Tag Archives: ios

iPad + Bluetooth keyboard aggravations – feature requests for the Apple team

Posted on by
Reply

Yet another flight to India (we have a new team in Bangalore), yet another chance to try the iPad/Keyboard solution I’ve written about.  So far, it’s working out great!

This is quickly going from hypothesis to prototype to full-blown implementation, but there are some rough edges that Apple could help smoothen out.

Navigation aggravation

Most of these annoyances relate to navigating the iPad via the bluetooth keyboard. The Cmd-key doesn’t really exist on the iPad, and so don’t most of the shortcuts related to that key. Specifically, if the following keystrokes existed in the Mail app, I’d be a happy panda:

Continue reading →

Coming soon: Siri and Spotlight search for iOS Apps

Posted on by
2

(Side-note: I’ve been interested in writing this post for about two years now. Every few months I feel I should write it before Apple actually ships such a feature. Finally the post’s done!)

How does iOS reduce its dependence on web search from Google or Bing? Simple, syndicate Spotlight searches to installed apps.

Introducing Spotlight for Apps

Imagine if every iOS app could implement a ‘search’ capability, that would be exposed to the iOS search subsystem. This search could be over local data, e.g. Address Book-like applications; over remote data, e.g. Wikipedia; or over either, e.g. Mail.

Your favorite content sources (like Yelp), content aggregators (like Flipboard or New York Times) and even crowdsourced information aggregators (like, hey, Twitter and Facebook) already reside as apps on your iOS device. Any search you’re interested in doing would hit these apps first – and would probably show the information you care for right at the top.

Continue reading →