Are there any plans/rumours for more memory more flash and in the same small package as Pro Mini or maybe Nano? I am finding the 32K FLASH and the 2K RAM very limiting, and it would be so nice to have something more spacious to work with.
Currently I am fumbling with a Maple Mini, but it is not at all an Arduino.
Then you need to step up to a ARM processor, for example a Teensy or a mini ARM Cortex M0 (do they exist yet with Arduino ? they should 
).
The Teensy 3.1 is small : Teensy USB Development Board
The 1284p is a great chip, with a significant following among people ppb these forums. Crossroads sells boards if a few form factors.
Unlike the teensy, it's still an avr so it's mostly compatible with libraries and Arduino code from around the web.
Yup, 16K SRAM (twice that of the Mega), 128K flash, 32 IO, dual hardware serial ports.
Browse here
http://www.crossroadsfencing.com/BobuinoRev17/
Small board the size of the chip to larger Uno size boards to larger development boards, with onboard or offboard USB, and optional screw terminals. Jack Christensen has been keeping support for them in the IDE.
Having now played around with the Maple Mini clone (STM32F103CB) it is quite more powerful than the Atmega MCUs. In the same size as the Nano you get so much more.
I have not used it, but on paper the Teensy 3.1 leaves the Pro Mini miles behind, albeit much more expensive.
However these are not official Arduino projects. For example the Maple Mini was abandonded by their makers, Leaflabs, and now is being ressurrected by a handful of volunteers.
Of course it is unfair to compare an 8 bit CPU to a 32 bit, but on the other hand the STM32F103CB has 48 pins and is marginally larger than the Atmega328 present on my Pro Mini or Nano. On this alone I am well entitled to compare and ask why Arduino is stuck in the middle ages?
Then the IDE. Apart from a hardware boost, in my opinion, Arduino also needs a better IDE with a major feature : debugging, some form of debugging. It is terrible to have to debug by serial prints in 2015 - even back in 1980 we had better forms of debugging as the CPU supported SS interrupts (8086). Later CPUs also supported memory/data breakpoints and virtual memory/paging (80386) which made for software debuggers almost as good as hardware ones (80386 was released in 1985).
So here we are today with a very simple system that hides the complexities underneath and so is useable by beginners, however there could be a few more features and they would not scare the newcomers away neither would they be superfluous.
These are just my ideas.
