All right, so we know the forthcoming iPhone 4 has a squared-off but thinner case, using glass for the front and rear. The buttons also look nicer, and Apple has been busy trying to fix the things that might have irritated you before. But let me backtrack a little.

I was one of the early adopters of the once-famous Motorola RAZR. Forgetting the interface glitches forced upon Motorola by the carriers they used, it was actually a pretty decent product. Audio quality was first-rate, but the little rocker control placed at the left side of the unit to adjust ringer and talk volume was poorly designed. When you placed the handset into a case, you’d frequently change volume levels by mistake. I cannot tell you how many times I missed a call simply because the volume was mistakenly set to zero.

Unfortunately, when Apple developed the iPhone, they installed a rocker switch, so many of you encountered the same problems I experienced with the RAZR way back when. I know I’m constantly adjusting volume levels after a few days of slipping my iPhone in and out of its case. Not good.

Now previous iPhones were mostly cut from the same mold, so it’s understandable that the poorly-designed controls would persist. With iPhone 4.0, Apple made some serious changes in the case, even though it probably doesn’t look all that different from a distance. The basic smartphone form factor pioneered by Apple has been imitated by loads of competitors. This means a large rectangular screen, a few tiny controls and a relatively thin case. Some of those other phones will even sport superior hardware specs until Apple, with its annual updates, catches up and advances the state of the art. But the OS is everything when it comes to usability beyond making simple phone calls. And clearly not using side-mounted rocker switches for volume settings.

When it comes to the relabeled iOS, Apple has clearly listened to customers and added the features that you and the media critics have long complained about. But it didn’t happen overnight. Indeed, it took Apple three years to devise a workable multitasking scheme beyond their own apps. Yes, I suppose they lost some sales in the interim, from people who believed that they couldn’t use a smartphone if it didn’t have unfettered multitasking and other features that you were led to believe were essential to your well being.

Now I have to tell you that I haven’t had a moment’s grief with my current iPhone, a basic 3GS, without enhanced multitasking, perhaps because I don’t use apps that benefit most, such as the Pandora music service. The device is fast enough to allow me to switch from app to app without feeling that I’m somehow losing convenience in the process.

Aside from the software enhancements in iOS 4, Apple also did something that competing smartphone makers seldom think about, which is to find a way to boost audio quality beyond the basic digital haze offered by the typical wireless carrier. Among its enhancements is a second microphone for noise canceling. This may not mean much to you in a normal environment, but if you’re in a busy restaurant or auditorium, it can make a world of a difference.

The retina display is also a smart invention, if expensive. By reducing screen pixels to 326 pixels per inch, higher than the limit of the human eye, which is 300 pixels per inch, onscreen text for once appears as sharp as printing. The illustrations you’ve seen posted by Apple and the tech media demonstrate the clear differences, though in a limited way. It may be the real solution to the e-book dilemma, and I wonder how long before this feature is translated to the iPad’s 9.7 inch screen, which is no slouch when it comes its book reading function.

Of course the main problem is that packing more and more pixels onto a sophisticated LCD display is not cheap. The price difference may not be so significant on an iPhone, but as soon as you expand screen size, the cost of raw materials might become too high to maintain an affordable price. So it may be a few years before ultra-high pixel rates are available on an iPad or an iMac, but Apple clearly continues to explore cutting edge display technology.

It’s also nice to see that Apple is thinking about the customers as much as the bottom line, and it will be interesting to see how reviewers justify the clearly inferior Android OS products when they begin to do honest comparisons.

The problem is, unfortunately, that too much emphasis is placed on raw specs rather than a direct user experience. All the comparisons published so far consist of bullet points for the iPhone 4 against the latest and greatest Android OS smartphone, and iOS 4 against Android 2.2. How well those features actually work in the real world isn’t being addressed, and it should be.

Meantime, I’m encouraged by the promise of iPhone 4, and I look forward to actually working with a real one once review units are available to the media.

In the days of the original Star Trek TV show in the 1960s, the crew of the starship Enterprise would explore a new world equipped with a handheld computer known as a Tricorder. According to the Wikipedia entry and the innate knowledge of any “Treker” on our planet, this gadget was “a multifunction handheld device used for sensor scanning, data analysis, and communication.”

In other words, an iPhone, since, though thicker, it was smaller than an iPad.

Now I don’t pretend to know if the designers if the iPhone 4 spent much of any of their free time watching old Star Trek episodes for inspiration. More than likely, they simply looked at the problems previous smartphones had failed to solve, and went ahead to make the latest and greatest model reflect solutions to those problems.

The end result is that the newest iPhone, version number four, sporting that squared off case revealed when a preproduction sample found its way into the hands of an online publication, ends up offering  a lot more than you might have expected from those Gizmodo reports. In a sense, Apple has answered every presumed advantage of the latest generation of Android OS handsets and then some.

But the one problem Apple couldn’t solve can be traced to the limits of Wi-Fi networking. With hundreds of separate functioning networks operated by the press contingent in attendance during the WWDC keynote, Apple’s onscreen displays kept bogging down. Steve Jobs even asked the press corps if they could shut down their networks, which, of course, was one request they, for the most part, politely ignored.

The other notable change is strictly in nomenclature. iPhone 4.0 is henceforth iOS 4. Is nobody sick and tired of those dreadful “i” prefixes yet? Or has Apple simply lost it?

So there you have it. The thinner iPhone 4, sporting a better than retinal display, a five megapixel camera with flash, front facing camera for video chats and HD camcorder capability, not to mention a gyroscope and a longer life battery. Jobs also spent a fair amount of time telling us that five billion apps had been downloaded from the App Store, with revenue for developers totaling over a billion dollars, which goes to show that most of those downloads involve free apps.

When it comes to video chats, I remember my childhood visit to the New York Worlds Fair, where you could make video calls from specially equipped phone booths. With Apple’s FaceTime, you can accomplish the same task, with a far better image, using the iPhone 4’s front or rear cameras, although a Wi-Fi network is required. Apple is working with the wireless carriers to try to get support for video conferences on regular cellular connections. As a side note, the FaceTime format is being submitted as a proposed industry standard.

It sounds even better than a Tricorder.

The price is the same as the iPhone 3GS, $199 for the 16GB version and $299 for the 32GB version, with the usual two-year contract. At the same time, AT&T is granting immediate eligibility for those whose contracts expire in 2010. It’ll go on sale June 24th in the U.S., France, Germany, the UK and Japan, with preorders accepted 9 days earlier. All the better to enhance Apple’s sales for this quarter, assuming the usual amount of pent-up demand.

The international rollout will expand in July.

The iOS 4 upgrade, with some 100 fancy new features, including multitasking, appears June 21st for the iPhone and iPod touch. iPad users will get theirs this fall. However, the first generation iPhone is evidently not compatible, and the 3G version from 2008 won’t get such features as multitasking, because it doesn’t have the available resources to handle that often requested capability. Then again, if you have a two-year-old iPhone, you are no doubt ready to upgrade anyway.

In keeping with all the speculation, there’s a third search option on iOS 4, and that’s Microsoft’s Bing, which joins Google and Yahoo! A similar option is now available in the newly-unleashed Safari 5 for Mac OS X and Windows, released Monday afternoon. But since Bing will soon power Yahoo! searches, that may be a distinction without a difference. But it does explain why Microsoft seems more kindly disposed towards Apple these days, even though they’re smarting from being supplanted in market cap.

As much as the iPhone and the iOS 4 demonstrations no doubt delighted Apple customers around the world, some might be disappointed at what was missing. The rumored Apple TV replacement sporting an iPhone-style case and the same OS never appeared, nor was there any inkling of updates for the Mac Pro, Mac mini or even an early preview of Mac OS 10.7. It was all iPhone and iOS 4 all the time. Nothing more, but nothing less either. But after nearly two hours on stage with those prolonged demos, the audience might have been thoroughly worn out.

And don’t forget that, in 2008, Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard was quietly introduced to developers without a moment’s mention during the WWDC keynote. So the full story about the 2010 event possibly has yet to be written.

At last week’s AllThingsDigital conference, sponsored by the Wall Street Journal, both Steve Jobs and Steve Ballmer were front and center, on different days. Unlike that famous joint appearance between Jobs and Bill Gates, the sponsors of this year’s event opted for separate sessions. Or maybe Jobs and Ballmer wanted it that way.

Regardless, in looking over the transcripts from the two events, you could get a pretty good idea of someone who is in total control of his business affairs and one who is cracking at the seams.

This doesn’t mean that you should take everything Jobs said as gospel. His pronouncements, however sincere he might seem, are surely self-serving. He isn’t going to do anything that materially impacts Apple’s bottom line, although it’s refreshing to hear him explain why the company he co-founded picks and chooses which markets to enter so carefully.

One of the most significant things to come out of his comments is that Apple cannot be all things to all people. Their vertically integrated, tightly controlled ecosystem may not appeal to some of you who prefer a more “open” environment. This isn’t to say that Apple is really that restrictive, but the entire approach remains controversial.

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Just weeks ahead of the expected release of the next generation iPhone, AT&T has decided that they simply can’t afford to give you unlimited data access for $30 a month. Instead, they are setting up a two-tier program that should serve most light and heavy users.

So is this just more evidence of rampant corporate greed, or does AT&T have a point? Well, here’s the deal: The top-of-the-line Data Pro package gives you 2GB of bandwidth for $25. Their PR spin doctors claim that only 2% of their customers abuse that limit, and they are allegedly causing poor network performance for everyone.

The reason, I suppose, is that the worst “abusers” are spending inordinate amounts of their spare time downloading apps, movies and songs through AT&T’s network, thus helping to saturate finite system capacity. The new data program is designed to offer a good deal for the other 98%, and actually save you some money in the process.

The pricing structure, however, doesn’t seem to make much sense. For $15 per month, you get 200MB bandwidth.  That’s only $10 less than the 2GB package. You will be warned if you are getting close to exceeding those limits, and you will then have upgrade options. If you are in danger of consuming more than 2GB, for example, an extra $10 will get you another 1GB, which ought to be sufficient for at least some of those remaining 2% of heavy users and abusers.

Data Pro customers will also be able to set up tethering, which means you can use your iPhone as a 3G broadband modem on, say, your Mac or PC portable, for an additional $20, which actually seems a pretty sensible package when you examine similar deals from other carriers.

You’re not forced to take one of the new pricing schemes. Those of you currently signed up for the $30 unlimited data plan will be “grandfathered,” which means you can keep that plan even if you upgrade to the next generation iPhone. The altered packages are primarily for those who sign up for new contracts, although you can switch if you like.

One quick way to decide whether to make a move is to check your online usage on your AT&T account under the View Past Data Usage category. AT&T will display graphics of the amount of data you consumed for the previous six months, plus the choice of examining the stats for other timeframes.

Now when I checked my account, I noticed that I came close to 200MB on occasion, but rarely, if ever, exceeded that amount. The main reason is that I do most of my Internet heavy lifting while connected to a Wi-Fi network, so I’m not taxing AT&T’s system. If you’re a light user, by all means downgrade to the basic plan. However, considering the slight difference in cost, I would probably switch to Data Pro, assuming I wanted to abandon unlimited. But even though I’ve been going through tremendous financial turmoil in recent months, my iPhone remains an essential business expense.

Right now, AT&T’s main competitor, Verizon Wireless, plans to stick with their unlimited data programs, since it makes for provocative ad copy. But since so few users are being hurt, on the long haul that will probably change.

More to the point, I’m not concerned so much with a more realistic data plan, particularly if it lessens the load on AT&T’s clogged cell towers. The real relief from slow performance and dropped calls, though, will be the promised upgrades to their network architecture. At this week’s AllThingsDigital conference, Steve Jobs said that he expected at least some relief by summer. Before you dismiss any promise made by AT&T, even if that promise is given to the CEO of Apple Inc., I have to tell you that call quality has improved tremendously in the three years I’ve been an AT&T customer.

You see, at one time, there were neighborhoods here in the Phoenix area through which I couldn’t pass without losing most of wireless signal. The installation of new towers and the upgrades to existing equipment have pretty much vanquished the worst ills. These days, dropped calls are a rarity for me, and general system performance is little different from my former wireless provider, Verizon.

However, if you live in New York or San Francisco, you may disagree. Clearly AT&T was caught flat-footed by the success of the iPhone and its tremendous drain on their network. Some suggest that Apple might be to blame, in part, because they weren’t familiar with the tricks of taming their smartphones for maximum connection efficiency without severely consuming network resources. While I suppose that may have been true at one time, Apple does use industry-standard parts for its communications hardware and they’ve surely been able to learn a few secrets from their network partners.

It’s also true that Internet access on the iPhone is so seamless, more and more people are relying on these gadgets for surfing. That’s why AT&T had to look at the data plans a little more realistically.

While I suppose some of you might have reason to complain about being cheated by a greedy wireless carrier, in the real world, you’ll rarely have need to exceed the new limits. Or just keep the plan you have to feel safer.