Saturday, July 12, 2014

Hey, Apple! Fix the iPhone Upgrade Process!


There's a new upgrade for the iPhone operating system (iOS 7.1.2). I've been through a lot of these upgrades. Everyone is the same: brain dead

Here's the problem. My iPhone is full of music. Each upgrade requires more free space. Changing my "...media sync options to make more storage available" doesn't really do that so I have to delete songs manually. This is like asking me to perform my own root canal. Every song I pull off manually is painful, like pulling another tooth.

Here are some options. I'm going to write the options out in pseudo code. Any one of my students could program this for you, Apple. If you're interested in hiring them, I'll send you a list.

The first option: automatically delete songs that aren't played very much until you have enough free space (I know you keep information on how often a song has been played).

Sort songs by the number of times each song has been played;
Do Until (There is enough free space);
     Delete songs starting with least played.

Here's another option: automatically put deleted songs out into the cloud.

Sort songs by the number of times each song has been played;
Do Until (There is enough free space);
     Put the least played song out in the cloud;
     Keep the song in the playlist but mark it as out in the cloud;
     Delete the song on the iPhone.

Here's another option: store all the music in the cloud unless I ask to play it. I have many, many more songs that I have purchased from you on iTunes than I can possible put on my iPhone.

Download to the iPhone the list of all songs purchased from iTunes;
When I select a song to be played, download it to my iPhone;
If ((my iPhone is out of space) or (you need more space for an upgrade)) Do Until (There is enough free space);
     Delete songs starting with least played.

Well, I could go on. 

"Why are you putting this on your blog," you ask, "rather than sending it to Apple as a suggestion?"

Obviously, you have never tried to make suggestions to a large computer manufacturer or a software developer. Try notifying Google Maps (or worse yet, Apple Maps) that something is wrong: "We'll let you know when we've upgraded the map to reflect your correction." Right! That was three years ago.

Is it just me or does it seem that Apple System Programming is a bit uninspired these days?

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