As nice as the device is (and the more I use it, the more I like it), I’ve again found myself once again with a few thoughts on what could make the iPhone even better…

a (ahem) better network In a previous life, I wrote a fair amount of music for television commercials.  Once I was called back to do some alterations on a spot for an aerosol carpet deodorizer because of changes required by legal at the ad agency - in the commercial, the effectiveness of the product was illustrated using a (somewhat silly) ‘odor-smelling wand’ prop.  However, it was discovered that the number of (entirely fake) beeps coming from the prop didn’t accurately match the (entirely real) numbers coming from the focus group, so the spot needed to be reedited – such is the attention paid to truth in advertising and potential litigation.    How then does Apple get away with showing 3G web pages loading this quickly in their iPhone 3G ads?  (I mean, whose little blue Safari browser bar moves across that quickly?)

Good old-fashioned voice coverage is even more of an issue, though - I (along with an informal sampling of my fellow NYC iPhone users) are still occasionally suffering from the AT&T dropped call syndrome, and what’s worse is that despite having all the latest firmware upgrades, I still have to stand in the far corner of my living room to get enough bars to make a phone call from my apartment - and this is a 7 minute subway ride from Manhattan (i.e. not exactly the boondocks).   Even in the middle of New York City, coverage can be spotty:  I recently stood on the corner of 14th St. and University Place (Union Sq.) and had no voice service whatsoever (incredibly, I had to walk west along 14th St. past 5th Ave. before I had any bars).  The AT&T cell network needs some work, at least in the New York City area.

system-wide ‘undo’ It’s a little surprising the iPhone is missing a global ‘undo’ command at the operating system level, but I’m guessing it’s the result of a conscious design decision to keep the iPhone OS as lean and mean as possible (in computer science terms, a global undo requires a certain degree of ’statefulness’, but the iPhone is largely a stateless device).   However, as iPhone Apps get more interesting and powerful, the lack of an ‘undo’ command is only going to become more of an issue (and meanwhile, what if you delete an SMS conversation by mistake?)
One cute idea would be to leverage the iPhone’s onboard accelerometer (which makes how the device itself is held a user input for flipping the display axis and for certain games) - because a rapid physical shaking of the iPhone would make a neat ‘undo’ command, wouldn’t it?  (reminding us all of our childhood Etch-a-Sketch…)

system-wide text ‘copy’ and ‘paste’ Again, a pretty basic function, but one the iPhone doesn’t support.  Here’s a great mockup of how this could work – from vimeo, a video sharing site I like a lot.

axis flipping for the mail app Again, back to the accelerometer – I get a fair amount of HTML emails. While the iPhone does a good job displaying them, it would be nice to be able to hold the device lengthwise and view what are essential web pages with the wider horizontal aspect ratio - as I’m already able to do with the browser, camera roll, and video player apps (and since the functionality is already in place for those apps, it would be very easy to implement).

In general, though, while the AT&T network is a disappointment, the device itself certainly is not – and recent sales figures reflect just how popular the iPhone has become: during the last quarter, Apple sold 6.9 million units, more than were sold during all previous quarters combined. In fact, over the last quarter, the iPhone sold more than any other mobile device (smart phone or not), beating out both the (often free) Motorola Razr in the consumer space and the RIM Blackberry line in the enterprise space.  Further evidence of the iPhone’s success can be found reading between the lines of a recent blog post from a Microsoft blogger concerning the new Office 2008 web apps and cross-platform cloud computing – iPhone compatibility is given top billing, over even Mac OS compatibility.

So the iPhone is a hit - as a believer in the importance of good product design, I’m glad to see it.

The AT&T network, though, remains a work in progress - at least in our neck of the woods.