Talk about ungrateful -- the iPhone hadn't been out for more than a month when we created our first list of "missing" iPhone features we'd like to see.
But Apple has now had more than 20 months to grow and refine the iPhone. While the iPhone 2.0 software update of July 2008 added a bunch of interesting new features, there are still plenty of other features -- some of which we've been pushing for since the iPhone's initial announcement -- that still haven't arrived.
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And so we present our latest list of the 15 features we hope we'll see at Tuesday's iPhone 3.0 announcement event in Cupertino. Some of them are old standards; others are fresh and new.
Systemwide cut/copy/paste
It's been arguably the most requested feature of the iPhone OS since day one. Apple's tried to predict where people would want to use copy-and-paste and provide suitable workarounds, like being able to mail links from Safari. But anyone who's ever had to transfer a scrap of arbitrary text between two applications (taking a quote from a Web page to Mail, for example) has eventually had to resort to the poor man's copy-and-paste: jotting a note down on a piece of paper and then laboriously typing it back in. It's time to finally bring the iPhone's capabilities up to par with the 1984's Mac OS in this department. -- DM
Push notifications and/or background apps
At Apple's 2008 Worldwide Developer Conference, the company touted a push notification system that would allow third-party iPhone apps to alert users. However, the feature disappeared from the face of the Earth. Even if that particular implementation doesn't make it into iPhone 3.0, it seems likely that Apple will introduce some sort of notification system. The company may even go so far as to loosen up the restrictions on applications running in the background, which would greatly benefit programs like music players, macro utilities, GPS data loggers, and instant-messaging clients. Again, it may be a case of history repeating itself: remember, the original Mac OS ran just one program for the first several years of its existence too. -- DM
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