Five Little Apple Annoyances
Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 10:19AM 
No, we're not talking about the app store approval process, or the high priced RAM options. Today we look at five minor Apple annoyances, most of which could be fixed quickly/easily. In no particular order:
1. The location of the Refresh Button in Safari 4. You have those back and forward navigation buttons, along with the bookmark button etc, all over on the left. Why would you make the decision to move arguably the most-used button, the refresh/reload button to the far right of the address bar? Moving it is one thing, but at least give us an easy way to move it back if we like. I'm pretty sure the old user interface guidelines would suggest against placing one button 3/4 of the screen away from the rest of the similar navigation buttons.
2. Pictures that can't be rotated properly on the iPhone. This one is a little hard to describe, but if it's happened to you, you'll know exactly what we're talking about. If you take a screenshot on your iPhone (press the home button and top button simultaneously) and the content is in a widescreen mode, then the rotation is always 90 degrees off. Unfortunately, there isn't a way to correct the rotation until you get the image to your computer.
3. No Twitter name field in Address Book. We said these were little annoyances, and maybe this could be considered more of a feature request. It would be great to have a twitter field within Address Book. There are people I communicate with far more frequently this way than by cell (annoyance # 3b: the use of "mobile" for the cell number. If mobile is a more popular distinction in some countries, then localize it. I always say "try his cell" not "try his mobile.") and it would make sense to make it easy to integrate this contact info.
4. Notebook heat. This one come from BigGuyD on twitter: "MacBook Pros can burn the hair off your legs and cook eggs at the same time they get so hot." The use of metal materials for laptops notebooks is great, but surely those minds at Cupertino can find a way to keep the heat transfer to skin in check.
5. No Keynote Livestreaming. This one is near and dear to our hearts. Come on, Apple, roll back the clock to 2000 when bandwidth was costly and you DID stream the keynote. Your friends at Akamai can now stream right to the iPhone. You should give them a call. I hear they can stream to tablets too.
Bonus:
90 days of phone support. Recently Laptop Magazine awarded Apple an 'A' for their tech support. The only glaring issue was Apple's last-placed 90 days of free phone support. Extend it to at least 180 days, or even a year. Too expensive you say? Maybe, just maybe this would cut down on the chaos at the Genius Bar. Just a thought.
What do you think? What little Apple annoyances get under your skin? Let us know in the comments.
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