We’ve all been reading and watching intently the latest iPhone rumours, all with different perspectives on the issue.

Marc, one of our user interface designers is most interested in the size of the device (you know men, always got size on their mind…):

“I find the current iPhone model just a little too cumbersome, so I love the idea of a slender iPhone that I can stick in my jeans pocket and just forget about, as covered by Jeremy Horwitz on iLounge. Sure, the upcoming smaller 2.8″-screen model is just a rumour at this point, but it would be a sensible move from Apple - the iPhone can’t be all things to all users. A product family makes complete sense to me.

If you’re an existing iPhone user you may have spotted a new version of our interface we just released into wild. It was our mission to create a rich, usable experience that is complementary to the iPhone’s native UI. We couldn’t help ourselves from sprinkling in some fancy Apple-style widgets in there. Just go to taptu.com on your iPhone to check it out.”

Meanwhile, I’m most excited about the faster 3G connection (assuming O2 doesn’t mess customers around). I unfortunately live in the middle of nowhere, where EDGE generally isn’t available, which means that I often find myself following a link on Twitter, which leads to a YouTube video, just to get a pop-up telling me that I must be on EDGE or wi-fi to be able to watch it.

On wi-fi, the iPhone’s a total gem, a great browsing device. Not so great on the input, even with my small hands, so the thought of an even smaller iPhone doesn’t appeal to me. On EDGE, it’s quite acceptable, but unleashing full HSDPA speeds in that device would make it even better. I don’t think I’ll be swapping my 6-months old iPhone for the 3G one purely on the speed factor, but if new features which I can’t get through software updates appear, you may find out I’m first in line for the new one.

Are you at all interested in the next iPhone release? Sick of the rumours already? Got your own theory on what’s coming up next?

The mobile web is still only a fragment of the wider desktop web we use everyday, so one of the challenges operators, website owners and users face is how on Earth to cram this big web onto small screens.

Different people tackle the problem in different ways, as the Sender 11 blog points out:

Apple: Adapt the phone to the web.
Opera: Adapt the web to the phone.

But then, there’s a third option: Bulldoze everything with a transcoder, including sites which are already mobile, and don’t shed a tear for the casualties.

This approach has unfortunately been adopted by a number of operators, namely Vodafone and TeliaSonera with Novarra, and Sprint with OpenWave.

When I think of the carelessness these guys are exhibiting, I get a Hulk moment “Vero angry, Vero smash phones! ARGGHHHH!” It boggles the mind how Sprint can go as far as saying it’s in the customer’s best interest. If they really cared about the customer experience, they wouldn’t highjack user agents, they would acknowledge sites which are already mobile-ready and they would listen to the community’s needs.

Anyone who isn’t directly involved in the mobile industry is unlikely to realise that the site they’re browsing looks crap on their phone, not by the website owner’s fault or because their phone isn’t up to par, but squarely because of the operator’s complete disregard for its customers. A little bit of me dies every time I see a friend criticize the mobile web’s shortcomings when it’s really due to bastardised transcoding.

Operators claim to be offering a proverbial olive branch by telling mobile website owners to request to be added to a whitelist. Dennis at Wapreview sounded the alarm on the latest whitelist to join but this is a neverending game of whack-a-mole! As far as I know, between Spain and the UK, Vodafone doesn’t even share its whitelist! (If anyone can tell me I’m wrong on this one, I’ll regain a bit of faith in the Big Red.)

As Dennis explains, unless you have a handset on the local network, it’s difficult to find out what’s happening to your site once it goes through the shredder:

Unless you have a Sprint handset there’s really no way to tell if your site’s being transcoded. If you do have a Sprint phone you can generally tell just by looking at the screen but if in doubt use the device’s Show URL browser menu command. If it starts with http://sprint.aopwv.com/ you are being transcoded.

Mobhappy, Mike Rowehl, Techype, RCR Wireless News and Semapedia, amongst others, have picked up on the issue, and they’re all as unimpressed as I am with the situation.

How could anyone, in their infinite wisdom, think this was a scaleable and manageable way to decide what sites to leave as-is? Seriously, I’m willing to give anyone from an operator a fair hearing, I’ll even buy ‘em a beer, if they can explain to me how they’re going to improve on the current situation from here.

If you’re a developer and your mobile site is affected by the latest Sprint issue, register on the Sprint forums and leave a comment in this thread to get whitelisted.

[Update: Russ at Mowser posted, following my angry post, to shed light on how what Mowser does is different to the operator’s transcoders, so if you’re still fuzzy on what is proper and improper behaviour for adapting content, check out his post. At the core of it all though, Mowser listen to their users and are part of the community rather than living up in that cozy ivory tower. That makes all the difference.]

In technology, we’re always so focused on the future, on what’s coming next and what’s going to be the next big gadget or web app to break into the spotlight. Gizmodo’s Jesus Diaz looks to the past for the designs that inspired Apple’s products. It’s impossible to deny the resemblance in some of the 60’s styling and our latest shiny goodies.

We’re big fans of great, simple design here, so it’s comforting to think that great design is here to stay, revived in different forms through the ages. I’ve had this quote from Rams stuck in my scrapbook for years now, but it’s good to see Gizmodo bring it up as well.

This passion for “simplicity” and “honest design” that is always declared by Ive whenever he’s interviewed or appears in a promo video, is at the core of Dieter Rams’ 10 principles for good design:

• Good design is innovative.
• Good design makes a product useful.
• Good design is aesthetic.
• Good design helps us to understand a product.
• Good design is unobtrusive.
• Good design is honest.
• Good design is durable.
• Good design is consequent to the last detail.
• Good design is concerned with the environment.
• Good design is as little design as possible.

[Via Thought Balloons]