Engadget goes over a few aspects of the Pre that the iPhone lacks:
Push notifications
Apple was showing off what (at the time) seemed to be some pretty great push functionality back in June of last year, but since then Android and now webOS make Apple’s implementation seem decidedly dated — not to mention the fact that Apple still hasn’t launched the promised functionality. Apple needs to make notifications universal (for whatever service and wherever you are in the OS), easy to act on and informative but at the same time unobtrusive, and they’ve got a long way to go on all fronts.
Developer freedom, transparency
Happily, Apple seems to be getting better at this as we speak, allowing a bunch of Safari-alternatives through today that would’ve been previously seen as a violation of its “no duplicate functionality” policy. We also just spotted a CoPilot GPS app running live on an iPhone, and it seems unlikely that a major developer would do all that work if Apple wasn’t going to let it through the App Store. Still, Apple needs to do a better of job of being up front with developers, and stop making silly restrictions on the release of truly useful apps.
Multitasking
Apple only needs to look as far as the Jailbreak community to see some great multitasking in action, but hopefully it’s going to take a look at what Palm is doing with its “cards” method of switching through apps — quite similar to Apple’s own tabs interface for Safari — and give the people what they want.
Synergy contacts
Oddly enough, the Pre wasn’t the first time we saw a device running this sort of contacts integration, 3’s INQ1, a sorta-dumbphone from the UK, showed off this Synergy-style integration of social networking, IM and regular contact info last year. This isn’t a new concept, and shouldn’t be difficult to accomplish with most modern mobile operating systems, but for some reason Palm was the first company to manage to do this right in a smartphone OS — we hope Apple catches on quick.
IM integration
For a company that touts its own iChat app as one of the cornerstones of the desktop experience, Apple’s been strangely reluctant to integrate IM into the iPhone, instead leaning on 3rd party developers to do it. The Pre shows that IM shouldn’t be an afterthought, it should be tightly integrated into contacts and text messaging.
Ease of development with web standards
Granted, Mobile OS X has been widely touted for its ease of development, but we’re surprised that Apple hasn’t at least duplicated its own Dashboard Widgets — which are just little self-contained WebKit-powered modules, with some similarities to webOS apps, minus the deeper OS integration. Is there room for a compromise here? The App Store isn’t lacking for apps, but an increase in developers never hurt anyone.
Spotlight-style functionality
Another feature that Apple could’ve easily ripped straight from its desktop experience, but Palm beat them to the punch. As the iPhone is saddled with more contacts, emails, bookmarks and apps, a universal search seems like a really easy solution to the problem of complexity. If nothing else, Apple needs to look at the number of steps it takes to perform certain important functions like making calls — a bit less of bouncing in and out of the home screen could really do the body good.
Speed
We haven’t seen a final version of the Pre in action yet, but what we did see seemed really wicked fast. And this isn’t just about who can render the most FPS or scroll through a webpage better, this is about vehemently fighting off the general lag that can creep into an increasingly bloated operating system. Apple claims it’s staving off multitasking to keep the OS responsive, we’re wondering why our SMS screen is still loading.
Keyboard, removable battery
This isn’t software, so it’s sort of out of the purview of what we’re talking about here, but we like like physical keyboards, and we like the fact that Palm gives us the option. Some of us also like Apple’s touchscreen keyboard, so we wouldn’t mind Palm coming out with another device that just does touchscreen, and perhaps another keyboard device for the landscape-oriented among us. Since Palm doesn’t have a paralyzing fear of buttons, pretty much anything is possible. Oh, and that removable battery is Just Good Sense.
