It is no secret around the office and in my social circles that I’m an Apple guy. Between my wife and I we have 7 Apple products. I am also loyal to a fault. My loyalty to Apple has meant that I have put up with a few issues over the years as iOS updates have come along. I can honestly say that my patience has been tested more than once with iOS 8, which means I’m really excited for iOS 9.

There are a few rumors about what we can expect from the WWDC in June, most of them related to the Apple TV. But we also know that Apple always announces the next iOS at the WWDC, and that’s what I’m most interested in. Here are a few things I want to see from iOS 9.

Improved Performance

iOS 8 has been buggy. Not bad, but definitely not great. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen the alert that says “Download Failed”. I had no idea I was downloading anything to begin with! What does this mean?

Another bug that I’ve seen is the issue where the email app says you have an unread email, even though you just went through your inbox, and read all of your emails. This has been going on since iOS 6, maybe longer. It’s a very small thing, but it would still be awesome to see that get fixed.

Improved Maps

Don’t get me wrong, Apple’s native Maps app has come a long way since they first introduced it. I prefer to use the native app, because it will show me my next turn even if my phone is locked. This means less strain on my battery. But every time I’m going somewhere new, I find myself comparing what the native app says to what Google Maps says. I have seen the native app miss by a couple blocks, and I have a friend who has seen it miss by 25 miles. I’m not looking for the next great mobile maps innovation, I just want to know that the reliability is continuing to improve.

Improvements To Siri

Let’s be honest: Siri isn’t that great. She’s kind of fun, she’ll tell you a story if you bug her enough, and she’s pretty good at making phone calls when you ask her to. But she has some pretty serious flaws too. Apple bragged about her ability to identify a song, and I know they partnered with Shazam, but I often have to open the Shazam app and use it if I want to know the name of the song that is playing right now. From my experience, Siri gets about 30% of all requests for song identification.

In addition to the things she doesn’t do well, there are a lot of things she doesn’t do at all. Some level of Siri integration with the Health app would be great. Even for simple things like asking her how many steps I have taken today. She can search the web, but she can’t give me a piece of information that is on my phone? That just doesn’t seem right.

We just had a major user interface overhaul a couple of years ago, I don’t think we need another one now. On that front though, why is the Game Center app still 3D when everything else has a flat design? (Thank you Deacon for pointing this out). But please, make some major performance improvements. Apple has an opportunity to further distance themselves from the competition, but they have to get this iOS right.

What do you think? Do you agree with me? Or are you an Android user who believes that Google has done it better? I would love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment below, or find me on Twitter @P_Wunder.