Almost everyone knows that I am a huge Apple fanatic. I don’t try to hide my bias. When it comes to mobile operating systems, I feel that Apple remains the leader of the pack. But while it remains the best, it isn’t perfect and here are two things I despise about iOS.

Siri
When Apple announced Siri in October 2011, my initial thought was, “this is a joke, right?” No part of me finds talking to my cell phone appealing. If anything, it reminds me of those idiots who walk around with their Bluetooth headpiece on looking like a Star Trek extra.

Was Apple out of class on the day that everyone learned that people like to navigate and play with their phones? I would much rather swipe and find the application I am looking for then “ask Siri” to have her take 40 seconds to give me the wrong answer or open to incorrect application.

Yes, I know Siri is a beta application. But when Apple continues to highlight Siri as a reason to get the phone, it deserves critique. The reality is that Siri just isn’t good. The concept is flawed and the accuracy is poor at best. When I have to ask Siri multiple times I finally give up and just navigate to the application and look it up myself.

Recently, iMore.com did a poll on Siri usage by iPhone 4S users and the results, while shocking to iMore.com, were not a surprise to me at all. The poll revealed that almost nobody uses Siri.

Of the 5 people I know well that have a 4S or iPhone 5, none of them uses Siri. In fact, my good friend (not a techie) turned it off. One of my friends indicated that Siri was so worthless that they actually use it more to show people how bad it is, rather than for anything of real use.

And to my frustration, Apple continues to develop and spend time on Siri. Apple has a tendency to stick with features and highlight them (see FaceTime) even if people don’t use or like the features. But when the competition is catching up in areas of practical application (widgets, app switching etc,), Apple is focusing on gimmicks like Siri that provide little value.

It is no surprise to me that the two original founders of Siri (who were employed by Apple) are no longer with Apple. It would not shock me to learn that Apple is slightly embarrassed by this feature. People just are not that excited about it and it is time for Apple to put this feature out to pasture once and for all.

Inability to Delete Factory Applications
I understand that Apple wants to make sure that users don’t delete a critical application, but it would be nice if Apple allowed users to “hide” applications that they never use. For me, that would be Passbook, Compass, FaceTime (on my iPad), Newstand, and Clock.

Apple has a tendency to create applications with good intentions but the concept is simply flawed. Passbook is a good example. Anyone reading forum posts in the blogosphere would realize that Passbook is not simple and requires more work than necessary. Furthermore, not that many people care enough to figure it out. Most people navigate to MLB.com or United Airlines if they need to get access to their tickets anyways. They have been doing this for years. While Apple believes Passbook will be a more convenient solution, it just simply won’t catch on in my opinion. Already people are looking at hiding the application.

Another good example of a worthless application is Newstand. Apple made the argument that this would be a central repository for all news and magazine related applications. But app developers realized that this simply hid their applications and users would rather have to tap once to gain access to an app, not twice. The WSJ avoided this (smartly) while the New York Times did not. I use the WSJ almost all the time and rarely navigate to the Times. Now, most people are looking at ways to hide Newstand.

Conclusion
As I said at the beginning, I am an iOS fan. It isn’t perfect, but it gets so many things right that I can look past issues like Siri, Passbook, Newstand, and Facetime.

I would really love to see Apple spend more time on the following; notification center widgets or widgets for the main screen, better multitasking, improvements in the Weather, Stocks, and Photos application.