My iPhone and my iPad are almost always running the latest version of iOS. When the App Store icon lights up with app updates, I click it like a Pavlovian parlor trick. Sometimes to regret, but not always…

My wife on the other hand? Her iPhone is running iOS 5 – she’s terrified of the new maps app. Her App Store icon read “48” last night when I went in to try and unwind the me.com/Mac.com/iCloud.com bedlam she has accidentally created for herself. 48. 48 app updates. My OCD makes my neck itch just thinking about that. Not to even think about the chaos of the accounts that cannot be merged that I still have to try and repair.

The original vision of iOS was that of a thin client. Fat OS, but with Web-based apps that could have been patched relatively easily, when treated as a service. But when the App Store arrived, it broke all that. From that point on, every user became their own admin. As a result, iOS devices became the new Windows. Patched only by force, or when the IT-savvy relative freaks out about how out of date the OS or apps are. Conversely, because core apps like Maps are updated with the OS (or removed, as in the case of the YouTube app), some users – even technical ones – will elect to play this update through, and not update. While innumerable people have updated to iOS 6, lots haven’t.

People don’t like to get their tires rotated. They don’t like to get their oil changed, or teeth cleaned. Call it laziness… Call it a desire for ruthless efficiency… People rarely perform proactive maintenance. iOS should have an option, on by default to update in the background. More importantly, in an ecosystem where too many app authors do the bare minimum in terms of security, apps should have that same option.

The original iPhone succeeded not because of apps. No, it succeeded because it was a better, more usable phone than almost anything else on the market. It just worked. It had voicemails we could see before listening, contacts we could easily edit on the phone, and a Web browser that was better than any mobile browser we’d ever seen before.

But the OS is showing its age. Little nuances like the somewhat functional search screen, Favorites in Contacts, and VIPs in Mail show that iOS is under structural pressure to deal with the volume of data it tries to display in a viable way. Notifications and the Settings app seem fragmented and are starting to become as disorganized as the Windows Control Panel (that’s bad!). Photo Stream sharing is a joke. It’s unusable. The edges are showing.

Of all the things I could wish for in the next version of iOS – if there was one guiding mantra I could tell Tim Cook I want in the next iOS… I would say, “Please give me less of more, and more of less.” The OS may need to be expanded where the OS can do more with the modern hardware of the phone after the iPhone 5 and the 5th generation iPad, but in so many more ways, it needs to be cautiously, carefully reorganized – cleaned up, with the spirit that the original iPhone and iPhone OS used to establish their role – that of simplicity, a mantra of “It just works”. OS and application updates that self-apply for all consumers except those who opt out of it…

I’ve been a fan of the iPhone from the beginning. But I really think the platform is showing its age, and isn’t nearly as usable as it once was. All too often lately, I look at something in the OS and have to shake my head that it works that way. It’s time to clean up the house.