Scripting News: iPhone wishes

Scripting News, the weblog started in 1997 that bootstrapped the blogging revolution.

iPhone wishes

I'm still finding things I wish they did, not little things, but big ones, incongruities, things about the iPhone and its positioning that don't match the feature set.

Probably the biggest area the product is lacking is in browser prefs. i've been using the web for almost 14 years. We've seen a lot of ideas come and go in prefs for web browsers, but it has settled down to a predictable set. Apple says this is a real web browser, as opposed to the more limited browsers that come with other cell phones. If so, where are the most rudimentary of preferences?

The one I miss the most from my Blackberry is the option to set the start page. I created a list of sites that I like to check when I'm on the BART or waiting in line at the supermarket. Without the ability to set the start page, I have to rely on memory, and I have to type the first few characters of the URL.

The ability to set the default font and size is a very standard and time-tested browser pref. I always set this in a new browser, I never accept the default. And never have I seen a browser that needs this pref more than the iPhone does.

Wouldn't it be great if it had a fractional horsepower HTTP server built in, so when you're near a laptop or a desktop, you could configure the iPhone from a full-size screen and a computer that has a clipboard (another thing I suspect I'm really going to miss on the iPhone).

Last update: Thursday, June 3, 2010; 4:01:05 PM

~About the Author~

Dave Winer, 55, is a visiting scholar at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in New York City.

"The protoblogger." - NY Times.

"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.

One of BusinessWeek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

"Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.

"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

Mail: scriptingnews1mail at gmail dot com.

Jun Aug