Sploid for Gawker Media after seven years working at Gizmodo, where he helmed the lost-in-a-bar iPhone 4 story and wrote old angry man rants, among other things. He's a creative director, screenwriter, and producer at The Magic Sauce, and currently writes for Fast Company and Tom's Guide.