Dear Apple,

Hi there. It’s me again. I am enjoying my iPhone 4S immensely (even though pre-ordering one was a right pain in my ass). I think Siri is great and I use it all the time to draft text messages and create calendar events and reminders. It’s definitely a feature you can call “magical” all you want, in my book. But that new Reminders app… that could use a few changes, please.

First and foremost, why aren’t my lists in Reminders sortable? I have to admit that I’m pretty stumped you guys overlooked this basic feature in an app that’s mean to store tasks. Sure, there’s that Date tab at the top but this only shows me tasks scheduled I have for today (and subsequent individual days if I flip through them sequentially). But I want to see my entire list sorted by due date. Some of my tasks are several months in the future, you know, and swiping through page by page is a horrible way to get to them. Maybe make it how the default Completed list displays items? See? You already know how to do this one!

Adding on to that, I’d love to be able to set a priority for my tasks as well. So if I have a number of tasks due on a certain date (and you let me sort them) I can view the most important ones at the top of the list. You get how that makes sense, right? Not all tasks are created equal, even if they are due on the same day.

Also, I’m not perfect (clearly!). I don’t complete tasks on the scheduled date sometimes often. Time escapes me every now and then. I get sucked into a good book. I play way too much Fruit Ninja or Jetpack Joyride. Or I give in to the old puppy dog eyes routine and take Jake out on one more walk because the weather is so nice. And then stuff doesn’t get done as planned. How about some help with that? Like some options for repeating alarms for tasks with due dates? And a little visual reminder that turns the text red or something? These additional cues don’t need to “surprise and delight” me with any particular slickness or anything. They just need to be there and work, please.

I know you can fix Reminders, Apple. I want Reminders to be my default to do app now that it’s integrated via iCloud with iCal on my Mac. There are a ton of other excellent to do apps in the App Store that have all of these features. Not that I want you to copy them, but at least catch up to them in terms of features, please?

Sincerely,

Marianne Schultz

P.S. Thanks for listening to me about the whole voice command feature thing. Again, Siri is really cool.

 

Gah! I can barely contain my excitement to receive my new iPhone 4S on Friday. My Apple online store order status is “Prepared for shipment” so it should be on its way soon.

ohpleasefortheloveofgodfedexdonotmessupthisdelivery

(I’m hoping Apple will use UPS for my order this time – the UPS guy who delivers to our area is great and usually hits our neighborhood in the morning.)

On a related note, my favorite app for tracking packages is Delivery Status touch by Junecloud (link opens iTunes). I do most of my shopping online and once I enter tracking numbers in this app, I can see the current ETA and other information for each one easily. I can guarantee you I will enter the tracking number for my iPhone 4S into Delivery Status touch as soon as I get it. And I’ll probably check it about 5,563 times until it arrives at my door.

You may think I’m exaggerating with that number. I’m not.

Anyway, my trusty iPhone 4 is still going strong and at this point, I will not be updating it to iOS 5 on Wednesday since it’s currently jailbroken and unlocked and I want to keep it that way for the moment. I’m not sure about whether or not I’m going to sell it since I might keep it around as a testing device. Though my car is now due for new brakes (thank you, handy brake pad wear indicator warning light), which will cost me a pretty penny so we’ll see.

If you’re thinking of selling an older iPhone to upgrade to the iPhone 4S, check out this handy guide I wrote for everythingiCafe. Though it was written just before the release of the iPhone 4 last year, the information there is still very relevant.

If you want to try an electronics reseller service instead of going through eBay, craigslist or similar, I used Gazelle to get rid of my first-generation iPad to upgrade to the iPad 2 and my review of how that worked for me is up on my old blog here.

If you get your iPhone 4S early, please comment here so that I may rant and rave in a fit of violent nerd jealousy. I will then curse your name to the heavens until the moment my own iPhone 4S arrives, at which point I will see nothing but my precioussss for at least a few hours.