Updated since Apple has shown iOS5 at WWDC.  I made out pretty well.

Here are a few things that I would really like to see Apple address with iOS5 and the iPhone.  Many of these will help in the enterprise and some are just general improvements (all my opinions).

• As mentioned in a previous post – better notification system – Completely revamped.  Finally.
• Better use of the lock screen.  This ties in to the request for better notifications a little, but those little red numbered balls are useless when you have a PIN set on your phone and you have to unlock it to even get to the home screen.  Give us info on the lock screen. – Yes!
• Even better could be an external notification of some kind, like an LED, to let me know it is even worth looking at the screen in the first place. – Yes. LED flash for notifications.
• Over The Air activation.  Please.  Connecting to iTunes is a pain when you are trying to roll out a large number of iPhones and iPads. – Yes!
• Over The Air iOS upgrades.  Blackberry has been doing this forever and Android supported it from the start. – Yes!
• Select all capability in email. – Unknown.
• Please implement the ability to tap on a conference number in a Calendar item and have it dial the number, wait, then dial the extension – including the # character.  Seriously, this is a huge miss when trying to take conference calls on the road.  There is an app that does a decent job of handling this called ApptDialer, but this should be supported natively.  If you don’t understand how useful this is you have never used a Blackberry. – Unknown.  For now ApptDialer is working well.
• In Contacts, why can’t I look someone up from the Exchange Global Address Book and easily add them to my Contacts.  A simple button that says – add to calendar like others do.  Now I have to sms it to myself. – Unknown.
• And while we are on the Contacts/Exchange Global Address Book, how about pulling back more information than just name, title, phone number, and email address.  Add the street address as well please. – Unknown.
• Rework some of the settings for better placement.  Make it easier to enable/disable WiFi and Bluetooth, or at least get them in the same area of the menus.    Move bluetooth up under WiFi in the main settings menu instead of placing it under the General section under settings.  There are times when you need to get to those things quickly so save us a couple of steps. – Unknown.
• Customization of all sounds.  I can’t believe that I even have to ask for this one.  And let me use any song or sound that I have on the device for any alert or ringtone.  I’ve already paid for the music and I want to use it for any sound that I choose. – Yes!

Those are the ones that I can think of off the top of my head.  Which ones did I miss that you care about?

Score: 6 wishes granted, 5 unknown or no.  Not too bad as the 6 granted are things that I really thought iOS needed, especially after using Blackberry and Android devices.

Life with the iPad has gone really, really well. Performance is great, size is great, screen is really nice, the lack of Flash hasn’t hurt me at all…and then it happened. We started researching new cars and for the first time since owning the iPad and it became very difficult to do without Flash.

I get it, I’ve been an OS X user for 8 or 9 years now and I know what the Flash player can do. The CPU goes up, the fans kick in, and the performance goes down. I’ve been there many times. But even if the world decided to make html5 a killer Flash replacement it would not change over night. I would like to make the decision on running Flash or not. It ends up that I do want the “complete” web experience and good or bad, Flash is a part of that.

It’s a shame that Apple didn’t take the approach or working with Adobe to improve the Flash experience instead of an outright ban. Maybe all of that past Windows preference by Adobe had something to do with it. Steve has made his position clear I guess, but tonight was the first time that i had to use something other than my iPad to use the web and that is unfortunate.

You have to give Apple credit for one thing at least – they certainly know how to get press coverage when they want to announce something.  I won’t get in to all of the specs since you can go read about them here, but I have been asked about the iPad enough that I thought I would just put together a quick post with some of my thoughts.

For all of you uber-geeks out there this may not be for you.  You wanted power – lot’s of power – in a small package.  You wanted something like a MacBook Pro screen without the rest of the computer.  You probably wanted it to run OS X.  You wanted full support for Flash.  You wanted a camera in the front for video conferencing and a camera on the back so that you could take pictures.  You wanted GPS.  You wanted an OLED screen.  You wanted multitasking.  You probably expected all of this with 4+ hours of battery life.  AT&T?!  Are you kidding me?  No wonder you are so upset about this thing.  And what’s with the name?  Even my wife thinks this thing is stupid.

But there is a different demographic that Apple is aware of and they don’t care about most of that stuff.  They love what their iPod Touch can do and they just wish it had a larger screen.  Maybe they would have liked to have the Touch but the screen was just too small (trust me, hit 40 and reading small screens starts to get interesting).  They would be happy reading their “newspaper” online with this thing.  eBooks?  Sure, why not?  It’s not open like Android.  They don’t care.  Truly they don’t.  They don’t understand vendor lock-in and they really don’t care as long as it does the things that they want it to do.

I think of it kind of like the Nintendo Wii.  The Wii is the least powerful game console out there.  The XBox 360 and the PS3 just crush the Wii’s hardware specs.  The XBox 360 and the PS3 are both capable of doing much more than just games, yet somehow the Wii just keeps chugging along and is one of the most popular game consoles around.  I know a ton of people that have one.  But the serious gamers I know have the XBox 360, PS3, or use a Windows PC.  The Wii is accessible and easily used by the masses.  The interface and controller require very little thought – you can just pick up the controller and play most games.

Personally, I fit more in to the geek category than the non-geek category but I am sure that I will buy one.  I’ll buy it because I love technology and like to think that I occasionally understand where things are headed – and I don’t think this is such a bad product at all.  Just like the iPhone and iTunes before it, the apps and the acceptance will come.  I’m even dumb enough to think that we could still see some changes to it for the launch.  Maybe that camera will show up as well as a new version of the OS that will allow multitasking.  Remember, this is Apple’s chip in this thing so we really don’t know what it can, and cannot do yet.

I’m certainly not right all of the time, and many of the smartest people on the Internet (as well as my wife) seem to think that this one falls short, but I still believe that the iPad will do very well.  I would be surprised if Apple sells less than 2-3 million of them by the end of this year.  And maybe, just maybe, as technology continues to advance and costs come down, Apple will give us some of those MacBook components in a tablet form – including the OS.  Until then, I can see no reason why they would be willing to cannibalize their laptop sales by giving us everything that we really wanted in a tablet.

The iPad is the iPod Touch for an entire generation that has a lot of disposable income and needs reading glasses.  You already know them because they raised you as children and are now showing up on Facebook in droves.