Thinking about iPhone 3g, it seems obvious that Apple has taken an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary approach.  In essence, iPhone 3g doesn’t do anything the original iPhone doesn’t do.  The original iPhone had data, albeit slow, where iPhone 3g has, 3g.  The original iPhone had location awareness through cell triangulation and SkyHook WiFi locating; iPhone 3g ups the ante by making the location aware servces far more accurate by adding GPS.  Essentially, if a piece of software expects iPhone to do something, both “versions” can do it.  it just so happens that one will be better than another.  There’s nothing that can, or will, be released that will work on only one version.

This is a typical Apple approach for a number of reasons.  Firstly, Apple is big on simplicity.  When announcing OSX Leopard, Steve Jobs made a big deal about the single version of OSX, compared to the rather confusing Windows Vista lineup.  Imagine the confusion if there were some apps in the iPhone app store that only worked with iPhone 3g?  Amongst the average consumer, this is tantamount to having two product lines.

The other reason is product longevity. Apple have created a situation where they can update both versions of iPhone with new software that relies on these services.  They don’t have to worry about leaving certain users out in the cold when it comes to new functionality added through software.  And, if you are satisfied with the current accuracy of the positioning, and the speed of data, there’s absolutely no reason to upgrade.  The other new features will be with you shortly.

We will have to wait for a “real” second version of iPhone before many of its current shortcomings will be addressed.  What remains to be seen is how long Apple can drag us along with the current iPhone, be it 3g or not.

The way I look at the iPhone is the same way  look at an athelete preparing for the Olympics. They’ve run the preliminaries, and performed well.  But from this point on they are honing their skills.  Not doing anything different, just better.  If a 100m sprinter trains for a year, they may knock half a second off their best time, but they still won’t be able to fly (unless the tests for performance enhancing drugs get stepped back quite alot).  It’s the same with the iPhone.  Yes, it can be more precise at locating you and it can download data faster, but it still can’t make video calls through a front facing camera and it still can’t support a hardware keyboard.  So maybe we need to wait for the “Triathlon Edition“.

Same size (or very close), same form-factor

Slightly reduced price, say £299 for the top spec version

No GPS but improved location detection in Google Maps

5 Megapixel camera, no autofocus and no flash, video recording will be added

HSDPA (3g)

MMS (finally)

A2DP support

Will ship with at least one game from the new iPhone App Store

Flash Support (wishful thinking I fear)

Fashion options (different colours, more customisation)

Announced at WWDC, available mid to late June simultaneously in all territories

Some of my predictions are based on the alledged new chipset being used, some are common sense and some are more hopeful than anything.

So why am I terrified?  Well, quite frankly, I want one.  I’ve been clicnging on to my Nokia N95 for a while now, I bought it the day they were released, and I’m really fed up with it.  The sluggish interface, and the knowledge that the phone is capable of so much more than I use it for, is really making me resent it.  And I resent it not because I choose not to use it, but more because it is horrible to use.  Really painfull.  So I’m relying on the new iPhone coming out, and I’m relying on it suiting my needs more than my wants.

What I Need, Not What I Want

I’ve given this some thought over the last few weeks, and there are certain things I need to be true about the new iPhone before I can happily buy one.  These aren’t features from the wishlist that I’ve drawn up in my head, but things that will actually prevent me from buying an iPhone if they aren’t there.  On the MoSoCoW scale, these are MUSTS.

The first thing on my list is size.  The iPhone is big enough already, I know this is to accomodate the large screen, and I’m happy with that compromise, but it absolutely has to be pocketable.  And I’m talking trouser-pocketable, not clown-suit-pocketable.  So it has to be in line with the current size.  The depth doesn’t bother me so much as the height and width.  A smaller bezel, leaving a higher surface-size to screen ratio would be perfect.

Next up is the battery life.  Even my power hungry N95 gets two days on average of battery life.  That’s with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS largely unused.  I’d expect the iPhone to at least match that.  I can, however, see a problem.  My N95 gets two days battery life partly because I don’t use it.  I thin I’ll use the iPhone alot.  So a days battery life with moderately heavy usage is a must.

Something that the current/original iPhone has been critiscised for is it’s reception and call quality.  Considering it’s essentially a first general device, it’s almost understandable, forgiveable even.  But not on a second generation device.  I need top-draw reception and top-draw call quality.  Steve Jobs spoke about the killer feature of the original iPhone being making calls, they really need to refocus their attention on this aspect.

I’m on the verge of declaring that 3g is another feature on my must have list, but I’m not so sure.  Compared to the two requirements above 3g is very much on a different, slightly lower, level.  The absence of 3g wouldn’t prevent me from buying the phone, I’d have to give it some more thought, but ultimately I think I could live without it.

The Game-Changers

So the above is a list of features and aspects that simply have to be there to make the iPhone a viable option for me.  There are a few things Apple could do beyond those that would quite simply change the entire mobile industry.  And if any company is going to make these features work, it will be Apple.

Assuming that the new iPhone will have 3g, a whole new world of opportunities open up.  Top of my list of game changers would be video calling, with multiple participants, and compatible with multiple desktop and mobile clients over Wi-Fi or 3g.  Imagine being at the airport and being able to talk to your Wife on her N95 and your daughter on her Mac and arranging a trip face-to-face.  And seeing as iChat would be one of the supported clients, how about document and screen sharing at the same time?

Extending the idea of screen sharing, imagine having full access to your Mac through your iPhone.  Using a new (and working!) version of Back To My Mac you could connect to your home Mac, edit and view documents, access media and anything else you can do while sitting in front of the machine.  The current Safari interface would lend itself well to this feature, with the Smart Zooming functionality and the on-demand keyboard.

Extending this idea even further, how about active, over-the-air syncing of my contacts, bookmarks and calendar.  If I add a contact to my iPhone, I’d really like it to be waiting for me in my Mac’s Address Book, and my GMail contact list, by the time I get home.  The same applies for my calendar.

So what do you think?  I’ll be following up with a post about some iPhone applications that I’d like to see soon, so keep watching.  Or, to keep up to date subscribe by clicking here or follow me on Twitter.

Because I knew this was my aim right from the very start, I planned for it. Every element was structured semantically and hierarchically. So by the time I reached the first draft of the theme, it was completely valid. Both in XHTML 1.1 and CSS. And it remained that way until I started to activate the plugins currently used on the blog. As soon as I had done this I continued to tweak the design so they fitted in and looked part of the site and not what they were, third party tools that had just been plugged in. Designing is always an iterative process, so this went through a number of iterations, with the design changing with each. At the end, when I was reasonably happy, I went about validating the code again, confident that I had not made any changes that would lead to invalid code.

How wrong I was.

I went from having valid XHTML and CSS to both being invalid. That’s right, something in there had actually caused the CSS to invalidate, something which is actually quite difficult to do. Now I don’t want to sound like I’m just moaning, so let’s look at what’s causing this invalidity, and how that can correct it.

CSS

Fortunately, but not unsurprisingly, there was only one aspect of CSS that caused validation to fail. Surprisingly, it actually comes from Google and one of the Adsense units. The specific line causing the problems is this:

.ch{cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;}.textcolor{color: #ffffff }

So that’s google trying to assign two different cursor values to the same class. I suspect this is because I’m using two different types of adsense units, so the loaded styles are conflicting. It may also be that I’m using one newly generated Adsense unit and at least one old one. Google could quite easily fix this, the real fix would be to use real hyperlinks in their ad links so they didn’t need to selectively style the cursor. Poor show, Google.

XHTML

XHTML, and I’m sure most of you already realise this, can be difficult. Just one slip-up can lead to literally 100s of validation errors. So when i checked and only came across 6 errors, two of which were clearly down to poorly formed test data, it didn’t seem that bad. That doesn’t change the fact that none of these errors are down to the theme, they were all down to plugins. Unfortunately, upon investigation, it appears that all four errors are down to a single plugin. Just one.

The plugin in question is from addthis.com, they provide links to many of the most popular social bookmarking and news sites. You can see their button at the bottom of every post. It’s a very popular plugin that you’ll find on many websites and blogs. This single plugin has, in no particular order, a link with a target attribute (x2), inline deprecated styles (e.g. border), and an image with no alt text. I know inline styles are bad, but if you must use them, at least make it CSS and not HTML styles.

The easy way to fix this, and I will do this by editing the plugin when the theme finally goes live, is to use CSS and not inline HTML styles, give the image some usefull, accessible alt text and remove the target attribute from the link. Something bizzarre I noticed was that the addthis plugin actually self-closes the img tag for the image, to at least attempt XHTML validity, but then makes the other really obvious mistakes. Strange.

The Current Theme

This all got me thinking. When i validated the theme currently used by this site, I did so prior to enabling all the plugins it currently uses. So I wonder if they have caused similar problems. In a word, yes, but I’m also to blame.

I’ve been proudly displaying the Valid XHTML and Valid CSS buttons on a number of websites and blogs for a number of years. I see them as a stamp of quality. So when I revalidated this blog I found a whole host of problems. As mentioned above, many of these have come from plugins and widgets using wither invalid code or, more often, HTML as opposed to XHTML. There are also some problems with slight tweaks I’ve made to the theme as well as posts I’ve written. Specifically the alignment of images. When including images in post I align them using the WordPress Rich Text Editor. What this does is add an “align” attribute to the image. This isn’t valid XHTML. What it should do, and what I will do from now on, is use floats to align images left or right.

A Suggestion

Understanding, as I do, that not all blog owners, writer, authors and managers are familiar with the underpinnings of their blog and theme, I think it’s important to not alienate them. That’s why I’d like to see some options available when using plugins and widgets. Specifically, I’d like to see a “naked” option, where the widget/plugin isn’t styled at all but rather marked up, semantically of course, such that it can be styled through CSS, which I can leave in a seperate file. I’d also like to see further options, for those less technical users, to change the styles before downloading. Google does a good job of this when setting up Adsense Units. For the new theme I’m actually manually editing some of my most used plugins so that the code they use is valid, and no longer use in line styles. Depending on my success, and the licence of the plugin, I may approach the author with what I come up with and/or release it for download. I’m sure there’s demand for it.

Have you come across any other offending plugins or widgets? Looking through the blogs I run, it seems like a pretty widespread problem.

The first problem I came across was when visiting the iPod and iTunes section of the Apple website. This was well after the presentation had finished and I was expecting the new products to be displayed for my pleasure. The following image is what I came across when visiting the page.

Click the image for an un-squashed version. it should, however, be obvious what the mistake is. This has since been corrected, but I really didn’t expect to see it at all. And this wasn’t the only mistake I’ve come across.

There’s a nice video walkthrough on the apple website running through the new iPod Touch. All very well and good except for the Starbucks part, which points you to http://www.apple.com/starbucks for roll out information. Being keen on finding out when this is going to be available in Europe, I quickly rushed over to the url only to find this: -

Not a great start Apple. I’d say you’ve lost a customer, but that would be a blatant lie.