3 Things Still Missing From Apple's New iPhone

Apple answered many iPhone wish lists yesterday when it announced video recording, copy and paste, and other improvements. But there’s still stuff missing:

  1. Adobe Flash. Adobe is scurrying to make a version of Flash that works well with the iPhone. But if Flash will ever work the same way on the iPhone as it does on a computer , Adobe will need significant help from Apple building it into MobileSafari. That has not been an easy process so far.What’s the point of Flash on the iPhone? Many Web sites still use Flash for multimedia, animation, and navigation. And ad agencies would LOVE to get access to Flash to make rich media ads for the iPhone more easily.
  2. Video chat. Some wacky, Photoshopped images made the rounds last weekend showing an iPhone 3G with a front-facing camera for video chat. This sort of thing  is a feature Apple loves to sell on its MacBooks and iMacs, and makes some sense in the mobile industry, too.
  3. Background app processing. Apple’s main competitors can all run apps in the background, so you can pop into your email app and keep your IM app open. Or listen to Pandora Radio while you’re reading a Web page. We’ve heard that this is something Apple is working on, but it’s apparently not ready yet for iPhone 3.0. It might be something they get to in an update, or perhaps something they’ll save for iPhone 4.0.