What is the iPhone SDK Missing?

I’ve been doing mobile app development for a long time (2001?), but the systems we worked with back then were dedicated mobile development environments (Symbian, J2ME, BREW). iPhone SDK is a curious hybrid of Mac OS X and Apple’s take on mobile (Cocoa Touch).

But it is missing some stuff that other mobile systems have, IMO. Specifically:

  • Application background processing
  • SMS/MMS application routing (send an SMS to my application in the background)
  • API for accessing phone functions/call history/call interception

I realize that Apple has perfectly valid reasons for releasing the SDK the way they did. I am curious what people on SO think the SDK is missing and how would they go about fixing/adding it, were they an Engineering Product Manager at Apple.