Wishlist for iPhone OS 4.0

I’ve discussed previously what I think might be in store next year for the iPhone. And I’ve seen incredibly ridiculous lists of dumb ideas for the next iPhone OS software. But I’ve been spending more time with brand new iPhone users lately, as well as seeing what other mobile OS vendors are doing, and have got their thoughts and put together a list of ideas.

First is a an iPhone “Service” application. Yes, this is a new class of application that would run in the background, but it isn’t what most people will want in terms of “background apps”. The software will have no configuration, no way to interface with the user whatsoever other than through it’s owner application (e.g. the Pandora or MLB app). It could allow background internet radio, or to report location, or even other more interesting ideas like  facilitate iPhone interoperability with outside systems. Namely, an in-car productivity solution like Ford Sync. The goal is to allow me to talk to the Ford Sync system (which now has something of an open API), and allowing it to inter-operate seamlessly with the iPhone. When I ask my car to go through my unread mail, it would read me the sender and subject line, whether or not I was a TO or CC, and if I want it to read me the contents of the email I’ll say “read it to me”. The iPhone would allow access to that email, it would communicate using either the dock connector or bluetooth, and copy the email to the Ford Sync system to read it to me. I could send a short voice-transcribed reply of the email (you wouldn’t want to do a long-form email because of the quality of the microphones in the vehicle or the lack of good dictation engines that run on the Sync or iPhone systems).

Next is a Voice Synthesis API. The iPhone already has a limited voice synthesis engine – exposed through VoiceOver. Being able to talk to the user would be especially useful for me – I’ve got a number of app ideas that would make great use of this API and provide a great user experience.

Social Network Integration fills in what a lot of other OSes have that the iPhone is lacking. The new Windows Phone 7 OS today showed that using the “Photos” app, they could pull down photos from their friend’s or their own Facebook pages. Allowing apps to access Calendar, Photos and other built-in libraries on the phone to add and updates photos would help social apps feel more integrated with the operating system.

A Response Interface would be a great tool. This improvement would be two parts – first to get rid of the modal (everything else stops) dialog boxes and allowing the notifications to not be obtrusive; then allow the user to reply without exiting their current application. Just an overlay on top of the existing app. I would assume it cant take much memory or resources just to throw up a generic text capture application and then route it as a reply to the app handling the incoming message and let it send it out.

Here are some other quick ideas:

• Usage patterns that allow the user to put the most commonly used apps on the first or second page automatically.
• Access to files, shared over USB when plugged into a computer (this is rumored for the iPad)
• Hardware-based video encoding API, allowing apps to set things like resolution and bitrate up to some specific maximum. This allows for streaming apps like UStream to consume less power.

Hopefully we’ll see some of these with the 4.0 operating system.

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• Guesses on iPhone 4th-Generation
• You’re not Apple, stop trying to be…
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• MacBook Pro 2010 Predictions
• Fixing the iPad