Dear Apple, you're half-way there
In January you told Apple what you wanted in iPhone OS 4.0. Did the development team heed your advice? Well, even though iPhone OS 4 is only in its first beta release, Apple has already added 50% of the major features you wanted.
What was delivered?
Vertical swiping, app switching, background VoIP/audio playback and enhanced abilities for apps to save state and return you to the point where you left off are available in iPhone OS 4 through the new multitasking features. App organization and overall device app capacity has been improved with the introduction of Folders. A new home screen has been implemented with background wallpapers and a new dock.
What got left out?
Flash (and it's never going to happen, so just forget about it), a new lock screen, support for more codecs, and disk mode are the obvious ones that didn't make the list. However, some of the smaller feature requests are still possible, since they would be relatively minor changes that would be easy to implement as the SDK beta continues to progress. The ability to lock the device to portrait or landscape could still be a feature we'll see, especially considering Apple has already implemented the feature on the iPad via a hardware switch.
It's also possible that Apple could allow users to remove or hide Apple-installed apps, though there are so far no hints of that in the SDK according to the devs we've spoken to; however, having Folders means that you can pile them all in one folder and forget about them. As for that universal documents folder, no signs of it yet, but Mail app's ability to select which apps should open attachments in iPhone OS 4 is a good start.
Now we wait and see if anyone listened to your hardware wants for the 4th gen iPhone.
