iPad Accessories

Now that Apple has announced an iPhone OS 4.0 event for April 8 2010, I thought I would post what I’d like to see in the next and future iPhone OS releases. I’ve had the pleasure and fortune to use an iPhone 3G for the last two years, and as I use it multiple times per day, I do run into instances where I wish it included some basic changes to improve my life. So, here are my Top-9 requested features:

• App Sorting: Instead of bullets you can scroll left or right to in a serial fashion, I would like Apple to include Tabs you could click on and view a scrollable list of Apps in that category. This would be an extra way to view Apps on the iPhone OS device, in addition to the current method.
• Cover Flow: As above and already with music albums and songs, but Cover Flow for Apps, all and categorized. We can view Mac OS X folder content in numerous different ways, so get with it Apple, and offer it for iPhone OS devices as well.
• Landscape Dock: The iPad does it already with iPhone OS 3.2, and this is a feature I’ve desired months before iPad was announced. Let iPhone/touch users rotate to landscape and have five or six Dock items stored at the bottom. Four is far too limiting, as I use about six main apps every single day. Apps would all rotate, and this would emphasize a Cover Flow method as well.
• Central InBox: Steve Jobs at Apple has hinted this was coming, and I’m counting on it. I use two .mac (.me) and one Gmail on my iPhone, and screenshots of the iPad show that it can handle half a dozen e-mail address types, so I hope that Apple will enable this much like in the Mac OS today – a central inbox repository for all e-mail addresses.
• Redesigned Settings: Although I can find stuff in Settings, some of them are rather hidden and not entirely intuitive. It would be nice if Apple could bring to the surface and rename some of the categories to better explain where settings can be changed. If I’m struggling to find Tethering functions or other features, imagine someone less technically inclined!
• Documents Folder: We have it in Mac OS X, and even on Vista, Windows XP, Windows 7, etc. Now that the iPad is out and many will use it as a Netbook or Laptop replacement, I don’t want to have to store documents embedded in e-mail messages. Please, provide us actual mobile-work users a central spot to store things like resume’s/c.v.’s., work/art/modeling portfolios, price lists, etc. Save to desktop? woah. No, let’s not get too greedy, and imagine the mess we’d then have on the iPad! Oh, and yes, you’ll probably say “but, we can use iDisk to save and load stuff”, well good point, but what if I want stuff LOCALLY as I’m in a no-WiFi or no-3G area? Sixty-four gigabytes – we can do it locally. Plenty of space.
• Print: Oh my gosh, yes, I would love to be able to print to a Bonjour-enabled printer on a wireless network – directly! No more ’send-email-with-attachment-to-coworker-with-printer-so-he/she-can-print-it-off crap please. Oops PG-13. Yes, crap. Seriously, why hasn’t Apple released printing already even! Now that iPad has Pages and Keynote, numbers, Bento and other productivity Apps, printing is a MUST.
• Desktop Image: A rather trivial request, but the iPad has it! Us belittled iPhone 3G/touch users want to put a Chuck and Sarah image behind our Apps too! It would open the door to so many new Apps and downloads.
• Larger Icons: On a serious note though, I do know some people with impaired vision, and Apple has always been a strong proponent of Accessibility for the disabled on their products. I’d like to see the ability to double the size and text on the iPhone (specifically) and other devices – there’s ample room on the iPhone 3G screen to hold four App icons vs. the current 16 per page. A simple request, yet important one for those who squint to read the 4-pt text under App icons.

Let’s just see what Apple does on Thursday at its iPhone OS 4.0 event; I’ll have my fingers and toes crossed.