Keep filing bug reports and feedback: Product Feedback - Apple
I know for a fact that Apple reads all submissions because they have implemented at least a couple of mine. Although most Feedback will be dismissed, none of it is ignored. You stand a much greater chance of having your feedback considered if you express clear justification for implementing a specific product feature that conveys indisputable customer benefits consistent with their Human Interface Guidelines, privacy, device integration and everything else that builds customer loyalty.
Feedback and product suggestions that are otherwise valid but runs counter to future marketing goals only they know about won't get implemented, and sometimes it takes years to fully appreciate the direction they decided to take. Apple tends to drive the market rather than be driven by it, and if it were any other way they'd relegate themselves to irrelevance. Who didn't dislike their abandonment of CD-ROM drives for example, or their unwillingness to pay exorbitant fees for Blu-Ray licensing a/k/a "bag of hurt". Entertainment is a significant part of Apple's business, but can you imagine entertainment today without on-demand streaming content and Apple TV? Like many others, their decision only makes sense in retrospect.
Apple also appears unwilling to bring a product to market unless they can sell millions of them. That's a disappointment, and a break from Steve Jobs who was always willing to test the waters. For example I would gladly pay lots of money for a decent home theater AVR, for which Apple has abundant development talent. They would crush the competition, whose offerings are quite frankly awful. But I know they'll never do it because an AVR is a high margin, low volume product. Unless it's high margin and high volume Apple isn't interested. That's too bad. It stifles innovation, but I suppose they think they're innovative enough.
Unfortunately the life cycle of companies is such that as they grow, they become increasingly reluctant to take on risk. Steve Jobs was willing to risk everything on the iPhone, and did. That will probably never happen again.
It's probably frustrating for an Apple engineer with a brilliant idea for a new product to have it squashed under some apparently arbitrary marketing goal, but they're free to go out on their own and make it happen. So what if they're not the next Big Thing.
Anyway however I got on this tangent the point is if you have a great idea for a feature or product suggestion, definitely send it to Apple via their Feedback portal. Just bear in mind that Apple will take all the credit and you will be a Nobody. Otherwise, go out on your own and make it happen. After all that's how Steve Jobs started this whole thing, because HP wasn't interested.
And yes, this user community is unmatched in the business. No other company comes close. It's Apple's best kept secret.
