4 really quirky things about iOS 5

So the iOS 5 update didn’t go very smoothly for a lot of people yesterday. But after finally getting it installed I was excited to page through and see what was new. The deeper I went though, the less excited I got. Here are 4 things that *slightly* burst my bubble:

1) Location based reminders:

I can tie a location to trigger a reminder, but I can only pick from addresses in my address book. Okay, so if I want “buy eggs” to pop up when I go to the grocery store, I have to save the store as a contact in my address book? Here’s an idea: give me a map! Wouldn’t it make complete sense to be able to put a pin in a map and say “when I arrive at this point, remind me to buy eggs.” Or “When I drive near this intersection, remind me to pick up the dry cleaning.” Or even “When I walk down this trail that is nowhere near any house or building and therefore has no address, remind me to check and see if anyone discovered the body yet.” Why does it have to be tied to a contact’s address? The fact that the address book is the ONLY way to specify a location is completely counter to the ideas put forth with the whole “find my friends” app. At least it should pull up a list of the bookmarked locations from the Maps app. It’s completely baffling to me how obvious that is yet it’s not implemented.

2) Emoji character replacement:

A few weeks ago I used a little plane symbol in my calendar and twitter feed. After the iOS 5 update, it gets replaced with a goofy cartoon plane. But iOS 5 doesn’t replace the symbol consistently. Here is a before and after screenshot of my calendar:

And here is my twitter feed as it is after the update. Notice that the plane show up in the timeline, but not on the tweet’s detail page:

Now I know this is because Apple implemented a global emoji keyboard available through the settings menu, and I know that the kiddies love emoticons. But what I want to know is how do I disable them? And why is the text getting replaced after the fact, when I didn’t use the emoji keyboard to type them in the first place? Apple, please get rid of the damn cartoon characters!

3) Newsstand:

I’m not going to be buying a $36.99/yr. subscription to any digital magazines anytime soon. My Newsstand rack will be perpetually empty. I can promise you that right now. But because the “app” is really just a folder to hold other “magazine apps”, it’ll be forced to sit there, lonely and empty on my phone. I can’t delete it (like all of the other Apple apps). Worse yet, I can’t even stow it away inside of a folder because it is, of course, a folder on it’s own. So, yeah. That one is worthless.

4) Crazy image zooming with double tap:

Pull up your camera roll. Select a fancy photo. Maybe you choose one you shot last month. Maybe one you just took. Doesn’t matter. Now double tap on it to zoom in. HOLY SUPER ZOOM CLOSE-UP! Why is it suddenly zooming so far? It’s crazy-to-the-point-of-being-rediculus pixel-blur zooming. I can’t imagine anyone in their right mind intending to zoom that far into any image.

All that said however, I’m really liking some of the new features. The landscape weekly calendar view, the camera auto-focus and auto-exposure lock, the volume + shutter button, mail flagging, and the return to the iPod style separate video and music apps. Couple that with continuous syncing of contacts, appointments, and bookmarks, and I’m pretty happy with the release.

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