This week marks the year day of remembrance of Steve Jobs giving the world its very first glimpse at the iPhone . Which think of it ’s also the anniversary of the first time someone looked at Apple ’s mobile telephone set and enunciate , “ It sounds nice and all , but what itreallyneeds is … ”
We ’re as shamefaced of this as anyone . The iPhone was barely a month past its June 29 release appointment before we produce a lean of … well , need is such an surly tidings . Let ’s call it a wish list of iPhone feature we want to see .
A spate has deepen since that iPhone launching last January . The smartphone has ship , for starter motor , and wound up in the hand of jillion of users . Apple has also roll out four iPhone package updates , some of which have institute major raw improvement such as the iTunes Wi - Fi Store , external keyboard musical accompaniment , and picture output amongst bug fixes and other , small feature article .
But for all of that , gaps remain in the iPhone ’s feature article lot . Six month after the equipment ’s launching — and a calendar week before a Macworld Expo that might see more iPhone modifications — we’re revisiting our wish list to see where Apple ’s smartphone has come along and where future features still are needed .
Hardware
Adding support for GPS was one of the few changes we want that would ask new hardware . As is its custom on any production speculation , Apple ’s been quiet on the guinea pig . Google , however , recently announce it would bring a My Location feature article to Google Maps on some cell sound , though support for the iPhone was notably absent . Since this functionality relies on figure your position in relation to mobile phone headphone tugboat , it could be roll out in a future computer software update .
The other hardware - establish capability many have demanded is musical accompaniment for 3 G wireless technology . This would make both upload and download speeds several times faster than the iPhone ’s current EDGE networking . It ’s also a must - have for competing in international marketplace like Japan , where 3 one thousand is already the touchstone .
as luck would have it , there ’s adept news on this front : both Steve Jobs and AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson have alluded to a 3 gramme iPhone model — Stephenson went so far as to call a 3 G iPhone in 2008 .
Battery power for such a phone has been a major concern as 3 G engineering consumes more Department of Energy , but the exploitation of young , more effective chips likeBroadcom ’s BCM21551 3 G Phone on a Chip processorsuggests that many of these obstacles have already been whelm .
Interface
While the iPhone ’s substance abuser interface is almost certainly higher-ranking to most of the other phones on the market place , that does n’t stand for it could n’t put up a few melioration . Last summer , we complain about the lack of text edition selection , replicate and library paste , search capabilities , multiple survival of the fittest , and the power to use the landscape - orient keyboard in app other than Safari . Apple has yet to make a move on any of these fronts , though , label by the reaction of iPhone users in our office , most of these features are still very much in demand .
The inability to blue-pencil multiple substance in the iPhone ’s Mail practical app was one of the most frequent ailment from iPhone users on our faculty back in July , and it remains unaddressed in the newfangled class .
While spam - filtering has improved in the retiring few years , spammers are still find out way around it , and many drug user get more spam than licit e - postal service . tot up the deficiency of junk e-mail - filtering on the iPhone itself into the mix and you quick terminate up with a letter box carry with go for prescription drugs and get - plentiful - quick schemes — which you then must laboriously delete one - by - one . The message from substance abuser to Apple is clear : tot up junk e-mail filtering or give us a way to delete a bunch of messages at once .
There ’s also still no means to mark multiple messages as read , force HTML messages to display as plain text edition , or correct how much of a content is quote in a reply . And Mail ’s handling of pictures , both institutionalise and receiving , remains limited : You still ca n’t move exposure from Mail to the Photos app , or einsteinium - chain armor multiple photo at once . Those of us with multiple east - mail accounts still bemoan the lack of a unified inbox that would set aside us to glance over subject matter in all of our accounts at once .
The phone
After much hemming and hawing early on , Apple came around on one of our top complaint about the iPhone ’s telephone features : impost ringtones . Having go through third - party utilities such as Ambrosia Software ’s iToner , loophole jade like thefile - renaming trick , and the modified pick of ringtones you could buy straight from the iTunes Store , Apple added the power to create usance ringtones into thelatest version of GarageBand . If you do n’t have iLife ‘ 08 , the $ 15 iToner still works hunky-dory and requires no hacking on your part .
While Apple ’s changed its tune on ringtones , it has yet to address our other phone - related gripes . lively tones for Calendar reminders are still not configurable and you’re able to not utilize your iPhone as a modem for accessing the Internet on your laptop withoutextensive hacking . And with the iPhone ’s unlimited data plan , it seems that this may be one feature that AT&T would not be too thrilled about .
PDA features
Maybe it ’s because of the ribbing Apple took back during the Newton days , but the iPhone ’s personal data management potentiality are perhaps the least flesh - out of any of its features . There ’s still no agency to produce To Do lists on the iPhone or think them from iCal . And even though we expected the ability to synchronize Notes would come with the October release of Leopard , it stay on prominently absent — despite Mail.app ’s new To Do and Notes features , you ca n’t sync any of that information with the iPhone .
The iPhone ’s manipulation of multiple calendars is still nonexistent : events created on the iPhone calendar can only be synced with one calendar on your Mac , meaning that you ’re out of luck if you want to make both personal and work events on your iPhone and have those beam to the appropriate calendar in iCal . And while the 1.1.1 software package update made viewing attachments like Excel and Word docs slenderly gentle by allowing you to face at them in portrayal or landscape painting style , you still ca n’t edit them .
Apple has still revealed no architectural plan to incorporate the same manual disk way institute on iPods , including the iPod hint , so the best root for Indian file store remains Ecamm connection ’s $ 10 iPhoneDrive , which has also expanded to let you access to passably much any datum on your iPhone , including your music , video , exposure , ringtones , and Notes .
On the up side , one of our colic , the inability to access contacts from the household sieve , was mostly addressed by Apple with the aforementioned 1.1.1 software update . You now have the option to summon your liaison Favorites by twofold chatter the iPhone ’s Home clit .
Internet
The iPhone ’s Internet access is perhaps its strongest aspect , but even it has some missing opus . There ’s still no sign of Flash come to the mobile adaptation of Safari , and though many sites are hear the hard way that they should always have straight HTML alternative , there are some things you just ca n’t do without Flash ( my morning crossword puzzle , for example ) . It seems hard to believe that Apple ’s not work on this deep in some underground laboratory , but there ’s no reading when we might see it in the wild .
And finally , one of the large complaints from our original regard list remains a yaw hole in the iPhone ’s feature coiffure even today — the lack of an prescribed , native minute - message client . We ’ve triedTinyBuddy IM , Meebo , ApolloIM , and every other IM client for the iPhone and we remain unsatiated . The World Wide Web - based clients are good in a pinch and the third - company native customer are usable , though they need you to jailbreak your sound , a operation which has bugger off more complicated with Apple ’s late software update .
It seems possible that Apple will release an IM guest in an update sometime before February — if not , it ’s potential to be among the first applications expel after the developer get their hired hand on the forthcoming software development kit ( seebelow ) .
The rest
Our last remaining bitch was that the iPhone ’s tv camera ca n’t be used to seize video ; that has n’t convert in the last five month either .
And , of form , our tilt hardly remain static these last few months . Our band of on - staff iPhone substance abuser would like to see better electric battery performance on standby , more accurate controls for scrubbing through media , iPhone - native games , the ability to send SMS substance to multiple parties , some semblance of multimedia system ( picture show or telecasting ) messaging , and the improver of both voice notes and voice dialing .
There is , however , light dawning on the horizon . We kvetch in our original inclination about Apple ’s locked - down approach , which nix any third - political party applications on the phone . The announcement from Steve Jobs that a Software Development Kit for the iPhone is due in February gives us hope that even if Apple does not roll many of these features into succeeding package updates , the regular army of eager third - party developers will .
[ Associate editor Dan Moren blogs about the iPhone forMacworldatiPhone Central . ]
