[gambiting]

>>What not an iPhone with a desktop mode you can pair with a monitor, keyboard, and trackpad?

That sounds like the most un-apple thing I can possibly imagine. Their ethos was always to build a device that does something incredibly well - a phone that can be a phone but also a desktop computer is everything but this.

[bitwize]

ISTR seeing illustrations from an Apple patent showing a computer display with a slot in the back into which an iPhone can be docked, turning the phone into a full-size desktop workstation.

And this was during the Jobs era.

[threeseed]

Apple pays their employees to file patents for pretty much anything.

That doesn't mean they will ever manifest in real products.

[Redoubts]

How do you figure? The iPhone was unveiled as a 3-in-1 device during its first keynote.

[aaronblohowiak]

The iPad is already this but with a bigger screen.

[gambiting]

No, I'd argue it isn't. Even if you connect an external keyboard an display to the iPad, you are just getting the ipad experience on a larger screen. There is never any transformation of interface when used this way. Apple has never allowed mouse/trackpad on iOS(with some very very narrow exceptions) so it's not transformative - you are still getting the same experience essentialy.

For it to work on the iPhone, they would have to add support for some kind of mouse/trackpad, because the iphone itself is sitting in the dock - and I don't see apple doing that in a million years.

[solarkraft]

iOS still has a long, long way to go. It seems like they're preparing all the hardware, though.