These are not predictions. I have no inside information. I just have needs, wants, and aspirations. And I’m hoping that this year’s WWDC, Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference happening on Monday in San Francisco, as I’ve hoped so many times in the past will help me fill some of them.
I’m going to start with something that we know we’ll get, iPhone software. Since getting my iPhone nearly one year ago I’ve been more than happy with it. But I’m ready for Apple to support, and even encourage, third party applications to be built for the iPhone. On Monday we should get a pretty good glimpse of how this will work and, perhaps, even know an exact date when third party applications will be available to download and install on the iPhone through Apple’s iTunes store.
First, I’m going to cover my wishes for updates to the existing iPhone software.
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Mobile Mail is in need of a pretty thorough update. I manage two email addresses on the iPhone. One for personal, and one for work. The Mobile Mail application, using IMAP, does this pretty well – but sometimes the iPhone chokes a little. I’d like to see speed improvements, easier flagging for following up on my Mac, and searching mail messages.
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Mobile Safari will probably get a decent upgrade, as regards its rendering speed and hopefully cache. The iPhone has a fairly large hard drive, and I have yet to see the reason Mobile Safari doesn’t use it to store the Web pages you visit in a cache. Reloading pages over and over and over on EDGE is frustrating.
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The address book, or phone contacts, is also in need of a search function. The alphabet slider on the side, for those of us with hundreds of contacts on our phone, doesn’t make things too much easier. I’d also like to see better bluetooth support here to sync contacts and/or send contact information to a friend’s iPhone.
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The calendar application needs to do a better job with multiple calendars. I would like to have all of my calendars on the iPhone, but also be able to add new events to any of those calendars instead of just one. Sending these events to other attendees, either via email or bluetooth, would also be nice.
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The iPhone’s camera is decent quality, but I wouldn’t mind a brightness slider, or even some effects, for when taking photos. I also wouldn’t mind being able to delete all of the photos on the iPhone with a tap or two. Being able to tell, on the iPhone, when a photo was taken would be a major plus.
Are any of these things too much to ask for? I don’t think so. Next, I’m going to focus on third party applications that I’d like to see.
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Sharing. Just an application that would let me share anything on my iPhone with another iPhone. Contacts, photos, documents? Why not?
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Bonjour messaging! Any iPhone within range? I’d like to be able to "chat" with that iPhone by sending messages, links, photos, etc. to it. That’d be fun.
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Media Browser. I’ve finally setup a shared hard drive on my Airport Express at home with photos, music, and video. Being able to access this media on the iPhone when home, would be nice.
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Twitterrific, on the iPhone. Enough said.
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A simple "to do list" application.
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Games! I know a lot of people are waiting for these, and I am too in a way, but I know that my battery is going to suffer for it.
Are any of these too much to ask for? I don’t think so either. Sometimes though I start to think about some of the crazy ideas for iPhone applications like controllers, a way to view my computer screen at home remotely, interactive applications based on location, and other hair-brained ideas. The possibilities seems endless, but I don’t want to get my hopes up. I’d rather be pleasantly surprised.
And last, I’d like to just quickly state that I’m in the market for a new laptop. My wife’s laptop, which I gave to her when I upgraded to this black Macbook over two years ago, is on its last legs. My black Macbook, however, is running perfectly. So I’m planning on giving her my black Macbook when I upgrade to, whatever comes next out of Cupertino. I’m leaning towards a Macbook Pro, but I’m waiting to see if anything happens at WWDC first.
Are you ready for tomorrow? What are you waiting to see?