Saturday, September 22, 2007

My wishlist for the new iPhone

I have been playing with my iPhone for almost three months now, enough to be able to suggest a few things to Apple for the next release. All pretty much obvious, but...

HARDWARE
  1. A 3G chip. I know, I am not the first to ask it, but everywhere I have wi-fi, I also have a laptop or a PC... I need high bandwidth on the run. Wi-fi is nice to have. 3G is a must.
  2. A GPS chip. Same as before. Google Maps would take up a complete new dimension. And it would be good for mobile advertising too ;-)
  3. A phone that would not make my radio in the car and the speakers on my PC rattle once every 10 minutes. It is really annoying.
  4. A camera that makes picture that you want to keep.
  5. A keyboard and a self-cleaning screen. Just kidding...

SOFTWARE
  1. Just an open phone, everything the iPhone is missing today would be (and it is) developed by the community out there. Please do it soon. Today is not soon enough. If you do it, all the items below will be disappearing from your feature list. Wouldn't it be great?
  2. Push email beside Yahoo (we are working on it, but we need #1 to make it mainstream)
  3. Contacts, Calendar, Task and Notes synchronization over-the-air (same as #2, but we need also #4)
  4. Tasks. I just can't remember a single thing if I do not write it down. Not having task support on-the-go could be dangerous for my health, because I might forget to take medications without it. It is just like e911. It should be mandatory, by the government (just for me ;-)
  5. Support for something more than just the English dictionary. I know autocorrect is cool, but if you type in Italian and every single word gets changed by the device... it gets you to a point where you want to throw the beautiful device and hit an Apple employee.
  6. The landscape mode working in many other apps, beside the browser. For example, in the Mail application. It makes typing much easier.
  7. The ability to sort cities in Weather. You have to delete them to re-sort them today. Who forgot this feature (bug)? Where was QA?
  8. Search in contacts. We have a person in our free myFUNAMBOL site with over 9,000 contacts. Believe me, s/he can't call anybody without a search tool.
  9. Support for a bunch more attachments, like audio (I get my landline voicemail forwarded via email and I can't listen to it). Powerpoint would be nice too.
  10. Copy and Paste. People get really surprised when I tell them the iPhone does not have copy and paste, but I have the feeling it will be very hard to figure out how to do it (right), considering the current user interface. Double-tap and drag? I do not know... I just have the need to be able to copy something from the web into an email...
That's it. Not that much, I know. The iPhone is a heck of a device, with a few additional touches I would even carry it around as my main device (I am not doing it today).
Posted by Fabrizio at 17:48  

2 Comments:

Blogger Hal said...  

Two more items:

1) How about being able to use the iPhone with any mobile network? A lot of people won't use it if it's unavailable for their network.

2) Even though the purchase price was recently lowered, between the still too high price and the high monthly fees, it is beyond the reach of the mass market.

Address these points and a lot more people will buy one.

Comment Posted at 08:20

Anonymous iphone applications said...  

reading this on my iPhone in the Geneva airport; I have to agree. Some things would have been useful this trip, but some things merioned here are already quasi-possible:

1. Blogging client: I love Ecto on my Mac, yes. But at least for now there is a plugin for Movable Type meant specifically for use in Safari on the iPhone; very useful.

2. Flickr uploader: one can email photos to a photostream, though this can be a tiresome process if one has more than a few photos and a slow connection.

I would definitely use textexpander, I love it on my Mac. I'd like the ability to locate a place on the map and either text or email it to someone. I'd love it if one could synch one's google locations to begin with. Lastly, stronger dotmac integration would be helpful; online storage of documents and email attachments, keychain synching.

Lastly, the ability to edit the auto correction dictionary. Typing in French on occasion is maddening, let alone using acronyms for work.

Comment Posted at 01:10

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