When Apple releases the iPhone software update 2.0 in June, here are three new features that would make the device more attractive to users:

Safari: choose where links open

When you select a link on a web page, a small menu appears with two options: Open here or Open as new page. But, I wouldn’t have this appear by default because it might confuse new iPhone owners who aren’t used to mobile web browsing yet. So, I’d add an option to the Safari section of the iPhone settings that allows an iPhone owner to turn on the menu if she or he so desires.

Calendar: maps/directions integration

The Calendar application should recognize a phone number or street address, just as Safari recognizes a phone number on a web page and offers to call it when a user selects it. When creating a calendar entry, there should be fields for a phone number or street address. While viewing a calendar entry, an iPhone owner can select the phone number and the iPhone will offer to dial it, or select the address and the Maps application will launch to display the location and provide directions.

Mail: Archive option for Gmail accounts

When I check email using the iPhone Mail application, I’ll often respond to messages, but I still have to access Gmail through a standard web browser to archive messages I’m finished with. When an iPhone owner sets up the mail application to work with a Gmail account, an option to archive messages should be added to the toolbar at the bottom of the message screen.

Those are the three iPhone features I most want to see in the iPhone 2.0 software update. What new ones are most important to you?

Whenever Apple unveils a new product, Steve Jobs often mentions “Apple Design” alongside all the other new features. And for good reason - the company takes design very seriously - so seriously that it’s a major selling point and the company has won numerous design awards including eight just this month alone.

Michael Lopp, senior engineering manager at Apple and author of Rands in Repose and the best-selling Managing Humans, shared some insights into Apple’s approach to design as a panelist at this year’s SXSW conference.

Pixel Perfect Mockups

From Businessweek’s Helen Walters:

This, Lopp admitted, causes a huge amount of work and takes an enormous amount of time. But, he added, “it removes all ambiguity.” That might add time up front, but it removes the need to correct mistakes later on.

10 to 3 to 1

Apple designers come up with 10 entirely different mock ups of any new feature. Not, Lopp said, “seven in order to make three look good”, which seems to be a fairly standard practice elsewhere.

Designers have complete creative freedom with those initial 10 designs, then choose to three to refine further until they reach the ultimate design.

Paired Design Meetings

Designers have two regular meetings a week. In the first, they explore any idea without constraints - it’s a chance to push their creativity as far as they can - and then some.

In the second, they try to work out all the details for a crazy idea and see how viable it is in reality.

This process and organization continues throughout the development of any app, though of course the balance shifts as the app progresses. But keeping an option for creative thought even at a late stage is really smart.

Too often, organizations constrain themselves by what they think they can get done, and don’t explore seemingly harebrained ideas. Apple does, and in an ingenious way that transforms what could be boundaries into opportunities that result in the unequaled products they seem to produce with amazing consistency.

The paired meetings, Lopp said, give designers a variety of ideas to present to senior management. Designers:

…take the best ideas from the paired design meetings and present those to leadership, who might just decide that some of those ideas are, in fact, their longed-for ponies. In this way, the ponies morph into deliverables. And the C-suite, who are quite reasonable in wanting to know what designers are up to, and absolutely entitled to want to have a say in what’s going on, are involved and included. And that helps to ensure that there are no nasty mistakes down the line.

It’s amazing to see an organization that’s truly postmodern in its ability to transcend ageless stereotypes. Apple’s designers and management seem to recognize that, above all else, both have value in designing, producing, and selling a smash-hit product - not just once, but with consistency. Isn’t that the secret to success?

(via Infinite Loop)

Since you can’t copy and paste text (yet) on iPhone (necessary for getting links into blog posts unless you want to type them by hand), I think the new Prologue theme released by WordPress is a great interface for iPhone blogging. Prologue’s interface clearly encourages short, Twitter-style updates.

Furthermore, with the growing awareness of the need for Data Portability, I’d like to use Prologue to keep my status updates on my own domain, and feed them to Twitter using RSS. This might even reduce the load that seems to cause the timeout errors I see multiple times a day from Twitterrific. [Read more]

According to a report published today by Gartner:

By 2010, end-user preferences will decide as much as half of all software, hardware and services acquisitions made by IT. The rise of the Internet and the ubiquity of the browser interface have made computing approachable and individuals are now making decisions about technology for personal and business use. [Read more]

Scott Karp makes an excellent argument about how a simple user interface enables greater adoption and more effective use of advanced tools:

The archetypal example of simplicity driving technology adoption is Google search. Type what you’re looking for into a box and click “search.” What could be simpler? Especially when that’s the only thing on the page. [Read more]