Yesterday, Pope Steven P. Jobs convened his disciples to unveil the latest creation of his orthodoxy. In surveying the mainstream, industry and social media response, we have observed the following archetypal reactions to the announcement as negative. We offer these playful animal names to stretch the archetype metaphor as far as it can go:

1. The Sheep: May have fallen prey to the lead-up media hype
2. The Elephant: Strong gut instinct to forcefully remain skeptical of new devices and models, especially those from Cupertino
3. The Crow: Fixates on feature lists and spills vitriol when an expected bullet point cannot be printed on the product’s marketing materials
4. The Wolf: Rejects the App Store model as the “mall-ification” of the open, free, pastoral internet currently enjoyed
5. The Beaver: Invested heavily in mastering Flash development and resents how Apple and Adobe relations ends up hanging them out to dry

Therefore, we conclude that the iPad could only deliver rapture to devotees.

The iPad tablet computer appears to simply extend the form factor of the iPhone/iPod touch devices to a larger screen dimension. But to say that the iPad is only an overpriced web browser, or underpowered touch laptop is to miss the point by approximately one mile.

Editor’s Note: we are aware of how our Twitter embeds have failed due to dependency on a third-party. That’ll teach us to not simple screengrab the tweets and link to Twitter as a static image

A Small Herd of Elephants:

A designer/developer retorts:

Hypothesis

The simple enlargement of the oleophobic multi-touch screen enables an incremental but significant expansion of the Touch OS to afford a greater set of user interaction complexities and sensitivities to the capacities of the human body. Indeed, the device fashions itself more to the user than anything we have yet been able to purchase. Rather than machining the user into the requirements of the computer, the iPad’s beauty is how it instinctively and delightfully adapts to human factors.

These demonstrations of Apple’s iWork productivity suite exemplify how the GUI and basic modalities of the 20th century operating system have evolved towards a significantly more tangible, less mediated, indeed “intimate” experience. Direct manipulation of objects emerges in favor of severely mediated interactions guided by your disembodied hand, symbolized by the arrow pointer. We remember how Douglas Englebart’s mouse and requisite virtual re-mapping of gesture into cartesian space is an archaic form.

We are not embarrassed about nor pay much concern to the insistent persistence of the QWERTY keyboard, an interface devised originally to slow down the typist, as the mechanism of early typewriters would jam easily otherwise.

Rather, the iPad envisions a computing experience much closer to Ivan Sutherland’s Sketchpad, where the models of elegant and direct manipulation have yet to be reborn in a contemporary system.

Revelation

The iPad is not cause to celebrate the device itself, but rather to announce the retirement of the 20th century GUI and OS. It has served us well for a few decades and profoundly transformed humanity. Instead, being reminded that Steve Jobs appropriated the innovations of window, menu and icon by Xerox PARC into the Macintosh OS, we revisit Mark Weiser’s (CTO of PARC) vision of the computer for the 21st century. His group’s vocabulary of tabs, pads and boards forms an invisibly cohesive infrastructure of ubiquitous computing as an attempt to deliberately abandon the monolithic totalitarianism of the personal computer.

For certain, Apple leads the industry in being able to amass mighty fortunes ($50 billion this year) to implement our lives with tabs (iPhones, iPods) and now pads (iPad). Of course, there are many more incremental steps to take on the path of computing ubiquity. It did not occur with the singular release of a product and it won’t ever happen at once. But each gradual step is a blip on the continuum, forming a kind of punctuated equilibrium that disrupts conventions sufficiently to shed the cruft and detritus of the regularizing activities of computer industry — feature driven bloatware, piling atop legacy code, reinforcing conservative modalities and affordances that some people “cling to like guns and religion.”¹

The tech industry will be in paroxysms of future shock for some time to come. Many will cling to their January-26th notions of what it takes to get “real work” done; cling to the idea that the computer-based part of it is the “real work”.

It’s not. The Real Work is not formatting the margins, installing the printer driver, uploading the document, finishing the PowerPoint slides, running the software update or reinstalling the OS.

The Real Work is teaching the child, healing the patient, selling the house, logging the road defects, fixing the car at the roadside, capturing the table’s order, designing the house and organising the party.

via Fraser Speirs

There is an emancipatory promise in the new tablet computing model if it succeeds at eliminating labor involved with using and maintaining a PC. It’s a new kind of casual computing. A revered Mac developer sums it up:

For as frustrated as I was with the restrictions, those exact same restrictions made the New World device a high-performance, high-reliability, absolute workhorse of a machine that got out of my way and just let me get things accomplished.

The bet is roughly that the future of computing:

• has a UI model based on direct manipulation of data objects
• completely hides the filesystem from the user
• favors ease of use and reduction of complexity over absolute flexibility
• favors benefit to the end-user rather than the developer or other vendors
• lives atop built-to-specific-purpose native applications and universally available web apps

The iPad as a particular device is not necessarily the future of computing. But as an ideology, I think it just might be.

via Steven Frank

Antithesis

Critics correctly point out that the iPad represents a future that biases media consumption over production while enforcing a strict corporate governance over software and hardware possibilities.

A Wolf in Sheep’s clothing:

Some go as a far as dismissing it as “crap futurism” framing the iPad as the anti-computer, more akin to the strip-mall-ification of personal computing. They cannot reconcile the hegemonic force of Apple Inc. as a primary capitalist enterprise bringing mass scale innovations to market.

Furthermore, we could equate the iPad with the re-enabling of an addiction to the corporate media establishment, at the expense of burgeoning peer-production by the free and open source geek-onomy.

Other voices denounce it as “unnovation” for living room leisure and superficial amusements to merely fill e-waste landfills without humanitarian credentials.

A howling Wolf:

These “doing it because we can” arguments also miss the point. A year from today, in 2011, iPad users will very likely enjoy a rich collection of creativity tools, provided by Adobe and numerous indy developers alike.

Developers cautiously reorient us to the creative potential:

Even Parsons students are apparently blind to the stunning potential of using tablet computing as a profound augmentation of the creative process because it lacks a camera.

Young Crows?

The PC will still be around for some time to come, of course. But when we start carrying tablets and employing them for ambient computing tasks related to both consumption and production throughout our professional and leisurely life, we will enjoy being more human, less dominated by the totalitarian tendencies enforced by using a laptop which demands our full and private attention and fails to afford partial and shared attention. We take for granted what the disembodied interaction of trackpad, pointer and 20th century operating system models forces us to endure. On the contrary, with tablet computing, we start to benefit from the fruits of the next phase of ubicomp where our Apple pads and tabs are at the ready to help us self-fashion ourselves into less-machined casual computing citizens. The tablet helps us return to a day when we were not stuck in front of computers, but instead we clutched notebooks, palettes, and sketchpads and focused on people and ideas, not “the computing administrative debris.”²

Regarding Flash

Rather than taking on this beast of a sub-topic (again and again and again and again), we will defer to others who are posting on this, and stay on-topic. Briefly:

Leave it to Beaver

Try building a player that runs a huge range of dynamic content written on a variety of tools (some of which you don’t control) by developers with massively varying skill levels. Now try making it compatible, consistent, and performant across dozens of OSes, browsers, platforms, and devices. And maintain backwards compatibility with the last 9 versions even while your target platforms change. And keep it under 5MB. And maintain it in parity with an OSS effort (Tamarin). And try to keep up with the demands of one of the most active and vocal developer communities.

via Grant Skinner

The reactions from these members of the Flash elite reflect a humility and respect for what that medium has been able to accomplish. The bombast from the anti-Flash clique, however, espouses open standards at all costs. Both viewpoints will need to reconcile how ubicomp will simplify and dissolve computing into the background. Against Adobe’s ability to conquer divergent hardware with convergent software, Apple is building a nascent ubicomp empire on unified hardware and software.

Comic Relief

A fellow named Neil Curtis chopped up the opening Apple keynote of 2010 to just include the adjectives. A somewhat hilarious synopsis of the keynote ensues.

Naturally, nothing could upstage Bishop Stephen Colbert unleashing the wünder tablet out of his suit pocket at the Grammy Awards to mesmerize and prime the purchasing audience. Tuning the zeitgeist.

Synthesis

It is remarkable how easily Apple can infiltrate cultural feeding grounds like this and inject its new product into our attention space to initiate a brilliant marketing campaign to regularize the iPad into existence. Consider how they deployed the iPod into the cultural discourse and how effectively normal it has become, a fully regular life condition, the way you listen to recorded music. Apple is big music.

The next massive regularization phase established the iPhone as an infiltration into everyday communications, primarily by wireless telephone and its bevy of sub-channels. Apple is at the heels of Nokia, the worlds largest mobile device maker. Apple is big telecom.

The iPad affords a new and novel kind of computing. The full adoption of its use in everyday living will reflect yet another stage of regularizing Apple into our lives. At this stage, Apple is ubiquitous to our daily life, always at hand.

Is Apple big ubicomp?

Footnotes

1. Barack Obama’s comments on the 2008 campaign trail. Via YouTube
2. See Edward Tufte’s early analysis of the impact of the iPhone on interaction design.

Despite furious speculation, Jobs releases incremental product improvements, rather than fundamental game-changing gear

Apple announced four new products today in San Francisco:

1. Time Capsule, wireless base station and network storage device
2. iPhone and iPod Touch firmware updates
3. Apple TV 2.0 and iTunes Video Rentals
4. MacBook Air ultra-thin notebook
5. One more thing… There is NO “one more thing!”

Interestingly, these announcements merely validate earlier predictions, mostly based on patent-filings, clues embedded deep within application strings, and the usual rumoring that surrounds Apple product design. In fact, the first three announcements represent the fulfillment of promised features more than anything else.

Time Capsule simply makes good on the promise of Leopard’s Time Machine feature to work usably on portable computers. The notion of a network storage appliance is nothing new.

The iPhone and Touch firmware updates, free for phone owners and a $20 upgrade for Touch owners, merely respond to the deluge of feature requests that at times overshadowed the praise of these revolutionary devices. Indeed, text messaging to multiple recipients, locative services in Google Maps, lyrics and video chapter displays, and home screen customization capabilities seemed like no-brainers from the start. On the Touch side, owners must shell out to gain the applications that are standard on the iPhone, which motivated the Touch jailbreak movement to establish a feature parity across the products. At least Apple is focusing on listening carefully to the user-base chatter. The iPhone firmware 1.1.3 is already available. Will a new jailbreak method appear before the official SDK launch?

When considering the Apple TV free software update and reduced introductory pricing, here is another example of Apple merely updating the software and business platforms to add serious value to existing owners. In many ways, today’s announcements are the biggest news for existing customers, especially owners of iPhones and Apple TVs, who in two weeks will be graciously rewarded with significant feature upgrades for free. No wonder all other companies envy Apple’s relationship with its customers.

The MacBook Air, however, is a mixed bag of excitements and disappointments. Certainly, the barely-there form factor is what will attract attention. But it’s the multi-touch trackpad and the planned obsolescence of the optical disc that represent the most significant futurist shifts. But $3100 for the solid state drive version is really, really, really expensive. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the new Air is its striking lack of a user replaceable battery!

Top 10 Expectations Unfulfilled

Indeed, wild speculation seemed to include every possible configuration and predictable product launch, and so, these were not announced today:

1. No tablet computer, basically an iPhone/Touch the size of a notebook, running OS X, not Mac OS X, 100% touch
2. No replacement for the Mac Mini, some kind of a screen-less, entry-level desktop
3. No 3G iPhone running on AT&T’s UMTS, nor a 16 GB storage upgrade
4. No AT&T wireless networking built into notebooks
5. No “copy & paste” for iPhone/Touch
6. No WiMax devices
7. No BluRay disc devices, especially on the Apple TV
8. No Speed bumps to product lines other than Pro towers, especially iMac, MacBooks and MacBook Pro
9. No Leopard Software Update 10.5.2
10. No iPhone SDK based application demonstrations

At this moment, Apple’s stock price is not surging, but then again, most of the market looks to be tanking. Not even Father Jobs can lure the US economy from a looming recession with his “halo effect” against the debt crisis and devalued dollar.

Hyperbole Essay Muses a Protestant Split Over Jesus Phone

Release a breakthrough product, ready the defenses. Slash prices within 60 days of its release. Pre-test an elaborate consumer store credit program. Maintain control of user experience, revenue streams, and product integrity. Expedite firmware drops to shore up security against an unpredictably vigorous, yet independent, and ingenious rogue software design movement. Monitor ensuing online chatter and surveil the field, ready to deploy assets.

Such is the life of Applists, at the brink of factioning off into a ruthless, fringe element, no longer allegiant to Pope Jobs. These followers protest, disillusioned with the rejection of their effusive prayers and deeds in the name of the product’s church. Emblems of the faith, splendid exemplars of user interface mantras led by installers as elegant as “undocumented features,” spreading customizations and innovations of every whim as if Gnostic Gospel. Each passionate shortcoming of the breakthrough product, much hyped, yet still maligned beyond nitpick, had been redeemed, by painstaking devoted minds, dedicated to unlocking the mysteries of the revolutionary creation, without manual, in disobedience to advice and guidance.

Today the mark is 1.1.1 vs. 1.0.2 — those who have crossed over towards Applist orthodoxy and those resistant, not yet yielding, making due without holy sanctions, verified creed. Perhaps it’s the attraction of a more personal relationship with the Godhead, the sacred code, Kabalah’s sublime intertextual numerology, the open principles of touch-based human interface guidelines and their applications, Gnostic texts canonized by Memex. This divine intimacy of the populace is too much for the orthodoxy to stomach, unmediated transgressors. Only deep within the Vaticanal campus of Cupertino, could the details of iPhone be realized and celebrated through masses. Or could they? The orthodoxy obediently applies edicts from axis mundi, replete with sharia, releasing newly inscribed sacraments of commerce, and trivial revisions to interface ritual, all as sacrifices to the Godhead in the name of stablity, security, and eschatology. The reformists resist the superficialities of bug fixes, feature tweaks, and new revenue streams in favor of purist pursuits of homebrewed exchange and unmediated gadgeteering.

Watch the iPhoneDev splinter group, the prophets Erica Sadun, and her followers, all Digging, the global audience, Natetrue and Nervegas and Nightwatch, all the great disciples of the tripartite theory of Jobs, Ives, and Schiller; now splintering off into a Protestant reformation, rejecting the hegemonies, the hierarchies, the corporate religiosity that puts shareholder before stakeholder, priest before parishoner, mission before congregation, partner before customer, policy before press, business before pleasure.

Other churches reap followers by addressing the misgivings of these loud voices, the difficult choice of switching allegiances, and selecting new identities could be the most drastic reaction to the Applist inquisition. Once dedicated followers, so-called fanboys, mavens, influencers, the variously labeled, occasionally ridiculed, persecuted acolytes of American design purity, objects painstakingly assembled by Chinese workers, clothed in their consumer best, they are lovingly delivered to lavishly spoiled consumers, whose lives change instantly, noticeably, invisibly, despite clear markings and insignia.

Needless to say, we aren’t the only ones jolted into a state of doubt, of second-guessing, a crisis of faith. Our iPhones remain 1.0.2, our AppTap apps continue to dance upon our SummerBoard with a flick, semi-useless, yet somehow indispensable reminders of cherishing the essentials of open, of freedom, of flexibility. We remember not to take for granted the simple joys of the original Applist congregation, enabled to seek more personal relationships with what the breakthrough product enables, beyond expansion and customization: retrogaming, instant messaging, operating systemics, electronic literature, voice recordings, recreation, media redistribution, virtualization, and location-based positioning.

The factionalization inevitably reflects the disconnect between the hierarchy and its Diocese. Cupertino must enforce and enrich its control and influence over the essential elements of its worldview, the device software. There are specific fiduciary duties towards contractual partners and shareholders that assess profound regard in refocusing the consumers attention towards revenue streams and away from endeavors that distract from ongoing tithing. Yet the followers, in their humanistic zeal for coming to know the the device software more intimately, more greatly, more intrinsically, unlocked an interconnection that may not have even been intended for mere mortals. This Pandora’s box exemplifies the detachment of the Tripartite from its congregation. Such a clearly precedented trait of Applists was forgotten, and now fracturing ensues.

Will devotees of Apple fracture into subservient and subversive sects, now prompted to select allegiances?

Update – August 21, 2007

iPhone 1.0.2 has just been released through iTunes, again, apparently just a bug fix maintenance release. The enthusiast community is scrambling to determine if any new features have appeared. Indeed, it is recommended that you restore your iPhone back to its factory state if you’ve applied any mods, as the update may fail otherwise. No word yet on compatibility with mods. Perhaps this update is an attempt by Apple to throttle the modification scene?

Update – August 3, 2007

iPhone 1.0.1 addresses the Audi Bluetooth connection problem as well as resolve the dealer installed iPod connector integration issues both reported here←. Now the phone remains reliably connected to the car system, plugged in or wireless. Furthermore, the audio signal now properly flows into the factory head unit, rather than through the iPhone’s speakers, when plugged in. Bravo Apple for fixing these crucial bugs first.

Update – August 2, 2007

Now that iPhone users have had a day or two to report on the undisclosed updates included in 1.0.1, according to AppleInsider→, this update does include some important fixes and improvements including:

• Call volume adjustment, making calls slightly louder
• Battery charge indicator graphic now properly indicates a fully charged battery
• Safari feels more stable, especially while listening to music in the background
• IMAP email accounts display subfolders
• Passcode lock limits increased
• VPN client improvements

So this update wasn’t as insignificant as we thought. Now, why doesn’t Apple just disclose these features rather than leave it up to the enthusiast community to painstakingly discover them?

Update – August 1, 2007

Indeed, a free software update emerged, iPhone 1.0.1, which is only a security patch and bug fix. The version numbering system is very consistent with Apple’s system of differentiating maintainance and security releases from feature updates. The only reported “feature” included in 1.0.1 seems to be the ability to automatically Bcc: oneself on outgoing mail. I’ve never understood why people do this. Because of this high-priority 1.0.1 update, we’re more cautiously expecting a 1.1 feature update in early Fall, to coincide with the release of Leopard. }

Original Post – July 31, 2007

According to Apple’s VP of iPod Product Marketing, Greg Joswiak, via AppleInsider→, the first free software update for the iPhone should be available shortly. Analyst Mike Abramsky of RBC Capital Markets speculates that the update will include the following features (our further speculations in parenthesis):

1. Chat (iChat?)
2. Picture Messaging (MMS support!)
3. Social Networking (Bluetooth local-area connectivity? MySpace or Facebook applications? SMS-based social tools?)
4. Location-based services (More Google applications?)
5. Home Networking (AirTunes or Apple TV support?)
6. OS X Leopard Integration (More flexible sync services? Disk mode? Dock remote?)

In addition, the predictions continue to express skepticism that 3G network services will arrive anytime soon, with the GSM/EDGE capabilities targeted towards the European launch of the device, despite the far greater prevalence of wireless broadband services and features across the pond. Battery life and form factor issues are cited for the implementation delay. Indeed, Apple is loathe to do anything less than perfectly, as the iPhone itself epitomizes: better to wait and shock the market with product excellence rather than peddle to the mediocracy.

Most notably absent from this prediction is an announcement of a Flash Player for the iPhone’s Safari browser. As any user who frequently browses the web can attest, there is simply too much Flash content out there to consider iPhone a complete web device until the Flash Player arrives.

5 tips and tricks for living with iPhone 1.0

Instead of pointing out the obvious flaws of a 1.0 release software, we offer 5 simple tips to workaround them while we wait for a software update from Apple. In addition, we’ve compiled a list of the Top 5 iPhone Safari Applications↓ that you simply must bookmark.

1. Slide-to-period tapping

   Instead of switching between letter and punctuation modes, slide your finger to the @123 button, but don’t release it until after sliding and releasing over the period key. The keyboard will switch back to letter input automatically. This makes a big difference. Be sure to measure the improvement of the slide method on your typing speed [iPhoneTypingTest.com]→ This is also known as the McCallum method via [Pogue→]. An otherwise, well documented shortcut, but addresses a very common complaint about the iPhone keyboard.

2. Contraction shortcuts. Itsp or Itsa = It’s

   You can intentionally spell it’s incorrectly as “itsp” or “itsa” and “it’s” will be suggested. The A and P keys are ideally positioned for this kind of a shortcut.

3. Top Button Wakes from Sleep Quicker Than the Home Button.

   You might be in the habit of pressing the Home key to wake iPhone out of its standby sleep mode. However, the top button seems to be more responsive. This could also reduce wear-and-tear on your Home key. Am I worried about mine wearing out before the battery?

4. Dock makes a useful headphone jack adapter.

   If your old headphones don’t fit into iPhones more durable jack port, try the Dock. Its Line Out fits all mini jacks and works without a dock connector cord attached. Works in a pinch.

5. Make an ‘iPhone’ bookmark toolbar folder in your desktop Safari to sync with your iPhone Safari.

   This just helps consolidate really useful iPhone Safari tool in one easy-to-reach location. Start with our ‘5 Essential Bookmarks for iPhone 1.0’ ↓below.

5 essential bookmarks for iPhone 1.0

Links approved by mercurious®

These features will likely make their way into the Home screen as full widgets, so these Safari applications are good stop-gap measures while we wait for iPhone 1.1 and beyond:

1. IM Client

   → JiveTalk (alpha) by BeeJive→ Looks like iChat. Smells like iChat. This is no iChat, however. Being trapped in the Safari iPhone interface, it cannot truly act as a full-fledged IM client. But BeeJive has the best offering currently, this is true.

2. Feed Reader

   → Digg Reader: The official version by Digg is a good specimen, a step in the right direction, but still needs better iPhone style paging as demonstrated by Joe Hewitt→ and his amazing iUI toolkit→.

3. Photo Sharing

   → iPhlicker by Chandler Kent. This is a good example of what the iPhone Flickr interface needs to be.

4. Fuel Pricing

   → Gas.app by Jeffery903@aol. Cheap gas, easy to find, what else is there to say?

5. Grocery Shopping

   → OneTrip Shopping List by Nevin Mrgan [sic]. A “why didn’t they think that sooner” kind of tool.

Impressions.

Although Gizmodo→ is recommending that those who haven’t already early-adopted should wait for the first software update, the iPhone is a stunning achievement. Really the only salient reason offered by Gizmodo for waiting applies to users who constantly MMS and/or SMS to multiple recipients. Despite owning many phones capable of both these features, we must admit that we rarely, if ever, use these features. Otherwise, the iPhone offers a feature set where we find ourselves using it instead of our laptop, perhaps because the elegance of the multi-touch interface makes the conventional OS seem blasé by comparison. Or, maybe it’s that we truly enjoy the personal nature of using the device, and marvel at its ability to overcome the limitations of the screen size, input methods and network capabilities.

Problems.

Update, August 2, 2007: iPhone Sofware Update 1.0.1 delivers the goods→ 

Unresolved issues that are real disappointments.

1. Issue Resolved→  The iPhone Car Bluetooth interface is not working well with my Audi A3 factory Bluetooth integration. Although it pairs beautifully and offers a terrific integration with the navigation system’s interface, the Bluetooth connection does not remain connected, and periodically drops and inconsistently reconnects. Perhaps the polling frequency of the Bluetooth software implementation needs to be adjusted in the forthcoming software updates to more reliably maintain the headset profile connection?
2. Issue Resolved→ The iPod Car integration kit is not working. This extremely expensive, official dealer-installed accessory that allows an iPod connected through the glove box to offer audio playback through the factory unit and charging does not seem compatible with the iPhone. The compatibility warning appears, suggesting the Airplane Mode to be activated. In either setting, the audio does not playback through the system. It is reduced to an inconvenient car charger. This is perhaps our greatest disappointment and we do hope that Apple improves compatibility with various Dock Connector accessories in the future updates.
3. I hate to write about this, but indeed, my first iPhone was a lemon. It froze, crashed and resisted the restore process. AppleCare customer service and my local Apple Retail store offered stellar customer service, however, and gladly replaced my unit, without much hassle. The replaced unit runs flawlessly, and clearly, there was a hardware issue, probably a faulty NAND RAM unit with my first one.

Wish List.

The Top Ten features that we’d love to see in the forthcoming software updates.

1. Junk Mail filter. It’s a shame that junk mail filters have truly become an essential aspect to any usable email client, and anyone who uses a standard POP or IMAP account can attest to the difficulty of using the iPhone email client without spam filtering.
2. Improved Bluetooth implementation. We’re talking full A2DP wireless stereo headset support, more aggressive polling to maintain headset or car kit connections, and full disk mode access via Bluetooth. Basically, a non-crippled, optimized implementation, and that’s not too much to ask.
3. Improved Dock Connector accessory compatibility. Obviously, Apple is worried about the interference caused by the AT&T cellular network frequencies. You’ve heard that distinctive ‘dih-dih-dih-dih’ that interferes with speakers nearby your phone as a call comes in. It would be better if you could accept this interference and enable full compatibility mode for legacy dock connector devices.
4. Disk Mode. You should be able to mount the iPhone as a USB drive and through Bluetooth to exchange files. This should also enable the file based editing of wallpapers and ringtones. In addition, manual media management should be allowed through drag-and-drop control in iTunes, as supported in iPod connections.
5. iChat. Surely, AT&T strong-armed Apple into not including iChat on the initial 1.0 release to swindle customers into opting for biggest SMS account features. It’s no coincidence that even the most expensive plans limit text messaging to 200 per month. However, an iChat client offered by Apple is badly needed.
6. Games. The multi-touch interface, motion sensors and brilliant screen are begging for games. You simply need something to enjoy on this device while you’re in the subway or in other network dead-zones. Not to mention, games are, uh, well, fun.
7. Nike+ compatibility. The Nike Plus system should work on the iPhone. It is not recognized as a compatible accessory.
8. Dock Remote Control. This is perhaps the most elaborate request, that will likely be enabled by a third-party and then absorbed by Apple into a Leopard upgrade release. We’re talking an SMS interface on your laptop/desktop, call control with caller ID, brightness/backlight control, iTunes remote access (so you can play off your iPhone instead of off your main device), and the ability to configure certain settings.
9. iSync Bluetooth synchronization support for Contacts, Calendars, Notes, non-media data. Obviously, Bluetooth is too slow to sync media files. But that feature could be achieved over WiFi, as is implemented on the Apple TV product.
10. iTunes Music Store. We’d like to buy music, movies, TV shows, games and subscribe to Podcasts directly on the device. Maybe it would only work while on a WiFi network until the 3G iPhone arrives, someday.