Next iOS must be coming soon. What is going to be in it? I’m not sure where to draw the line between “predictions” and a “wishlist”, so here are my thoughts on things that either were speculated, or I just want to be there, in no particular order.

Maps. Everyone has written about Apple planning to switch to its own mapping backend instead of Google’s. And presumably there will be some cool 3D views. I’m curious whether Apple was able to come up with their own navigation, traffic and local transport services. I also wonder if all these awesome things will work in Russia.

Better Notification Center. Notification Center sucks. Not only is it ugly, it’s unusable. It’s particularly bad on the iPad. It should show more text for each notification. The settings for it is a nightmare, it’s impossible to configure it.

Don’t Disturb. There were screenshots of a “Don’t Disturb” feature in Mountain Lion. I guess it temporarily disables all notifications. This would be great to have in iOS, too.

Widgets. Some people want custom Notification Center widgets and even predict an API for that. Given how bad Notification Center is, adding even more crap to it won’t make it better. I’m for Live icons instead.

Live icons. It’s great that the weather is always +23 ˚C (+73 ˚F if you are from U. S.), except that it’s not. Currently only the calendar icon shows the real date, every other icon is meaningless. The most useful would be making the Weather icon show the real weather, but also Clock could show the real time, Maps, your current location, Notes, the text of the latest note etc.

Better Siri. I don’t know much about Siri since I’m on iPhone 4. But there’s no doubt it can be made better (and Tim Cook has hinted it in his interview). The obvious thing to do is to add some integration with third-party apps. Also, what about Siri for iPad?

Default Apps. If Siri supports third-party apps, it should know which apps I use for what. E. g. if I prefered Opera for web browsing I wouldn’t want to always say “Siri, search web for X with Opera”. I’d just want Siri to know it. The most natural way will be for it to just “figure it out” without some messy settings like the Notification Center has. But even without Siri, default apps will be welcome (some people prefer Sparrow for mail!).

Apps interaction. Something like Windows Phone’s Contracts should be added to iOS. If I have selected a piece of text, I want to be able to translate it without going to the Google Translate app. And the “share sheets” should be extendable. Currently in Twitter app I can send a link to Instapaper or Read it Later, but not to Readability — because Twitter doesn’t know Readability. But Twitter shouldn’t even care, the system should know it. Apps interaction (or lack thereof) is one of the weaknesses of iOS.

Airdrop or wireless sharing. Easier sharing between devices and friends will be great. Currently sending a picture or a piece of text over the air to someone nearby is almost impossible. Or, Imagine that you are looking at a web page on your iPhone and want you friend to open it on her iPad. What would you do? This should be easy.

Work together. All my devices should work together and know when they are close to each other. Don’t display same alert everywhere. If I postpone an alert, postpone it everywhere. Sync open browser tabs, clipboards and everything else.

Airplay target. Open a movie on a Mac and send it to play on an iPad. This should be doable, at least after Mountain Lion (with Airplay) is released.

Better multitasking. I don’t know what exactly has to be done, but I want switching between apps to feel fast and harmless. Currently I think twice before leaving an app.

Facebook integration. I don’t care about it at all, but I’m listing it because it was rumored.

Safari Omnibar. In Safari 5.2 Apple has added what people call an “omnibar”: an addressbar combined with search. Invented by Opera in the 18th century or so and popularized by Google Chrome, this thing was conspicuously missing from Safari for so long. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve entered a search request into address field on my iPhone to get nothing. Modes suck.

Offline Reading List. There were some screenshots of this in desktop Safari, but in mobile one it will make even more sense.

iCloud Tabs. This is included in the latest builds of Mountain Lion, so I guess we’ll see it in iOS 6.

Sync iTunes Match over Wi-Fi. I like iTunes Match (even given how unbelievably buggy it is), but I prefer to use old good iTunes sync, because it works much faster. iTunes Match should detect that my library is available in the local network and download tracks from it (instead of from iCloud).

Sync track positions with iCloud. Want this for podcasts, tired of syncing by hand 5 times a day.

Visual refresh. Aren’t you tired of the standard controls? The transition to the rounded on/off switch (in iOS 5) is not enough. I want something of a Leopard-to-Lion scale at least.

Related links:

• iOS Low-Hanging Fruit by John Gruber,
• iOS 6: Higher hanging fruit by Rene Ritchie,
• 7 Features We’d Like To See In iOS 6 by Paul Paliath,
• 15 suggestions for iOS 6 by Michael Grothaus.

If an executive at some company announces a product or any meaningful partnership with Apple or somebody says that such an announcement has been made, ignore the news. It’s easy: Apple announces all its stuff itself.

Kaspersky’s CTO says Apple asked it to analyze OS X for vulnerabilities. Resolution: bullshit. Let’s imagine for a second that Apple really did ask Kaspersky to do that. Obviously Apple would want that Kaspersky keep their mouth shut. Why would Kaspersky ignore that and speak out anyway? Only one explanation: because they are not in any relationships with Apple and never were.

Kaspersky likes to publicly say bad things about Apple and its security. It doesn’t matter if they are even right, but they surely repel Apple. Apple completely ignored their latest attempt to “help” with Flashback. Do you want help from someone who bashes you all the time?

Kaspersky is terrified that soon there will be no place for them in the world and they are desperately trying to make people think they are important. I’m sure they analyze OS X for vulnerabilities day and night without any requests from Apple in hope to find something and say: you need us. Of course security experts will always have job. But if Apple needs them, they will have a job at Apple.

A lot has been said about how bad iTunes is. What bugs me most is that some actions within iTunes prevent me from actually listening to music. Sometimes iTunes is “Looking for iPhone...” and you can’t do anything until it’s done. And it still doesn’t do the most obviously useful thing for music listener: permanently display current track name somewhere. So we had to make Emcee.

But I’d like to take a look at the iTunes Store (including the App Store). How can it be made better?

What I hate about iTunes store is that it’s clearly a web site, but I can’t use a browser to browse it. The web view of iTunes is crippled and ridiculously slow. Why not use Safari? It will not only make the store better for the user, but I believe Apple will sell more songs and apps.

I can’t open a link in new window or tab. Sometimes I want to check out several things from a chart or from search results. Unfortunately, ⌘-clicking them won’t help, I’ll have to open each, then go back. I don’t think I’m the only one who forgets about going back.

I can’t add link to bookmarks. iTunes has a “wishlist”, but it’s only available on a Mac, not iPad or iPhone (or I wasn’t able to find it there). I want to use the Safari bookmarks manager with the store like with anything else and I want it to be synced between my devices. There are also, of course, no bookmarklets in iTunes, so I can’t tweet an app and I can’t send it to Instapaper (some apps have really long descriptions). No obvious way to save and share links is bad.

Some other things I can do in Safari but not in iTunes: zoom a page, drag an image (i. e. album art), pin a portion of a page to Dashboard, search history, find in page. I’ve found myself searching for a feature in an app’s description a couple of times, and I had to use eyes for that, which is just waste of time.

iTunes is already so bloated that it isn’t even funny. So adding all this stuff to iTunes is not an option. To make iTunes store better Apple should just move it from iTunes to Safari.

In previous versions of Photoshop I’ve always set up F2 to open Layer Options dialog. The layer name field was focused by default, so that’s how I renamed layers.

For mysterious reasons in CS6 Adobe has removed Layer Options from the list of things for which you could use a keyboard shortcuts. I was upset. I had to use mouse to rename layer (which takes ages). And why on Earth out of all things would they remove this from the infinite list of configurable shortcuts?

I was almost going to file a bug report, but found a new Rename Layer... item in the Layer menu. Of course it is listed in configurable menu shortcut list, so now I have F2 as a shortcut for it:

I found out that Layer Options were removed from the keyboard setup because the very dialog was removed from Photoshop altogether. That makes sense now that you rename layer with a dedicated command and select its color from a popup menu.

So if you had the same problem, now you don’t. And if you haven’t bothered to set up a shortcut to rename a layer, it’s about time to do it: it will save you tons of time.

Summer is coming to the northern hemisphere, and here’s a mix to welcome it:

It’s progressive house again, some of the sweetest tunes I’ve found lately. Enjoy!