Why do the Apple default apps have so many issues?

Question

With my upgrade from my trusty but dying iPhone 4s to a shiny new iPhone 6, the additional screen real estate makes me want to do a whole lot more. Things that I would previously never have dreamed of doing now approach the realm of the possible. With that, the limitations of Apple’s own apps also come to light. What follows is a wish list of sorts, stuff that I wish Apple would “get right” so that I don’t need to find separate workarounds.
Music
Synchronization. As my music collection grew, sync issues and weird behavior went from being a once-in-a-product-lifetime anomaly to a regular occurrence. Sometimes, a significant portion of my music collection is missing on my iPhone. Other times, the album art is only partially there. Yet other times, I search for an album by name and see only a subset of tracks but then search by artist and all the tracks are there. Or the playlist label is there but some or all of the songs aren’t listed. It’s all perfect in iTunes, but not on my phone. I have disabled sync’ing over WiFi and now do so only over a wired connection to my iMac. I have changed USB ports. I have changed Lightning cables. Nothing seems to work.
Search. The app always displays search results in the same way, regardless of which context I’m in. So irrespective of whether I’m in the Artists view or the Album view, results are displayed first by Artist, then by Album, then by Song. If I’m in the Album view, I want it by Album first! If I’m in the Playlists view, I want to search the titles of my playlists. Simple things.
Alphabetical Search. From A, I scroll, scroll, scroll, and then it does P to # just beautifully. What happened to B to O?
Genres view. This is a mess. The same genre shows up multiple times and, inexplicably, under different letters of the alphabet. Did this even go through QA?
Notes
Groups. I can only add a new group via my iMac’s desktop app (and possibly through a browser via iCloud.com, though I haven’t tried that). Why is this not possible in the iOS app?
Synchronization. I have a whole bunch of notes in my iMac’s Notes app that do not show up on my iPhone. They did once, and then poof, gone. They’re all visible on iCloud.com, though for some reason the embedded photos are not. This lack of reliability forces me to use Evernote, which really shouldn’t be necessary. Sync should just work.
Contacts
Groups. I want to be able to create, edit and delete groups in the iOS app. I want to be able to add a new contact to a group without first having to Hide All Contacts, select the group I want, create an entry, flip over to Messages, then finally add the contact’s number from there to the new entry. Why is this so painful?
Related Names. I love this, but why isn’t it smart? For example, if I add someone’s husband who is already listed in my contacts, then why doesn’t the wife automatically show up in the entry of that husband?
Calendar
Show All Notes. This does not, in fact, show all notes. It seems to cut off after a certain number of characters. If someone sets up a meeting invite in Outlook and there are oodles of intro text in the calendar entry’s body before the dial-in details are listed, then I cannot get to those details from my iPhone. I have to boot up my laptop and fire up Outlook, by which point I have missed half the meeting.
Inbox. Some stuff from Outlook/Exchange shows up here. Other stuff does not. If I take an action such as to accept or to decline a meeting, this doesn’t clean up the invite from my Mail Inbox as it would in Outlook. Frustrating.
No doubt, I have forgotten to list a few things. Apple, I know you pride yourself in the integration of hardware and software. Why, then, are the basics missing? Please get them sorted.

Answer 1

You are not addressing Apple here. This is a user to user technical support forum. If you want to tell Apple your thoughts, then go to the feedback page HERE, and click on the appropriate subject.