Once again, I'm going to reply to a post that Jeff Kirvin has made in my own blog, because I'm too lazy to register to post on his. Forgive me Jeff:
Okay, by now you guys know I’m not a fan of the iPhone. There are some things I like about it (battery life, durability, music UI) but I don’t think it’s a very good phone. The lack of 3G, inexplicable inconsistencies in the UI (different themes, different gesture effects) and the crippled Bluetooth profiles make the iPhone a non-starter for me. But what if there’s a method to the madness? Bob Cringely has an interesting column up where he talks about how Steve Jobs should know better than to release a device on hype alone:
We’ve all heard that the iPhone shipped with EDGE because the battery drain from current 3G chips was too high. But what if that’s a smokescreen? The iPhone’s battery life is off the charts, and a lot of the problems the iPhone has could be fixed by moving to 3G. Not just the data speed, but 3G allows a better voice codec as well, meaning better call quality. Add the bump to 3G to “fixes” to the UI consistency, minor bug fixes (why do you really think every Apple employee got an iPhone? product testing) and roll it all out the same time as Leopard, just in time for the Xmas shopping frenzy. And you could also use that opportunity to add things like copy-and-paste and the iWork office suite that is supposedly the real delay in getting Leopard out the door.
(from JeffKirvin.net.)
I think it's pretty clear that 3G isn't something that can be done in firmware, so that hope's out, but your other complaints: UI consistencies, bluetooth, etc. are things that can be changed with a forced (or not) update, and things that I suspect will be changed. Also, I suspect that in October when Leopard ships, we'll see some improvements to other complaints: note syncing and ToDo's seem like logical first steps, but I also have to imagine that we'll see some sort of 3rd party widgets at some point.
Some sort of iPhone-WikityWidget, or just about anything that the OmniGroup could write, I think would make folks like Jeff and me really happy.
My prediction: a firmware update coming soon, Leopard and a slightly beefed up Phoneless-iPhone in time for x-mas, and iphone v2.0 ready by MacWorld next year.
cheers!