David Tupman, another Apple employee who not many people know about, has just left the company. His last title at Apple before resigning was “Vice President of iPhone and iPod engineering”, he has over 70 patents in his name, and he spent over a decade at what is now considered the world’s biggest smartphone vendor. Now people leave companies for various reasons, so we don’t want to suggest that he got bored of Apple or didn’t agree with the where the company was going with the iPhone, but unless this guy wanted a vacation … why would you leave Apple when the company is as hot as it is today? The folks at 9to5Mac did some investigating to figure out where David now works, and while they didn’t find anything conclusive, they think he might be joining the guys at Nest. Nest being the company that wants to make the experience of controlling the temperature of your house all futuristic.

We don’t have anything else to say about David, but we’d like to explore the future of the iPhone. Last month was the five year anniversary of Steve Jobs’ announcement of the Jesus Phone. That’s right, the iPhone is half a decade old. So let’s be honest with ourselves for a second, despite the iPhone achieving record sales quarter after quarter, the platform is starting to feel a bit dated. Depending on what Apple shows off this year with iOS 6 and the iPhone 5 we’ll know whether the company will stick to their “grid of icons across a swath of pages” user interaction model or actually try something new. Android is kind of sort of the same as iOS, and Windows Phone is the newest, though least proven, so what can Apple do differently besides make Siri more advanced?

If we had the answer we’d be in a garage coding it up right now, so we’re open to your suggestions: What does Apple need to do to iOS and the iPhone to keep it fresh?