Suggested iPhone Enhancements (Stock/Weather)
Stocks
- Cache some chart data to allow the user to switch between chart views without receiving the 'Retrieving Data...' message. For example tap the '1y' button to view the one year chart -> tap the '2y' button to view the two year chart -> tap the '1y' button again. Each tap between views results in the retrieving data label appearing (even though at this time the markets are closed and data is not changing).
- Option to pinch to zoom in and out of the chart to view different times. This can appear more smooth by locally storing a small amount of historical data for each symbol.
- Option to scroll the chart back and forth to view data at a selected zoom level. For example, you can view the one day chat for symbols, but what did yesterday look like? In order to see this you would have to switch to the week view. Doing so causes you to loose out on the more detailed hour view. An example of this scrolling feature can be seen at finance.google.com.
- Retrieve more data for symbols. Add a tabbed view that allows users to view charts, open/high/low/close/volume type information. Retrieve news headlines for each symbol that when clicked load in Safari.
Weather
- Allow the user to select a primary location and display that weather information on the home screen's weather icon. This may necessitate fetching the weather data from time to time. Display a generic weather icon If stored weather data is out of date.
- Add more detailed weather information including an hour by hour view. This information is available from the The Weather Channel (which appears to be the current data provider with Yahoo).
- Add a 'more info' button or graphic in the current conditions section that when tapped slides left to a screen that provides weather information such as humidity, wind, visibility, severe weather alerts, text description of weather (Thunderstorms, some strong early, becoming clear after midnight. Low 64F. Winds NNW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 70%.), hour by hour view, links to weather maps, and streaming weather forecast videos from weather.com.
No one has mentioned a bug in the stock application that I have noticed:
The vertical date lines in the stock graphs appear in the wrong places (at least for the 1w view -- I have not confirmed the other views).
For example, in all other stock charting applications the line indicating "8" for April 8th would be placed right between the close of market on the 7th and the open of market on the 8th. Thus the area between the "7" line and the "8" line is the stock data for April 7th. On the iphone, the "8" line is placed somewhere in the "middle" of the April 8th data, so you can't tell what the closing value for the days are.