Saccades

iPhone is a pretty good step forward in the mobile phone appearance and user interface functionality. Dave Pouge of New York Times writes about its beautiful design and an innovative touch-interface. It’s also a long awaited iPod upgrade - although still closely tied with the desktop and iTunes. David Kirkpatrick, senior editor at Fortune, thinks that the iTunes dependence is “based on the ideas of the past” and favors the model where users pick from a giant online library and listen to whatever they want wherever they are. Tom Evslin, criticizes the phone’s service provider lock-in and lack of support for software-based VOIP applications like Skype that would allow free calls over WiFi.

In my opinion, iPhone does very little to challenge the status quo, change the mobile phone service business model or meaningfully extend functionality to enable users to do something new and useful. Apple spent a lot of time making incremental improvements and creating a sexier package for a pretty standard set of features: phone with a music player and a web browser.

I think that the device that aims to “revolutionize” needs to do much more. It’s got the looks, now let’s add some brains too. Here’s my wish list:

1. Work anywhere / everywhere without dropping a call
   Recognize, auto-configure and securely utilize whatever network exists transparently - across technologies and service providers. It should allow the user to pick between the most economic coverage and the best performance but not require any technical knowledge. (Apple could also “virtualize” charges across providers based on usage to make this economically viable).
2. Change the way we meet and interact while on the go
   A lot of integration related to location based services and social networks could be done here - e.g., check out a map to see who from your LinkedIn circle of interest (not the whole network!) is close-by and ping them to meet.
3. Change the way we collaborate and manage work / life activities
   Build smarts that emulate a good executive assistant that knows who to let through and who to route elsewhere based on what you’re doing, where you are and what are your priorities. Calendar, contact info, project notes, tasks, priorities, GPS, and a lot of other things are already there - what’s missing is the context and some common sense to connect the dots …
4. Keep us informed and entertained anywhere
   Cache multimedia content subscriptions without need to “plug-in” or manually synchronize everything (newspapers, lectures, eBooks, magazines, movies, music, rss feeds, podcasts, …) What I use on the web should just be on my phone too.
5. Synchronize all data with an online vault in real time
   The phone should not live in bubble - it should know about and use the data where it lives without having to get its own copy of everything. Master copy of any user files, PIM data and pretty much anything else should be updated at its main location without the user having to do a thing. (Master location is what’s versioned, backed-up, archived, indexed …)
6. Integrate all existing communication channels into one - with no mods required
   
7. Keep data safe and under your control regardless of who’s got the phone
   Integrate security features that allow users to disable, locate and/or permanently erase the phone by accessing an online portal. Staying up all night trying to remember exactly what personal & business data was exposed on a lost PalmPilot is not the experience I’d like to repeat.

Admittedly, some of this this stuff could be accomplished in software on top of the iPhone hardware (lack of 3G speed notwithstanding). As of right now, there’s no iPhone dev kit and no 3rd party apps can be loaded onto the device. While all this may sound like a huge mashup of opensource code and existing APIs, it should probably be managed and done by a company with Apple or Google sense of control and attention to detail in oder to ward off bugs & reboots that would make the whole thing just a pile of metal and plastic (Treos loaded with 3rd-party hacks is far from reliable).

If you still want the pretty new iPhone, try waiting a bit longer after the initial introduction: there’s a lot of room for price incentives. AP quoted an iSuppli estimate that Apple built in a 50% gross margin into the device MSRP. According to the report, the 4-gigabyte version of the iPhone, with a retail price of $499, will cost Apple $245.83 to make. The 8-gigabyte version, priced at $599, will cost Apple $280.83.

I’ll wait for the gPhone and keep my trusted BlackBerry & iPod for now.