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It’s summer 2009 and iPhone OS 3.0 has just been made available via iTunes. You have it up and running along with next gen Twitter clients, instant massagers, RSS readers, and all manner of Push Notification-enabled apps ready to alert you the very instant anything new is piping hot and ready.

Then it happens. 20 new Twitter DMs. 3 co-workers IM you. Every tech blog you follow updates about iTunes not crashing this time. You calendar reminds you about that meeting coming up. And your entire FPS combat team all invite you to come join their game. Suddenly Push Notification is trying to pop up 30 text boxes all at once — while you’re in the middle of an urgent phone call.

How will you handle this, Apple?

Right now a single SMS pops up a message box that you either have to deal with right away, and if you dismiss it, it’s gone. If you forget what it was for… well, that’s tough. Imagine 30 of those, all at once. Will you even be able to hang up your phone call before canceling out all of them? And if you do cancel out of them, what chance to you have to really see and process alerts #1-29?

Both the Google Android with its top-down slider and the Palm Pre with their bottom loaded notification area provide a far less obtrusive and simultaneously more persistent — and dare we say more elegant? — notification solution.

Could you, Apple, have an improved system ready to drop on us in a future 3.0 beta? At WWDC? Or is that waiting on 4.0? And if you do have a way of handling it, what is it? What can you do given the current architecture, gesture library, and frameworks of the iPhone to better handle the onslaught of notifications you’re about to drop on us?

Pull down the topmost menu bar a la Android? Create a dedicated Notification app on the Home Screen we can launch to see, like recent calls, what we may have missed?

Maybe our readers have some ideas that can help. They certainly proved smarter than us on the Bluetooth toggle question. What say you, readers, any ideas on how Apple can prevent the notification equivalent of “ping death” befalling us come iPhone 3.0 and Push Notification Service this summer?

Last year, during the iPhone 2.0 SDK Event, Apple unleashed a slew of enterprise-aimed initiatives. Phil Schiller took the stage to showcase Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync licensing, as well as 802.1x, Cisco VPN, certificates, remote wipe, configuration tools, and more.

Schiller didn’t show up at the iPhone 3.0 Sneak Peek event (not until the apres-Q&A at least), and Apple didn’t announce something as spectacular as Exchange support this year. But was there anything compelling for businesses this time around?

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A while back Dieter asked for a fast way to toggle Airplane Mode on the iPhone — a triple click of the home button, perhaps. Yesterday he and I were talking about all the new Bluetooth functionality in iPhone 3.0 and the same point came up — right now, to turn Bluetooth on or off you have to:

Wake the iPhone, Slide to Unlock, (type a Passcode perhaps), (return Home perhaps), tap Settings, tap General, tap Bluetooth, and then toggle the ON/OFF switch.

That’s a lot of overhead, in terms of mental “work” and physical interactions.

With Bluetooth headsets, Stereo Bluetooth speakers, Bluetooth connectivity for accessories, Bluetooth connectivity of tethering, P2P gameplay and P2P app exchange, etc. a much faster way to flip the Bluetooth switch would be really appreciated.

Triple-click may not work in terms of usability, but surely there must be some other way? Maybe surface the ON/OFF toggle on the main Settings page, just before the drill down arrow? Jeremy thinks letting users add Settings shortcuts as icons on the Home Screen (like we can currently do with Safari bookmarks) would work. Anyone have any other ideas?

No, we’re not talking cut/copy and paste, nor MMS, video recording, or any other of the slew of major feature omissions tech pundits can’t go an article without kicking, dead-horse-like. (There must be songs and drinking games about them — enough already!) We’re talking the minor stuff, the small things, the tiny little tweaks Apple could roll out in a 2.2.2 or 2.3 OS update that would make our iPhone experience just that much better and more enjoyable on a day-to-day basis.

Apple has done it before, of course. Double-space to add a period. Double-tap Home to get to favorite phone numbers or the iPod app. Tap Home to slide back to the first/primary/main App screen. Having Apps update in-place rather than shoving them back to the first empty slot.

And they could do it again, perhaps even with minimal effort, and sooner rather than later.

iPhone OS 3.0 will be previewed next tuesday, March 17, but likely won’t be delivered to users until June or July. Here’s what we’d like to see from Apple in the meantime, after the break…

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I wasn’t at CES with CrackBerry Kevin and Smartphone Expert Dieter. I was at Macworld getting, you know, iPhone news. But even TiPb couldn’t ignore the Pre and it’s former-iPod/iPhone team designed goodness. So tempting is the Pre, in face, that we suspect iPhone and BlackBerry loyalists alike might stray from the fold to at least try it out come launch day (whenever that is). So, the question becomes, what to call them roving polygadetists? What matches up with CrackBerry or the Jesus Phone?

CrackBerry Kevin has been using Pre-Jects for a while now. TiPb has thrown around Pre-Verts. We’ve even carried the argument over to the Twitter (@reneritchie and @crackberrykevin — just don’t tell @backlon!)

Are we being Pre-Mature about the whole thing? Or Pre-sumptuous in not letting you, or much smarter and better looking commenters choose the name? We’ve even set up a handy, dandy poll in the forums.

UPDATE: Ah hellz ya! Dieter has got him a rebuttal going on over at PreCentral.net! Let’s get it on!

Apple decides which apps get approved for the iPhone/iPod touch App Store, provides little to no transparency on the process, prevents certain things like turn-by-turn GPS outright in the SDK agreement, and — though they’ve yet to use them — maintains black lists for GPS and malware that could remove any LocationServices or entire applications from iPhones everywhere. For this, and more, Apple has earned quite a bit of criticism — and rightly so in many cases.

What if Apple went further, however. They sell officially unlocked iPhones in several regions, like Hong Kong. They also have a program that grants developers tethering abilities for testing. What if, one day, people with unlocked or developer iPhones woke up to find the Paid section of the App Store gone. What would the community reaction be? What should it be?

Google, whose “don’t be evil” motto has been downgraded by management in recent years, is lauded for the openness of their Android Market (even though they’re known to have a kill switch of their ownl — to do otherwise would be irresponsible), yet our friends over at Android Central woke to find themselves in just such a situation this week. Paid apps. Gone.

We’re told it’s because of piracy concerns, that Google thinks developer units of the G1 make it easier for people to steal paid apps. Jeffdc5 on Twitter let us know developer G1 handsets could store apps on the SD memory card in addition to the on-device memory of the regular units, which could make them more pirate-able. However, we’ve seen that the iPhone — with no external memory — can have apps pirated as well, so is that readon enough? It smacks of the same “treat your customers as thieves” thinking that created DRM music, Microsoft Genuine Advantage, Sony rootkits, and Adobe invading our boot sectors…

Apple has already removed DRM from iTunes music, and has now removed product keys from boxed versions of iLife 09 and iWork 09 as well. It seems to be working out none too badly for them.

Openness is definitely A Good Thing. Maybe trust in your user base should be as well?

The iPhone, like the iPod before it (well, at least since the 3rd-gen iPod, when Apple switched from FireWire), uses a proprietary connector called the dock for charging, syncing, video and audio-out, and multiple other functions. A broad port with 30 pins for many purposes, having a proprietary connector gives Apple a lot of flexibility, but also — through their licensing program — a lot of control over who can make peripherals and what can be done with them.

During our last edition of the iPhone Live! podcast, Dieter flat-out stated that Apple needed to dump the dock. He pointed out that countries like China and regions like the EU are, or may be, making universal connectors like USB a legal requirement. One charger, one port, to rule them all. (HTC is already replacing the 3.5mm headphone jack, folding it into the mini-USB-like ExtUSB on devices like the Android G1).

The dock connector originally allowed Apple to keep FireWire compatibility and add USB when it entered the PC market. Over time, Apple has moved over to USB, and now with the iPhone 3G and later iPod’s, FireWire is gone completely and charging can only occur via USB. Since USB already provides power, provides data exchange, and technology like DisplayLink (which connects external displays via USB) show that an increasingly large range of connection types are becoming possible.

So, as technology marches on, as backwards compatibility is shed, and as standards like USB 2.0 (and in the future, USB 3.0) grow faster and more capable, is it time for Apple to dump the dock and go with the same port most everyone else is using (including Apple with the Mac)?

MobileMe was announced by Steve Jobs and demonstrated by Phil Schiller at WWDC 2008. Tagged originally as “Exchange for the rest of us”, a disastrous launch — where Apple tried to do too much at once, including the iPhone 3G, iPhone OS 2.0, and the App Store — and a problem with early computer-side syncing forced them to downgrade the promise of “push” to more of a gentle “nudge”.

Fast forward 6 months and MobileMe has grown through its pain becoming almost, though not quite, everything Apple promised it would be at WWDC. Web-based email, contacts, and calendar are synced in near-real time to and from the iPhone and the Mac (Windows mileage may vary). Photos function, and iDisk is beefier, but still functionally on par with its .Mac roots.

But what do the next 6 months hold? If we get new iPhone hardware in June, and iPhone OS 3.0 along with it, could Apple be ballsy enough to try and give us MobileMe Take 2 at the same time? And if they are, what do we want to see in it?

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Sure, there are still plenty around — plenty of good ones even — but back before the App Store, before Apple released the iPhone SDK, WebApps were the development platform for the miraculous new mobile wireless platform.

HTML (HyperText Markup Language), CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), and AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) were the only tools needed, Steve Jobs told us, to make delightful, dynamic applications for the iPhone. And — by the way — every web developer already new how to use them! As a bonus of sorts, Apple provided some simple URL handles for things like telephone numbers, and some attributes and sample behaviors that helped optimize the iPhone experience.

For a while there was a torrent of WebApps, from re-purposed websites like FaceBook and Amazon, to original content and even games. Some were great, some were okay; it depended how well the idea suited the WebApp platform.

Now, 9 months post-iPhone SDK, 6 months post-App Store launch, post 15,000 apps, and we don’t hear much about WebApps anymore. Almost three months ago TiPb asked if WebApps had a future. Three months later, is the silence we’re hearing our best response?

Palm has now announced their new webOS platform, which is similar to WebApps but runs locally as well and should — though we don’t know the details yet — provide far greater hooks into the smartphone system (perhaps somewhere between WebApps and Native Apps, like Widgets). Could this kickstart the iPhone WebApp developers back into gear?

Anyone out there make, use, or find a killer iPhone WebApp lately? Know of any in the pipeline? And where do you think WebApps will be another 3 months? In another 6?

As I’ve said many times before on TiPb, I’m a Palm guy going back to the Palm V, and Treo guy going back to the Treo 600. When Palm essentially abandoned that user-base (see my Palm Treo Pro Round Robin video and review) a few years back, I abandoned them and dove headlong into the iPhone (and now the iPhone 3G).

I still have a very warm spot in my heart for Palm, however, their innovation in the smartphone space, and their focus on zen-like user experience. So, when Palm announced their new WebOS platform and premiered their new Pre handset at CES (see our new baby sibling site PreCentral.net for all the details and a massive hands-on video), I was more than just a little ecstatic. I won’t lie, it’s the first post-iPhone device that’s caught my attention.

Don’t get me wrong, I still fear for Palm — the market is much more crowded than it was when they helped create it, and for all the problems WebOS and the Pre solve, they bring their own set to the table. However, watching the Palm Keynote fro CES I, presented by former Apple iPod father Jon Rubinstein and Palm founder Ed Colligan, two things stood really stood out for me:

• What Palm outright stole from the iPhone and put in the Pre
• And what Apple should immediate steal from Palm and put into the next iPhone OS.

We’ll get into both, after the break.

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