Dear Apple,

WWDC 2014 is approaching fast and so is iOS 8 I guess. I’ve been writing and reading on potential iOS improvements for more than a year now. Today, I want to present you eight of my biggest wishes for iOS 8. I chose them based on the belief that they would push iOS to the next level.

1. Document management. I won’t be long on this matter as I already voted for this to be one of the biggest thing missing on iOS. iOS needs a document repository, a place to store documents to be available to all apps on the device (including the Mac or the PC) and on the cloud. Apple, welcome in 2014. You made a media picker, a photo repository, so this should be an easy one for you.

2. Inter-app communication. Sandboxing applications is a great way toward platform security. But it is also a very strict operating environment that has consequences on the user experience. I’m not sure callback URL are enough. One can imagine a mechanism where each application wishing to exchange data and pass on actions could do so in a formal way that you should formalize and build an API to support it. The user should be able to act upon a selected object to send it to another app or launch an action for application B from an application A. I’ll let you decide on the implementation details.

3. Make the iPad a real computer replacement. In that category I would put multiuser support as mandatory (not available for the iPhone or iPod touch as those devices are more personal). You’ve are rumoured to be working on this back in 2012. Is this true? I expect a few challenges here like how you would handle two different set of applications tied to different Apple IDs. Next, make a better use of the big screen. You like to laugh at Android tablets using only stretched versions of smartphone applications but on many levels, iOS default apps are acting just the same way. The Notification Center is a prime example of this. Finally, there are certain tasks which requires the use of two apps in a rapid fashion: word processor with a calculator is one example. So, I’m thinking about some sort of split screen mode here. I know this poses a lot of challenges as apps aren’t designed to be run in shrink down mode on the iPad (except for iPhone apps running on the iPad… could this be the start of a solution? I’l give it for you for free). How the user would invoke or leave the split mode is also up for discussion. Good luck with that one.

4. Improved Photo management. First, forget about PhotoStream. This was a bad idea. If you were really serious about iCloud, and the cloud in general, you would have made the Camera Roll itself stored on the cloud. Period. No need for PhotoStream. By linking the Camera Roll to the Apple ID, every device registered to iCloud with the same Apple ID would see the same Camera Roll. To help dissipate confusion in this world order, you could make clear, which pictures were taken by which device. A user could mark a picture to be locally available at all time for convenient. Again, I’ll let sort out all the remaining details. Finally, on the subject of photo management, do you think you could add an easy way to access photo’s metadata? It seems an easy one to do, isn’t? We call this a low hanging fruit.

5. Notification Center 2.0. Cross pollination between OS X and iOS could help bring quick reply actions on the Notification Center for iMessage or Mail. While you are at it, why not just bring this feature at the system level so a user could use it without having to quit the currently running application. On the iPad this stuff could be easier to implement has the screen is much bigger than on the iPhone. Finally, the “Missed” tab should disappear as I’m still thinking of its usefulness since iOS 7 came out. Don’t forget to add a “Clear All” too. Simple to do. Very frustrating waiting for you to fix this though.

6. Content syncing. I’m thinking of a bold move here but hey, this wouldn’t be your first one, isn’t? Get rid of iTunes syncing part and port this on the web. You already know how to do iTunes in the Cloud, why not just get rid of iTunes for content syncing across all devices. For things like photos, documents, videos and the like, just create a system level syncing service on the Mac and on the PC but let user manage it from the web. As a guy would put it: think cloud here.

7. Improve iOS visual language. I’ll be succinct on this subject. Just bring back the notion of a real actionnable button. Enough said. Oh and while you are at it, why not fix the Caps Lock key once and for all. Thank you.

8. Siri 2.0. Make an API for developers. Hard to do I know. But you’re the master at this, not me.

One more thing

Without trying too hard to be Google, because you’re not, try improving search in general (on the App Store for example), this could be reaaaaallly useful for a lot of us.

Yours truly.