iPhone wishes

Monday, July 02, 2007 by Dave Winer.

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).