Editorial: iOS 6's Sharing Menu is a Dumb Part of a Smart OS

This is a discussion thread for the "Editorial: iOS 6's Sharing Menu is a Dumb Part of a Smart OS" story posted on the front page.

Excellent article. I agree. Surely the app store and apps should be linked to share? So I could share a photo from instagram to photoshop mobile to email. That would be pretty easy to do from the share menu and requires no more than 6 taps/swipes:

1: bring share menu up -> instagram
2: bring share menu up -> photoshop mobile
3: bring share menu up -> email

The share menu is now a 'share with app' or rather 'send to app' menu where apps can both send a receive apps from each other. This would make the sharing experience at least a bit more fluid and dynamic then what we currently have.

Although, it wouldn't surprise me if Apple were stashing this one away for iOS 10. Good thing we have a jailbreak community.

This is definitely a part of iOS that needs to be rethinked a little bit.

I think it would be really useful to have a feature where a photo could be edited with an app such as Photoshop Mobile without ever leaving the Photos app. You could tap "Edit With..." and then choose Photoshop Mobile. Then PS Mobile plugin would popup in-app and allow you to edit it. Then you tap "Save" and the pop up pops... down. You're back to viewing the photo in the Photos app without ever leaving it.

These plugins could be downloaded off of the App Store in a separate category. You wouldn't even need to download an app, just the plugin.

This is where jailbreak tweaks come in - taking great ideas that were implemented stupidly and turning them back into what they were meant to be

Well the reason Facebook and Twitter are the only "outside" options is because they're integrated into iOS.

So you think they should be like Android or Windows 8 and support more services for sharing? You can just download apps to upload a photo to any of those services that you mentioned. I honestly don't think Apple needs to clutter up their OS with more third-party junk. There's enough in there already.

I don't understand how you can say that the sharing system needs rethinking and then not back it up with anything. What would you suggest to fix the problem? You need to have some sort of fix -- even if it's temporary -- for the issue, otherwise it doesn't make much sense even complaining about it.

I can't agree with your overall statement of "sharing in iOS is broken" because it just doesn't make sense and needs to be explained further. Also, the little things like sharing will not make that much of a difference for the end user because Apple's OS is, in most ways, much simpler to anyone who uses it. If you're a power user, which you seem to be, then you won't like simplicity and would rather have something more feature-packed. That's fine -- go get Android then.

Competition is there so you have options, not just so two companies can be rivals. Google and Apple offer two different experiences and there are a few reasons for that. Obviously, Android came after iOS, but that doesn't mean it has less to offer. In many areas, there are extra features, but the core functionality is the same since it's a mobile OS. If you don't like one, then explore the others to find what you're looking for. If what you seek isn't available, then go invent it.

Apple is not about competing with everyone else, they're about making the best product they can, whether it be an OS or a piece of hardware. They don't need to make sure they keep up with the latest sharing features because that's a minor detail in a much bigger project.

Oh, and that new sharing pop-up in iOS 6 is ridiculous, taking up way too much space on the screen. There's no need for those big icons. It just seems like Apple is thinking that people are too stupid to read things and would rather have graphical representations of what something says. I prefer the old list much more than the new home screen-like look.

You can share almost anything in iOS 6, including apps. I'm sure Apple is noticing how much more social people are becoming digitally and they're trying to get with the times, so to speak, but maybe they'd like to wait things out longer. I've never really heard anyone complain about the lack of functionality that you're speaking of.

remember, this is BETA 1, so apple could fix this later, it doesnt mean that this is the final version with just bug fixes, the could still add stuff to it before the final release... Hopefully Apple sees this and will enable this ability

Do not agree with you