iOS, News/Rumors June 15, 2012

What if on{X}, the Android app that programs your phone to answer specific needs came to iOS?

Recently, Microsoft has announced the beta release of an on{X}, an app that programs your phone to answer specific user’s needs. You get to have control of your Android smartphone with the help of remote programming. Users can very well use the Templates from the website or create their own Recipes with the help of JavaScript API.

For example you can program your device to “Remind me to take an umbrella every day the first time I unlock my phone, if it’s going to be rainy” or “Remind me to visit the gym if I haven’t been there for 3 days”. The requests or rules as the developer calls them are possible because the app uses the phone’s abilities such as GPS. The phone’s abilities are exposed in the on{X} API as Triggers (Weather, Time, News, WIFI, Battery, and Location) and Actions (ex: show notification, open an app/URL and send a text message).

On{X} provides 11 Templates or Recipes for answering your needs, for helping you make certain things even though you have forgotten about them. What captured our attention was the fact that the recipes are editable before being downloaded to the phone. Each user can create their own personalized recipes using a JavaScript API that highlights on{X}’s ‘triggers’ and ‘actions’.

The Mode Of Transport is one of the most useful API’s used and comes with the possibility of knowing whether the user is driving, walking or even driving a car. You could make a Recipe for your smartphone to remember the parking spot when you’re switching from driving to walking.

So what if this outstanding app would come to iOS? Most of the users would argue that it resembles Siri, but Siri cannot do tasks like “Remind me to take an umbrella every day the first time I unlock my phone, if it’s going to be rainy” or “Text my wife I’m on my way when I leave the office ”. You first need to activate Siri and afterward send a message to a friend. Rumors wonder around that the new version of iPhone would come with Siri API, so Siri would also be capable of doing many things. iOS users would surely want On{X} on their iPhones to remind them important things or automatically send messages to dear ones. The battery life would be the single inconvenient, because walking aroung with GPS on drawn a lot of battery.