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]

Less is More: Steve Jobs’ Macworld 2008 Keynote Address Excellent writeup from Daniel Steinberg on why this year’s keynote included a lot more than meets the eye.

Yesterday, I wrote about applying the principles of Macworld keynotes to make meetings more focused, buzzworthy, and useful to those who attend. I referenced Chris Brogan’s excellent post on the 3 essential types of meetings. In that post, Chris also offered six brief tips that ring true regardless of meeting type. Below, I’ve taken each of his [Read more]

John Gruber just published his Macworld Expo Predictions. While reading his well-reasoned arguments why we will see a new thin MacBook Air?, should see a new Apple TV, and won’t see DRM-free music, one prediction got me thinking. He suggests the rumored Newton-like tablet device is very likely in development but won’t make it out of the labs in time for the Keynote tomorrow morning.

There’s still the “what would I use it for?” factor. It seems to me it would need to be something more than just an iPod Touch with a larger screen — if that’s all it is, then what’s the point of buying one instead of a smaller, poctetable, iPod Touch or iPhone? I simply lack the cleverness to imagine what that hook might be — but I can’t imagine Apple releasing such a product without an obvious “Oh I gotta buy that” hook.

John Gruber gets it right – the tablet needs a hook. I think that hook might be eBooks.

The Sony Reader hasn’t sparked the market; neither has the Amazon Kindle. But both have set the stage for the typical Apple product introduction. They’ve raised awareness of this type of device, established the basic underpinnings of a market, and gotten people excited about the prospect of carrying multiple books in a very light device.

But they’ve also failed to live up to the hype in some big ways. The interface on the Sony Reader is much too complex. All the device should have is a simple control that navigates a menu of titles, and turns the pages when you’re reading an ebook. Philippe Starck said the Kindle designers weren’t “courageous” enough to strip everything else away and focus on the one thing that matters when reading a book: the page.

That’s where Apple comes in.

Time and time again we’ve seen that Apple’s design team are courageous enough to focus, focus, focus on what really makes each device sing. I can imagine an Apple designed ebook reader being a simple, incredibly thin, magnificent piece of aluminum that looks as simple and uncluttered as it should be. It would be the technological version of the book page – nothing to distract you when you’re trying to focus on reading.

So that’s the design argument. What about the infrastructure?

Apple already has it: iTunes

As of July 31, 2007, the iTunes Store surpassed Amazon and Target to become the third largest music retailer in the US.

Apple already sells music wirelessly via the iTunes Wi-Fi Store for iPhone and iPod Touch. This makes selling eBooks feasible, especially since the file size for eBooks would at least be the same, if not slightly smaller than music files.

So that’s the infrastructure argument. What about the experience?

Now we wait and see.

Check out my new Wikipatterns book – a how-to guide for growing wiki use in organizations with practical advice from a wiki expert. (That’s me!)

Here’s what people are saying about the book:

• “Create an idea-sharing environment where incomplete can be linked together and from this, solutions emerge.” – From the book’s Foreword, by Ward Cunningham
• “I’m going to recommend this without even reading it! Should be an e2.0 must-read top-shelfer…” – Susan Scrupski
• “Just pre-ordered this from Amazon. Looks to be a good read and an essential tool in any E2.0 evangelist’s tool kit.” – Scott Gavin
• “I love it when this happens, a blog I’ve read for ages (devoured some would say) gets published in book format. Needless to say my copy is already ordered.” – Gordon McLean

Ideally, every meeting should strive to be like a Macworld Keynote. It should take place only as often as necessary, involve something really important to discuss, and leave people charged up and motivated. Let’s look at how you can make this happen using a wiki and Chris Brogan’s 3 meeting types: announcement, status, & brainstorming. [Read more]

What if you got this message from a friend? What does it mean? And why was it “sent from iPhone”? It means that an organization’s culture has reached the point where, using tools like wikis, “individuals contribute to both the work and the art of the organization, then it is something they will tell their friends about.” It was sent from an iPhone because the person’s employer empowered them to choose the best tools for their needs. That’s how the organization of the future is going to work.

Apple has a long history of introducing products that start out simple, and maintain their simplicity of interaction even as they add more functionality. iPhone started out simple and will grow more feature rich over time, as both Apple and 3rd party developers create new tools for it.

That’s the formula for a successful, highly-used tool that people rave about.

The key thing is that it happens gradually. This gradual growth means that people have time to get used to the platform, contribute to it, and help influence its future growth.

Likewise, wikis start out simple and grow more information rich over time, as contributors add information to existing pages, create new pages, and gradually evolve the structure to keep the stable of information organized and easy to access. What makes them better than traditional enteprise tools is that they don’t force a rigid, rule-based system on people. People are in control.

“People understand control in a very serious way, and they know when they have it and when they do not.”

Wikis give people control, and the ability to not just make meaningful contributions to organizations, but be recognized as the source of meaningful ideas and contributions:

“Front line employees, having access to the same knowledge and data (which was previously locked up), will contribute to the high-level decisions of executives through rapid feedback loops and clued-in executives will not react to obvious needs but will co-opt them.”

We all understand wealth in a similar fashion, and we know who is reaping the wealth from our work. When enterprise software generates returns for the user in the same way that it generates returns for the enterprise, then users will feel delighted. Whether it is more personal interaction, a sense of control or more personal time, the changes that will be noticed will not be in interfaces or firewalls, but in the actual everyday life of the user.

I use both a wiki and an iPhone every day.

Check out my new Wikipatterns book – a how-to guide for growing wiki use in organizations with practical advice from a wiki expert. (That’s me!)

Here’s what people are saying about the book:

• “Create an idea-sharing environment where incomplete can be linked together and from this, solutions emerge.” – From the book’s Foreword, by Ward Cunningham
• “I’m going to recommend this without even reading it! Should be an e2.0 must-read top-shelfer…” – Susan Scrupski
• “Just pre-ordered this from Amazon. Looks to be a good read and an essential tool in any E2.0 evangelist’s tool kit.” – Scott Gavin
• “I love it when this happens, a blog I’ve read for ages (devoured some would say) gets published in book format. Needless to say my copy is already ordered.” – Gordon McLean