21 Awesome Features Missing from the New iPhone

The new iPhones with iOS7 are packed, nay packed with amazing new features, colors, camera abilities, software doodads, and more. They're nothing short of miraculous hunks of modern tech gloriousness. But they're also, shockingly, missing a few key features we'd really like to see in future models. Such as:

1. Snicker Muffler. For every hipster under 40 who struggles to stifle a disbelieving chuckle when they see their Midwestern elders scooping heaps of freeze-dried, lint-colored misery from giant, Costco-sized tins of Maxwell House into pale mugs of watery sadness, and you're all, like, "Really? You call that coffee? I pay six dollars for a single, hand-poured cup of Lost Guatemalan Ultra Orangutan Intestine Blend from Blue Bottle! [Snicker]."


2. Oyster Shucker. For those times you drink one too many Bloody Marys out at the coastal seafood joint you found using the iPhone's Yelp app and GPS functionality, and as you watch the burly fisherman dude in the bloody overalls shuck oysters by hand like a boss, you actually hear yourself say, "I think I'll just buy a giant bag of raw oysters right now, take them home and impress my boyfriend with my shucking skills using my new iPhone 5S."


3. Syrian Attack Upside-the-Head Slapper. Specially designed for otherwise savvy, 2nd-term Democratic presidents who aren't nearly as fantastic, progressive and badass as most of us hoped, but who should nevertheless know better by now than to rattle the sabres of bullsh-t war in a faint but still far-too-painful reminder of the obnoxious hawkishness of his milquetoast predecessor who ruined pretty much everything for a solid decade.


4. Avocado Ripeness Identifier. Is it perfect right now, or will it rip apart in a squelchy, rotted mess as soon as you twist it?


5. Auto-tune Disabler. So fans of roughly 92 percent of pop music today can hear that their idols cannot actually sing a goddamn note.


6. Miley Cyrus Blocker, comprehensive


7. Ocean Acidification Meter, Even Though We're Probably Doomed Anyway (version 5.0)


8. Anonymous Jackass Humanizer/Empathizer, in which all nasty, repulsive, racist, hateful, puerile, or otherwise tiny-brained anonymous comments from various blogs and sites are instantly re-translated into phrases such as, "I rarely leave the house and haven't had sex in four years." "My own dog thinks I'm a jerk and women shun me because of the smell." "I like to lash out in mean and childish ways on Gawker, YouTube, Slashdot, and also frequently in the comment area below this very column because that's the only way I can feel empowered in this, my tiny, sad cubicle adorned with stills from Lord of the Rings and fetish photos of handguns and sandwich meats."


9. N.S.A. Happy Finger: New feature notices when the N.S.A. is about to troll your personal data (which it can do, apparently, whenever it wants) and instantly scrambles all your emails, texts and banking data into a single piece of ASCII art in the shape of a giant middle finger.


10. Boehner Pincher, with McConnell Jabber. Unique finger-swipe gesture built into iOS7 allows user to pinch any photo of the House majority leader into a little, over-tanned crumple of sweaty, conservative angst until it pops like a small pimple, which then morphs into a tiny, greasy photo of Mitch McConnell, which then bounces around the screen like a Whack-A-Mole until you stab it with your finger, at which point it lets out a slow, wheezing gasp, and disappears.


11. Perspective Smacker. From the always-amusing news that Miley Cyrus (or any tacky celeb flavor of the month) is more popular, Google-search wise, than chemical warfare in Syria (or any other depressing, urgent news story of the month) comes a feature that tracks how many hours your spend searching for, reading about, or watching videos of hollow pop culture chyme, and occasionally swaps in a video of innocent civilians being massacred by sarin gas. Just to, you know, keep it real.


12. Hawthorne Effector. According to a recent study, customers who were told their energy use was being tracked for a month actually saved more energy. It's an example of what's called the Hawthorne effect; people behave differently (often more nobly, responsibly, or honestly) when they think they're being watched. Is Siri watching you right now? What are you wearing? Should you really be touching that? (Note: Hawthorne Effect useless on shameless congressmen).


13. California Teen Sex Urger. Special alert system designed to detect feral hormonal patterns in the iPhone's owner, match it to their zip code, and nudge all sexually active teens from backwater, Southern-state hateswamps to get the hell out and move to, say, California, where it's been proven over and over again that aggressive sex education combined with easy access to contraception reduces teen pregnancy, makes life better, and gets you the hell out of Louisiana. Which is always a good thing.


14. Toxic Goo Proximity Sensor. Emits shrill alarm and displays a highly detailed photo of multiple gastrointestinal cancer polyps anytime your phone is within 100 feet of Taco Bell.


15. Significant Other Mood Indicator (SOMI) - Phone will vibrate, beep, screech, turn red-hot and then drop right out of your pants/purse when detects your partner is in a foul and combative mood for some unknowable reason which, if you attempt to guess at it, confront it or somehow mollify it, will only make things worse because you should know better, jerk.


16. Unknowable Reason Decoder - Related to SOMI, the magic of fuzzy logic combines with your iPhone's world-class computing power to try and figure out just what the hell is irritating your lover/partner, when it's probably just the fact they're all out of cookies and just need a backrub, a hot bath and three powerful, ass-slapping orgasms.
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Mark Morford is the author of The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism, a mega-collection of his finest columns for the San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate, and the creator of the new Mark Morford's Apothecary iOS app. He's also a well-known ERYT yoga instructor in San Francisco. Join him on Facebook, or email him. Not to mention...