Apple Feedback Success Stories...

C

CreativeEye

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In recent days I've left three peices of feedback for Apple using their 'feedback' pages - these we're things that came to me through everyday use of Apple stuff...

They are -

iPhoto - A way to 'zero' each individual slider on the 'adjust' dashboard. Right now you can either reset all the sliders or drag individual sliders back to zero. I proposed being able to double click on the slider - which would in turn zero it. A small thing, but a handy thing.

iTunes - A way to bookmark pages on the ITMS. In the same way bookmarks work in safari...

iPod Photo - An iTunes icon (in place of album art) for tracks that don't have album art. This works on the device only (not needed on iTunes). Sometimes I want to scratch through a track - or rate it - and invariably, (i.e. to rate) this either requires three clicks of the select button or four. Having the icon appear on each track would standardise the number of clicks to reach that point. It's also an option that could be turned on or off.
From a usabilty / interface point of view - a standard number of clicks to reach a certain point or menu, seems a logical thing.

However, as I press the 'send' button on the feedback pages, part of me does feel as though its almost like sending junk mail to Apple! I know that the feedback might never be read - but I'm happy that at least a layman has a chance to leave feedback!

What Im interested in knowing is - are there any stories, or do you know of anyone - who has actually had their feedback implemented in any way by Apple?
 
I would seriously doubt that any one piece of feedback would generate a change... several hundred pieces of similar feedback may garner a raised eyebrow at Apple, but it would probably take a good fraction of the installed user base requesting a certain feature for Apple to seriously look into it...

Just a few cents worth... I don't know of anyone who had requested a certain feature and then had it implemented in a future update/release. More often than not, though, the request would have to be pretty unique to lay claim on it -- for example, something like "I wish iWork had better integration with iTunes and iPhoto" and then having the next release of iWork be able to import directly from those libraries is more likely to be coincidence rather than Apple taking that suggestion and saying, "Hmmm... good idea!"

I'm sure there are a lot of people who request features that are on the "update list" at Apple already. Apple's got some good minds at work over there, so unless the feature is extremely unique or creative, it's most likely that Apple's already thought of it.

With that said, I do like your idea of a generic icon on the iPod photo. I find myself more and more everyday using my iPod photo without looking at it, since I've got most of the menus memorized. Having a standard number of clicks to reach a certain screen would certainly go along with Apple's "ease of use" style of thinking.
 
The feedback IS read. The good ideas are passed over, and .. teh more a feature is requested and seems useful, the more likely it will be implemented. Never hurts to try.
 
I'm pretty sure it is all read, though it must take some time as I can't begin to imagine how much the Apple staff handling feedback have to work to sort the mail out and direct it to the right people.

I've sent about 3 feedback items, each reporting a minor flaw in software (a circumstance under which a menu option won't work as expected in iTunes, an address format that is incorrect for Australian postal addresses in Address Book, and a problem with the way the original release of iSync handled some types of data). In my experience, they do correct problems very promptly, and I get the impression feature requests are added to lists for each product team to carefully consider.

That said, I do always feel that bit of reluctance to waste their time on trivial things, but I expect that Apple's level of refinement and attention to detail we've all come to know and love is a direct result of listening to customer feedback.
 
I'd bet they're running some text anlysis apps against the requests, loking for word pattern matching and other things to sort out the mail. I see no way Apple has people manually reading what could be tens of thousands of emails. Course, that's just a guess, I have no idea how much feedback Apple is actually getting.
 
I sent feedback for the iPod Photo renaming bug, no news on an specific update yet, maybe it was fixed in the latest update..
 
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