[seunghomattyang]

What would constitute a "step forward for mobile computing"? For me, it'd be having the computing power of MacBook Pro on an iPhone. For example, I would hook up—or more likely, wirelessly connect—this hypothetical iPhone to a desktop monitor and run OS X. Arguably, this is 3-5 years down the line and only if Apple pursues this line of thinking.

[greendestiny]

Well here's a list of directions, with the caveat that you'd actually have to try some of these to see what worked. Improving safari with smart 'readability'-esque relayout engine. Safari performance for webkit. Widgets. Lock screen apps. Built in speech-to-text api. Flutter like non-touching gestures and interaction. Augmented reality api - with maps data. A todo app and api/data store (ok you'd make a million app developers cry with that one). iCloud for data.

Of course some of these are available as third-party apps and apis. Some would suck (widgets for one probably). But I don't believe we're anywhere near running out of things to innovate on to make mobile computing worthwhile/suck-less.

[othermaciej]

Safari does have a 'readability'-esque relayout engine - that's what the 'Reader' button does.

[clarky07]

there is already built in speech to text. any keyboard that opens has a button for it. there is a to do app. and there is iCloud for data.

[greendestiny]

I was thinking on phone processing of speech, not sure how much difference it would make. The point of that list isn't that those things don't exist, but they are areas where Apple could push hardware, operating system and web services in order to do something innovative in mobile computing.

[cageface]

The biggest problem with iOS is the siloing of apps. A task-centric UI just makes so much more sense and sharing information and functionality among different apps is so incredibly awkward for the user and developer.

Both Android and WP are much better in this regard but there's still a lot of room for improvement.

[joshschreuder]

Indeed, imagine being able to develop in XCode for iPhone, on an iPhone.

[cageface]

Please god no. Xcode is miserably slow on a 2011 Macbook Air. I don't even want to think about running it on something with a small fraction of that horsepower.

[joshschreuder]

I was replying to the "having the computing power of MacBook Pro on an iPhone" comment.

[damian2000]

There's not much stopping Apple from enabling this right now but maybe they see the developer market as a way of generating more Mac sales? Look at the $35 Raspberry Pi - it has a HDMI port and runs Linux, with a fraction of the power of the iPhone 5.