There are a few on my list that are obvious, and have been talked about already, but I tried to come up with some interesting things that could really make this technology more useful. Oh, and I went for 11, even though this is a top 10 list.
1. Flash Player. First and foremost above all else... the iPhone simply must have a Flash Player plug in for the Safari browser on there. WTF??? The web is literally COVERED with Flash, and I would even be happy if it played Flash, and didn't play "Flash Video" FLV's if they needed to leave that out I'd be fine with it in reality. But to think that the iPhone is being touted as "the first real web browser on a mobile device" and they can't play Flash? That just seems stupid. Has anyone commented yet on why this is not the case? I haven't heard a good reason.
2. Google Map Notes. On each step of your route (in list view), there could be an "add note" button (with a "submit note to Google" button) for each step. You could add your own personal notes to remind yourselves of things along the way ("get the fireworks here, or "watch for the sudden turn-off"). Also, there could be a wiki style note collection/aggrigation/rating system, sort of like digg, you could rate up or rate down a note as helpful or downright shitty, and then there could be a preference somewhere that you could assign so that on each step of the route, there could be a "show/hide" notes feature, and in settings, there could be a Map Notes section, and you choose the "top ___ notes" to be displayed, like "show three top rated route step notes when I tap 'show notes.'" These notes could be things like "Google says 'take a slight left and continue on 295N' and in reality, this step is a 'just stay on the main road' type of move," "This milage is totally wrong, it's not 5 miles to the turn off, it's 11.3 miles" or "Look for 'The Pie Shop' along this stretch of road, they make the best milkshakes in three counties." Stuff like that. What about "Do not stop at the rest areas on this stretch, they are the filthiest thing I have ever seen." Google has recently added "Customize your Route by dragging the blue line around" to the web version of Google Maps, and that's a feature I've been hoping for in the web version for years. I NEED that on the iPhone too. This is for people who actually do know something about the route they need to take, but still want to get it "programmed" into their iPhone - sometimes it's just so the navigator can follow it and tell you what to do but you have some prior knowledge that you want to infuse your routing with.
3. GPS This really seems like a no brainer. For a device this powerful, to not know where it is seems just hobbled. I'm certain this will be in a future version. A "where-am-I-now" Maps button would be killer - as would a "directions from here" default with GPS data supplying the start location. With GPS, you could also "group" with other GPS phone users, (like friends on a trip together, or meeting up with someone) and if you went to "maps" you'd see a little green dot or something, telling you where your party members are. Yeah, sort of like the map in World of Warcraft. Seems also like if you had that, you could have some preset searches that you look for like "coffee" "movie theaters" "rest area" or "sushi" and when you go to map search favorites, you tap "coffee" and the iPhone knows you mean "show me the closest 5 coffee shops to where I'm standing right now." That would be killer.
4. Audio Recording. You should be able to record calls, record voice memos, even bootleg a live show straight to AAC on the iPod side. It could just allow you to record until some preset number of MB's of space remains. Then, when you connect to iTunes, (just like photos sync to iPhoto when you connect) it would transfer recordings over, and keep them in a new device area (iPhone Recordings). You could "delete recordings when synced" so that's the process for clearing off the tracks. Why does Apple always seem to leave this type of feature to the third party vendors who can't ever seem to get it right?
5. Voice Dialing and Voice Commands. If you've got that mic, you have to have Voice functions. For dialing as well as features. Say "phone" "ipod" or "mail" and you are in that feature, or "home" to return to the home screen. Imagine saying "Directions from here to the nearest steakhouse." Yummm. Or like #3 above, just say "coffee" and boom, directions to the closest cuppa.
6. Custom Ring Tones. You should be able to specify ANY audio file to be your ring tone. Have a simple little editor (as straight forward as positioning and cropping your avatar in iChat where you snip the audio file to the 15 second max (or whatever it is) and save it as a ring tone. At the very least, allow iTunes purchased songs to be made ringtones or something. This is just one of those too-obvious ways that cell phone service providers are nickel and dime-ing us. Hey, I paid $600 for the phone, let me use the damn thing any way I want, and don't charge me money to activate "hobbled" services. That just makes me feel bad.
7. Niche Request For Musicians and Podcasters. Take it one step further: Why couldn't Apple create a "iPhone GarageBand" stripped-down port of their audio recording software, and allow you to do some simple multitracking. All to be synced and mixed and such in the real version of garageband back at home, but this could allow you to create new audio tracks, and monitor out of the phones and overdub a new track. You could track raw audio tracks in the field and then take them home for working on. I mean, why can the 8GB iPhone be an 8GB field recorder with 24/96 options and everything. A simple line in would allow an I/O device to be connected, or even create an I/O that's based on the docking port on the bottom of the iPhone.
8. Contextual Birthdays. Birthdays should show up on the calendar as "Johnny's 20th Birthday" in the cases where a birth year is entered in the contact record. Why have birthday in the contact details and not have that show up on your calendar? iCal, as many have mentioned, should be way more full-featured. Hopefully they will go down that road next. To-Do's, editing events, adding, all that.
9. Notes, Files Disc Mode. Notes MUST be able to be copied straight to your machine as text files (or no one will use notes.) Why is this not the case?! That being said, it would be really nice if there was a little simple file structure where you could place files (disc mode would solve this too) like Zip files, Word docs or PDFs, to use as attachments in Mail. You can email your note to yourself (or someone else), but that just seems clunky.
10. iTunes Store. You should be able to browse and put items in your "iPhone Cart" on the iTunes music store right from iPhone, and AppleTV for that matter. Then, when you connect to your home machine, these files just start downloading and your account is charged. Sitting in the airport, or on the subway is a great time to "browse, sample, and prepare to buy." Besides, if you work toward making them stand alone entertainment/communications devices, I bet they sell millions more.
11. YouTube Usefulness Request. The *last* videos on YouTube i *ever* want to watch are the "most viewed" and "featured" ones. They're almost always that crappy crust on the top of the crap that is the deluge of noobvids on the net. So... I want to have some power and flexibility in accessing YouTube videos. What I'd like to be able to do is hop on YouTube in the web browser on my computer, do a bunch of searching and surfing, and build a "YouTube iPhone Playlist" and then when you sync, the YouTube app picks up the list you've been "saving" while on your main machine. Of course the videos would have to be marked "iPhone Compatible" or if it wouldn't scare people just say "H.264" next to the "embed" field or something. Seems this is something that Safari could easily "send" over to the YouTube app in sync.
12-? your turn. Anyone have any more ideas? Leave them in the comments.
Why does Apple always seem to leave this type of feature to the third party vendors
It very likely has to do with contractual agreements that Apple has. The tech business seems like it's 2% new ideas and 98% legal.
As for the wish list, Apple can't roll out all their tricks in version one, how would they ever sell the other nine versions that will come out in the next 18 months?
As for the recording wishes, it's not like Apple didn't think of these. It all boils down to DRM. Jobs talks about hating DRM but his legal department and his accounting department insist that the iPhone come jam packed with it. And his company's stockholders are loving the fact that Apple is married to DRM.