WWDC preview: Apple’s iOS needs more than a face-lift

Jony Ive, Apple’s (AAPL) design guru, is about to put his stamp on the software that underlies the iPhone and iPad. I’m hoping he is giving the software more than just a face-lift.

At its annual developer conference on Monday, Apple is expected to unveil an overhauled version of iOS, its operating system for mobile devices. iOS 7 — so-called because it will be the seventh version of the software — is expected to reflect Ive’s minimalist aesthetic. According to rumors and reports, he and his team have revamped the way iOS looks and feels, ditching shaded graphics and virtual textures in favor of flatter, sharper icons, backgrounds and buttons.

I’m eager to see the new look because iOS has retained the same basic appearance it had when Apple debuted the iPhone six years ago. Compared with Windows Phone or BlackBerry 10, mobile operating systems that have debuted more recently, iOS looks dated.

But I hope Ive has done more than give iOS a fresh coat of paint. Because iOS has fallen behind not only in look and feel but, more importantly, in features.

Apple is also expected to unveil updated Mac computers, a revamped version of the OS X software that underlies the Mac and a new streaming radio service at the company’s World Wide Developer Conference in San Francisco. But the iOS update is likely to take center stage because of its import to the company and consumers. iOS is at the heart of hundreds of millions of devices that Apple has sold since it debuted the iPhone in 2007, far outpacing the number of Macs it has sold.

When Apple debuted the iPhone, it was more like an advanced iPod than a full-fledged computing device. Apple has added lots of features to iOS since then, but those updates haven’t kept pace with the rapid evolution of the computing market.

Smartphones and tablets are rapidly replacing traditional PCs as consumers’ primary computing devices, and they need to be able to do a lot more than Apple’s handheld devices can do. Consumers have the right to expect that their smartphones and tablets will offer many of the features they’ve long enjoyed on PCs.

One feature iOS is sorely lacking is a true file system. There’s no “documents” folder on an iPhone and no “movie” folder, either. Instead, files are largely cordoned off within particular apps. If you download a song to Amazon’s Cloud Player app, you can play it only in that app.

Yes, iOS does allow users to do some of the things they can do with a full file system. For example, you can email files that are stored within particular apps. And third-party apps can view and save pictures to Apple’s native photo gallery.

But those features don’t go far enough. Without a file system, transferring documents to an iOS device or from one iOS device to another can be difficult. And in some cases, it has impossible to share documents directly between apps, such as when you edit a letter in one app and want to send it via fax with another.

Users of iOS also cannot replace the iPhone and iPad’s native apps with ones of their choosing. You can’t make Google’s (GOOG) Chrome your default Web browser, as you can on a Mac; instead, when you click on a Web address, an iPhone or iPad will always launch Apple’s Safari.

This limitation became a particular concern last year when Apple dumped the Maps application it had developed with Google in favor of one it developed by itself. The new Maps app was simply awful, with bad data and missing features. It has since improved, but many iOS users still would likely swap it out for Google Maps because the Google app is better. But while users can download Google Maps, whenever they click on an address or ask Siri for directions, an iPhone or iPad will launch Apple’s maps app instead.

Another big missing feature in iOS is support for multiple users. Each person who signs on to a PC or Mac can have their own personalized work space and private access to their own set of files. That’s not true for iPad or iPhone users, which is unfortunate because those devices often are used by multiple people.

My wife and I often share a tablet, for example, and our kids frequently play games on our phones. It would be great if iOS — like Android and Windows Phone — allowed users to create their own personal spaces on those devices and limited what other users can see on them.

Those aren’t the only new features I’d like to see in iOS 7. I’d love for Apple to open up its Siri intelligent assistant to allow it to work with a much broader range of iOS apps. I’d also love to see a “quick settings” area that lets users easily turn off their Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios. And it would be great if Apple would finally follow through on its promise to open up its Facetime app so users can place video calls to folks who don’t have Apple devices.

Adding such features would go a long way toward making the iPhone and iPad more capable devices. To me, that’s much more important than a shiny new look.

Contact Troy Wolverton at 408-840-4285 or twolverton@mercurynews.com. Follow him at www.mercurynews.com/troy-wolverton or Twitter.com/troywolv.