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Nov 22

Being a “power user” really sucks sometimes as iPhone 2.2 reminds me

Apple, Tech, iPhone Add comments

Being a power user sucks, as you are often in the minority. The marketing folks are drooling over the middle of that bell curve, and you are clustered at one end with a few of your mates.

I got reminded of this again with the iPhone 2.2 update that gave me this:

iPhone Safari

I get it, some people didn’t know that the search icon would do what that huge block on the right hand side now does. Make it like the “normal” browser and maybe they will get it. For me though, the space that they gained with the reload/stop URL bar integration is destroyed by the huge search box which does nothing for me.

If you could change it back, that would be OK. about:config away. But Apple doesn’t do this for us. We live in a Jobsian society where his vision is our vision. One more gripe with the iPhone even with this update…. I keep expecting the team to give us a decent friggin cache. PLEASE let me give the iPhone as much space as it needs to keep my stuff around! A mobile browser that is often on a crap network needs this more than anyone else! Cache more aggressively. Save my JavaScript and CSS! At the very least, don’t let me hit the back button and wait for the entire bugger to be grabbed again for the love of god! Why can’t I about:config and up the caching space and rules :(

I find this common with the Apple tools in general. They often get away with it as the engineers hide things in Apple prefs that we can change. The UNIX sometimes gets a chance to shine through for us there. Developers can sneak in a few more settings that don’t show up in the UI that Mr. J probably looks at with a fine tooth comb.

Argh. So close. Does anyone else feel this way? Maybe it is time to check out Linux? Nah, I am not that crazy ;)

7 Responses to “Being a “power user” really sucks sometimes as iPhone 2.2 reminds me”

  1. Mark Scrimshire Says:

    So is wanting Cut and Paste a power user feature? I hope not!

  2. stu Says:

    the browser bar doesn’t bug me; I really was looking forward to 2.2 fixing the dramatic and annoying pauses & crashes with safari and the keyboard. So far so good.

    basically when they don’t fix things over time, I get annoyed. Cut ‘n paste, for example, I think *needs* to happen in 2009, there’s no excuse for it to have de-prioritized or thought-over for more than 2 years. As for the cache, sure I wish it were improved, and I gather there’s a hardware reason it hasn’t (maybe they cache in RAM and don’t want to prematurely wear out the flash? no idea).

  3. Carter Says:

    I was complaining to my fiance about the *exact* same things this morning at breakfast. Wasting screen real estate on a mobile device is a crime.

  4. Alex Says:

    I don’t mind the address bar issue too much — although I see what you mean. I like the design of it over all. I think, however, that it might be more interesting if they could somehow combine the search and URL bars; perhaps so that, if you typed in a URL, it would automatically navigate to it, but if you typed in anything else, it would search. It just seems that there must be some better way of handling it.

    As for copy-and-paste, I DO NOT want to see this on iPhone. I’d love to see something which accomplished something similar, but really, I’d like something better. Clipboard on computers have enough issues that we feel the need to make programs which help manage them… I don’t know what way might be better, but I am certain there must be a better way.

  5. Scott Morgan Says:

    cut and paste, landscape email, a delete all button for text messages, native IM so you don’t have to leave the app open, just a few things I keep wishing for. On a brighter note the updates to maps are awesome, however, google should of used the accelerometer with street view.

  6. Ilyak Says:

    URL bar and search bar are combined in konqueror.

    Just type URL to get there, search query to search with default engine, ggi:query searches images, ggg: groups, ya: yields yandex search, wp: wikipedia, dict: miriam-webster.
    Configurable!

  7. ruben llibre Says:

    This really sums up my feelings of being a power user,
    my feelings toward mac, and towards linux. jajaja!
    nice one

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