WWDC 2012: Our iOS 6 feature wish list

This year, Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference will kick off inside San Francisco's Moscone West center on June 11th.

Naturally, we're not exactly sure what the Cupertino manufacturer has up its sleeve for us. But, it's possible that we'll get a sneak peek at iOS 6 - the next iteration of Apple's mobile operating system.

Phil Schiller, Apple's SVP of worldwide marketing, has already stated that his company "can't wait to share news about iOS and OS X Mountain Lion with developers" at WWDC, which has left us a little excited.

iOS 5 answered many (if not most) of the concerns we had with the iPhone and iPad's operating system, but there are still several bits and bobs we'd love to see included in the next major iOS release. So, these are the six new features we want to see in iOS 6. See what I've done there? Good.

Systemwide Twitter integration is fine and all, but a lot of us would quite like Facebook integration, too.

Judging by the comments made by Apple CEO Tim Cook at the AllThingsD conference last week, The Big A and Mark Zuckerberg have managed to patch things up after their rumoured spat over Facebook support in Ping. Hopefully, then, Apple is working with Zuck and chums on integrating Facebook more deeply into iOS as I type.

For one thing, we'd really love to be able to press a single button to have our Facebook friends imported into our Contacts application.

We also want to be able to post photos and videos to Facebook directly from their corresponding iPhone and iPad apps, or fire off a quick status update without actually having to launch The Social Network's application on our iOS device.

With the release of iOS 5, Apple introduced various improvements to its gaming network, but it still doesn't quite stack up against the likes of Microsoft's Xbox Live, Sony's PlayStation Network, or even OpenFeint.

For starters, we want the ability to link our Game Center accounts to our favourite social networks so that we can see which of our friends use Apple's service and bug the ones that don't.

It'd also be nice if the Game Center application provided a running commentary - sort of like Beacons in Xbox Live - of what our friends are up to. For example, we want to be able to see what achievements Mark has unlocked in the past hour, or what high scores Richard managed to smash while he was killing it at Temple Run.

The ability to see which of your friends are online, customisable Xbox Live-esque avatars, and an in-app chat lobby wouldn't go amiss, either. We're not greedy, though.

Currently, there's no straightforward or idiot proof way of transferring files between iOS devices owned by different Apple lovers. Sure, you can use third-party applications such as Bump, but we want Apple to release an official solution.

That's where AirDrop comes into play.

If you have a Mac that runs OS X Lion, you'll probably already be familiar with AirDrop - a drag-and-drop file-sharing solution that allows you to, well, share files with other nearby machines via a peer-to-peer wi-fi network.

Can you imagine how cool it'd be sending a Pages document to your boss with a simple flick on your device's Retina display? We can.

No, not Microsoft's desktop operating system.

We want to be able to run iOS applications inside windows on our iPad so that we can view them side by side, much like we can on our iMacs. Basically, we want to work on a Pages document while constantly keeping an eye on our Twitter feed, or watch a movie through Netflix while simultaneously checking out IMDb.

Naturally, this is already possible if you have a jailbroken tablet and a copy of Quasar - a third-party application that can be downloaded from Cydia. It doesn't stop us wanting a first-party solution, though.

iCloud is a great platform for keeping your iOS devices in sync, but it's not quite perfect just yet. Notifications don't sync between devices, for example, nor do App Store updates.

We want to update Where's My Water? on our iPhone, pick up our iPad, and play through the game's latest levels without having to head back into Apple's digital marketplace to re-download the refresh for our tablet.

Being able to pull specific apps and save games from our iCloud backup, instead of restoring the whole device, would be nifty, too.

Rumours have been circulating that Apple will soon ditch Google Maps and implement its own first-party solution in the next major release of its OS, complete with 3D mapping and a bunch of other natty features.

We welcome the change... so long as it means more functionality. We'd love to see turn-by-turn navigation built into Apple's native Maps application; get updates on traffic, road cameras, and our speed as we drive; and take a sneak peek at Anfield in three dimensions. (Goodison Park can stay in 2D, though.)