VoIP, Personal Fax Software, iWeb, iMusic

[AJ Kandy]

OK- this was originally posted under Rumors but if Apple reads it...

1- license the Danger hiptop softphone/PDA, give it iPod styling and add 3 key features - 1) AirPort (or 2.4GHz wireless) 2) FireWire and 3) SIP protocol support.

SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) is really important. That and H.323 support are is the key for enabling voice applications on desktops and PDAs. This is an area that has been sorely lacking from the Mac for too long; Win XP comes with SIP built-in from what I understand.

As companies move from traditional PBX phone systems to Voice-over-IP it enables a whole bunch of options - much more flexible notification, paging, app integration, WAP, you name it -- because much of it can be done in software. For example, there is a SIP client for iPaq PDAs that turns it into a wireless phone over 802.11, that you can use in a company environment over a wireless LAN: it becomes an extension that follows you everywhere.

IP telephony is viable for consumers through broadband connections. It's an end-run around phone companies and long distance charges )

It would be great to have a wireless hardware/software iPhone solution(www.iphone.org) that could be a VoIP terminal client over AirPort at home, a tri-band cell phone on the road, and logs in as a SIP/H323 office phone at work.

There could be a Telephony Server bundle for OS X Server: a lot of core VoIP technologies can be rolled into OS X - there are a lot of telephony code stacks for Linux and System V Unix that could be ported. So far, only one company, Dialpad, has a VoIP client for OS X - I think everyone else is waiting for more core support from Apple.

A software iPhone on every OS X desktop would be a big value add when selling Macs to the Fortune 500; Apple should also beef up H.323 support (either standalone or as part of QuickTime) so that OS X users can videoconference and voice chat seamlessly with Windows and *nix users.

I humbly suggest that Apple should license our company's XMediusFAX Fax-over-IP technology and replace that horrible FaxSTF application with a Personal Fax-over-IP solution. (Time to bring the SMB market into the 21st century, folks!)

Apple could license core technologies and market their own VoIP softswitch and voicemail system (call it Phone Studio Pro) - or at least make sure iPhone hardware/software is interoperable with industry-standard VoIP gear from Cisco, Avaya, VocalData and others.

Other than that, I'd love to see Apple buy Ableton Live and sell it as iMusic (www.ableton.com) - or come up with something similar -

And there hasn't been a decent beginner's Web-design app since Claris Home Page. I suggest the WebObjects team could come out with iWeb, a graphical IDE with plenty of templates and drag-and-drop code objects to let even beginners do sophisticated design as simple as Lego - WYSIWYG layout, easy forms/buttons/scripting, - and for more advanced users, it would include support for rollovers, graphics optimization, imagemaps, tables, and full support for XML and CSS/layers etc. Maybe it could integrate with a future version of iPhoto to speed the creation of imagemaps and rollovers...

There could be "Upload to iDisk..." and "Publish to /Public" commands for one-step internet/intranet publishing. In a similar way to Freeway, it might allow the import of any graphic type as "layers", allow for opacity changes, etc. and then it would use the Quartz engine to flatten them and export an optimized imagemap / CSS layers.