With the release of iOS 4.3 (and a minor 4.3.1 update) now behind us and WWDC 2011 looming for a June 6 kick-off, all eyes are now on Apple’s next major revamp of its mobile operating system, iOS 5.

Although there’s speculation far and wide that a new iPhone will be missing in action from Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco when it kicks off on June 6, the company is promising to unveil “the future of iOS and Mac OS,” which no doubt includes a peek at iOS 5. Despite rumors that the next major iOS update won’t come until later this year, here’s a peek at what we can likely expect when it finally lands on our iPhones, iPod touches and iPads.

Revamped Notifications

Let’s get this out of the way up front: The iOS notifications system stinks. It’s also obtrusive, bringing your favorite movie, TV show or game to a screeching halt, most always at an inopportune moment. Worse yet, iOS only shows the most recent notification from a particular app, meaning you’re likely to miss important ones anyway. If you have several apps clamoring for your attention at once (which happens often), the next time you want to unlock your device and quickly get to an app, you’ll first have to dismiss a whole slew of notifications. It’s painful! Google’s Android has the right idea, and HP’s webOS does it the best so far, but we’re sure that iOS 5 will finally bring a notifications system to die for.

Voice Commands, Everywhere

How often do you use the Voice Control feature Apple introduced with iOS 3? (Cue the crickets.) Yeah, we thought so. Most of us forget it even exists until we accidentally hold down the home button a beat longer than normal, and then up it comes. System-wide voice commands is something else that Google’s Android has gotten more right than wrong, and it’s high time that Apple steps up to bat and knocks one out of the park on this front. You may recall that Cupertino plunked down some cash to buy Siri, the voice-activated “virtual personal assistant” software which is still hanging around the App Store. Check it out, and imagine that kind of technology spread all over iOS -- as well as third-party apps.

MobileMe Improvements

Rumors of a revamped (and possibly free) MobileMe service have been swirling in the rumor mill for the better part of the last year. Sure, we got a free version of Find My iPhone and the retail boxed copies of MobileMe have all been eradicated at last, but we have yet to hear that big data center in North Carolina get fired up to start serving cloud-based storage to the masses. The latest rumors claim that could happen in April, but it will still take a fairly major iOS update to incorporate all of the potential changes, such as a “music locker” to house your iTunes library. Meanwhile, Amazon just launched their own Amazon Cloud Player, so… your move, Apple.

True Multitasking

Don’t get us wrong -- we’re happy to have app switching and background apps with iOS 4, but every time we look at a webOS device flipping between apps on “cards,” we die just a little inside. Apple managed to introduce a form of multitasking to iOS that doesn’t dramatically impact battery life (unless you’re running Skype… ahem), but now we think they can go all Where No Operating System Has Gone Before™ by making a truly multitasking operating system, complete with that fancy four or five-finger swipe to switch between apps on the iPad like we’ve seen from developer builds. (Drool…)

I’ve Got a Gesture for You

Likewise, we like the direction Apple appears to be heading with multitouch gestures, and all we can say is, “More please!” There are rumors aplenty that a future iPhone may remove the home button entirely and replace it with gestures. After we recently lost our original 2007 iPhone to a broken home button -- effectively rendering it useless since we can no longer get out of an app without shutting it off -- we’d say that more gestures will be welcome. Let’s face it: All hardware breaks eventually, but multitouch gestures are forever.

Push Email for All

Riddle us this: Why is it that after four generations, we still can’t have IMAP push email on a non-Exchange account except for MobileMe and Yahoo? Don’t tell anyone, but in a moment of weakness, we briefly owned a Palm Pre when it first launched, and it was like a little slice of heaven to find that it honored the IMAP IDLE command just fine, meaning we were automagically notified of incoming email without the need for a fine third-party iOS app such as PushMail. This isn’t exactly rocket science, folks.

Text Tones: Now Hear This!

Hey Apple, thanks for giving us the option to change our incoming text message tone, we really appreciate it. Now is there any way we can push our luck just a little bit further and have the ability to add custom text tones? We know it took you what seemed like an eternity to finally let us add (or buy) custom ringtones, but this kind of thing should be old hat for you by now. So, you know, iOS 5, custom text tones… let’s make this happen, m’kay?

Wi-Fi Sync

By the time we’re likely to see iOS 5 released, it will be almost 2012 and we’ll still be syncing with those dock connector cables that you can never find when you need them. What we’d really like to see is a wireless sync option -- if not for full restores where you’re pushing gigabytes of data, at least some traditionally magical Apple way to occasional “check in” with your iTunes library throughout the day and push new media straight to your iOS device. Barring that, at least make Wi-Fi sync a reality so we can get a few new music tracks on our device without having to go through that whole “Starting sync… Backing up… Preparing to sync… Determining apps to sync… Importing photos… Finishing sync” nonsense.

Home Sharing to the Max

iOS 4.3 brought iTunes Home Sharing to the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, and that was most welcome. Unfortunately, it’s kind of a broken system at the moment. If your iTunes library contains a lot of media, it can take forever and a day for it to show up on the iPad, especially for movies, TV shows and music videos. While all that pretty artwork is nice to look at it, it’s just slowing down access to actually playing the file in question -- so let’s have some kind of “list only” view like we have for the iPhone/iPod touch to help speed things along. Also, since iTunes video files have that little blue dot to show us if the title in question has been watched or not, let’s add the same thing to iOS playback. While we’re at it, it would be nice to have Home Sharing remember where we’ve left off in a movie or TV show so we don’t have to go hunting the next time we use it. Third-party apps like Air Video do this quite elegantly, which makes it even more of a mystery why Apple can’t.

Quick Launch Apps

How many times have you rushed to get a picture of something with your iOS device, only to lose the moment while fumbling to unlock and launch the Camera app? If Apple doesn’t want to add a dedicated hardware camera shutter button to these devices (which they should seriously consider), let’s at least meet halfway by allowing certain key apps to live on the lock screen, available with a single tap. Of course, this should be determined by the user, since many of us might prefer a third-party app such as Camera+ to Apple’s own. Whip out your iOS device, tap the icon and snap away -- just imagine how many future moments you’ll capture that you would have otherwise lost.

With this laundry list of changes for iOS 5, the only question remaining is: What will be left to do with iOS 6 in 2012? Thankfully, that’s for Apple to figure out…

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