iPhone 4.0's Biggest DisappointmentsiPhone 4.0's Biggest Disappointments

Despite the long list of positive things Apple has done with iPhone OS 4.0, it left a number of things out of the new operating system. Here's a few things that the iPhone faithful were hoping to see.Improved Lock Screen - The iPhone's lock screen and notification system is essentially broken. Pressing the Home button or Power button brings up the time and the on-screen slider to unlock the phone. At a glance, users can only check the time. They will also see the most recent missed calls and messages -- until the alerts are cleared. Then they are all lost. Users don't get a glimpse of their email inbox at all. They only see the number of unread messages on the Home screen once the phone is unlocked. It's not a terrible experience, but it needs to be better. Other platforms, such as Android and webOS, have made strides in this area, leaving Apple behind.

Social Networking Integration - Competing platforms such as Android and webOS also weave social networking -- especially Facebook and Twitter -- into the base experience of the devices. Apple has not done this. The furthest it has gone is to import users' Facebook friends' profile pictures into the iPhone's contacts program. That's just not enough. Tighter integration between social networks and the iPhone's contacts program would help it stay neck-and-neck with the competition.

Improved Browsing - Apple didn't mention anything about the iPhone's Safari browser. In remains to be one of the best mobile browsers on the market, but the margin is getting smaller. I have high hopes for Skyfire and what it plans to bring to the Android platform. It has the potential to out-match Apple's Safari browser on the iPhone with its own Android product. The lack of Flash support in Safari is one thing. Safari in the iPhone (and iPad and iPod Touch) also fails to support some basic things inside web forms, such as scroll bars. This limits the functionality of Safari, especially for those who want to be able to create content on the fly.

Attachments In Email - Apple made some nice changes to the iPhone's email program, including a unified inbox and support for multiple Exchange accounts, but it didn't improve the attachment situation. Users still cannot add an attachment to an email from within the email program. This is a massive inconvenience. Attachments such as pictures or documents need to be attached to emails from the photo gallery or Pages applications directly.

File Management - iPhone OS 4.0 may have folders which users can fill with apps, but there is still no user-accessible directory for the content and/or files stored on the iPhone. It would be much more helpful if users had direct access to their files, so they can be better managed. At the very least, users need to be able to locate and access music, video, multimedia, audio, and document files.

iPhone OS 4.0 is still far from complete, so hopefully Apple will see fit to bring some of these changes to the platform by the time it becomes available later this year.