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I've always found the tactile experience of physically pressing the home button to be disruptive to the iPhone experience. I'd rather see them do away with it entirely, widen / lengthen the screen, and switch to a breadcrumb style navigation bar.

Imagine a swipe up scenario from the bottom that would show your full location using symbols (and allow you to navigate back with a press): Home > Home Screen 4 > Running Apps > Current App Home > Current Page in App

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On the iPad, you can avoid the home button altogether. A 3-fingered squeeze gets you to the home screen, and a 3-fingered upswipe gets you the task list.

Thanks for the tips - quite useful! However, I think that this reliance on gestures means that the usability gap will widen between those who are "in the know" and those who aren't. If iOS developers only use the shortcuts, they may not notice the annoyances of the default experience.

This would also do away with the doubly annoying double click required to view the currently running apps. These little tricks don't fit with iOS, which is so appealing because of its simplicity and intuitiveness.

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