- Maybe a Bluetooth icon on the launcher screen that’s a different colour if bluetooth is on/off – a single press will toggle the status.

- [Christopher Gavula] I think you have a point about Corporate and Business use. But then who uses Exchange? Corporates I’d say.

- [Christopher Gavula] Discovery mode is when you phone ‘can be found by others’. This allows hackers to make use of security holes in the bt stack. I always leave my phone in non-discoverable mode. Nokia has a neat feature that allows you to tun on discovery for a set period of time (turns off automatically after a minute for example). This security concern is negated by the fact that the iPhone doesn’t support any bluetooth profiles other than Headset Profile.

- Your idea of showing calender summary on the lock screen is brilliant. Making it configurable would be even better. You’d want to limit what’s shown on there so that someone who’s picked up your phone can’t access confidential info without unlocking it. Maybe adding a side screen like the WM Today Screen (by side screen I mean one that you just swipe to, like when you move a shortcut to a second screen).

- It would be useful to improve the Apple bundled apps Mail/Calender etc to make more use of landscape orientation and the landscape keyboard.

But overall we all know that the iPhone or iPhone OS is not finished yet. Apple have a long way to go and a zillion features they need to add before they can tick all the boxes that Nokia/Microsoft have ticked through the years. Apple has chosen it’s priorities and I think they’ve done quite well so far.

This time next year we’ll have a more fully featured iPhone and also much better UIs from S60 and WM…

AAMP

First – I do think there is a differentiation between not only consumer use and business use, but there’s also a distinction between business use, and CORPORATE business use that gets missed or lumped together. In general, I think the improvements made to the iPhone (under OS 2.x) are, in fact, pretty business firendly and they take you down the right path, but there needs to be more to make them CORPORATE friendly. I think that distinction is important and shouldn’t all be lumped under one “business use” label.

Second – You made a comment that the acelerometer needs to be open to developer access. It is! Otherwise all those games couldn’t be using it. What I think you really meant to say was that the APPS included needed to more universally use the accelerometer and that businees apps needed to more universally offer accelerometer-friendly andportrait/landscape friendly displays. I agree, but accelerometer use and display options are really in the hands of the individual developers – not the OS. Apple needs to offer Mail and Calendar with added landscape support, but that’s apps, not OS.

Third – BT draws very little power, especially compared to WiFi or 3G, so I don’t care that it’s a few steps to turn on/off, but I don’t like that it is always in discovery mode, and corporate IT doesn’t like that either, but again – there is a difference between being in discovery mode (where you’re looking for other devices) and offering yourself to be seen and attached to. THAT is what needs to be able to be disabled, not the discovery. I also don’t know how important BT keyboard support is. While it would be useful, I rarely see even power users using a BT keyboard agains their PDA. So it might be useful, but I don’t think it’s critical to business or corporate adoption.

Fourth – You talk about the WM today screen and the taps it takes to see your calendar. While this may be an issue for you, for me it is not. Why? Because the calendar items as seen on the Today screen are never sufficient for me – titles rarely tell me what I need to know. I nearly always have to tap into the entry anyway to see what’s really going on and decide whether or not I need to attend the meeting. So the today screen metting notice, other than telling me there’s something I need to look at, doesn’t ever help me from not having to “play” with the device. It simply doesn’t give enough info to be useful anyway, but I do agree that more flexible offerings for the main screen might be useful in some cases, at least on the “lock” screen.

Fifth – I totally agree with your comments about the need for a corporate app installation/launch/management platform. A corporate iTunes, if you will. A way to manage the devices and applications in a corporate environment would be very useful.

Sixth – office app support, in general, would be nice as well as local file synchronization and is important to business and corporate adoption.

Seventh – About security in general: It needs to be improved. The recently discovered exploit is actually easy to protect against, but really, better security needs to be implemeted. Again – most general business use won’t be an issue (because there is a workaround), but at the corporate level it is certainly a potential deal breaker and risk.

Wayne: I agree with most of your comments (especially about the need for remote kill in corporate use), but I do think the accelerometer locking could be handled at the application level (and should be until a complete OS_level locking mechanism exists) and developers should do this anyway. There are resons I may want SOME apps to swivel at will, but not others. I don’t want to ONLY have an OS-level lock. Developers need to step up and offer app-level control as well.

I also think that you’re WiFi preferred connection issue isn’t necessarily a “flaw” but it could be more flexible. For most use, the mechanism probably works fine – you have a home network and a work network and it switches seamlessly between them and the EDGE/3G network. But if you travel a lot,k use public/hotel/airport networks with any regularity, the SSID-centric approach is going to be problematic. Also, if you’re foolish enough to leave your home network on a generic name like “linksys” you may have issues. So whereas I wouldn’t call the current approach flawed, I would say it could use some extention and improvement.

So to sum it all up – I think we need to separate general business use and needs from corporate use and needs and recognize that our particular needs may or may not be what the majority of people are looking for. We also need to separate what we need improved in the OS from what we need improved in the bundled apps or 3rd party apps.

I suspect we’ve only seen the beginning of Apple’s offerings for business. They JUST started supporting apps, so now they need to extend the offerings and refine them.

I think the biggest corporate need is for a management/deployment platform that would handle app deployment/control as well as policy management and possibly even remote wipe. But there has to be a way to add those desired improvements without breaking or damaging those things that make the iPhone desirable on a consumer level.

1. Battery life and lack of replaceable battery – I said this way back on the Justanotheriphone weekly chat – corporations won’t keep phones that their salespeople cannot use all day (they will buy them – but I’ve seen boatloads of Moto Q returned for lack of battery life).

2. Remote kill – Corporations won’t deploy masses of iPhones with corporate assets unless and until they can kill (wipe the data) remotely any lost iphones.

3. Accelerometer – Need to be able to lock this down so that if you don’t want the screen to swivel then it won’t. Right now the implementation is too consumer gamish.

Example – I’m testing Splash Shopper. When I’m in the supermarket with my iPhone at my side – the screen starts doing its swivel gymnastics – I should be able to turn the swivel off.

4. Wi-Fi preferred connection is flawed. As you know the way it works now is either Yes – connect to everything you’ve ever connected to before or no. The problem is that the auto connection goes by the SSID which can be the same for different Wi-Fi networks – and many of the SSID are broadcasting for connections that aren’t open or require a login acknowledgement (such as hotels). Attempting to auto-connect to these just puts your iPhone into “offline” data state. Big flaw that I’m shocked they haven’t fixed.