March 17, 2009
iPhone OS 3.0 Preview Event Details (Updated)

Again with the Apple stuff, will it never stop?! You can keep an eye on the iPhone OS 3.0 event today by checking out either Engadget or the @macrumors twitter stream. If you're a twitterer you probably you that doing a search for #iPhone will probably garner you some good stuff as well :)

Update:
Highlights from the event are below (hit the read more):




  • In-app purchases (ie: buy another 10 levels, or extend your subscription to a magazine app).. for paid apps only. Hopefully not abused by developers
  • Peer 2 Peer connectivity - seamlessly connect with local devices running the same app. Sounds pretty awesome for gaming.
  • More hardware access for accessories. Blood pressure readers that work with the iPhone, or an FM transmitter that automagically talks to the iPhone (or iPod of course) to tune to the right station, or speaker that can control the EQ on the iPhone.
  • Maps can be embedded right into apps.
  • Turn by Turn Applications - wooo! Course, I think that not having this was a rule from apple and not a restriction in the hardware, but whatever :) Have to bring your own maps though (WTF?). Guess this is a statement on sending someone into a lake because google maps haven't been updated. Huge download size I'm guessing :( Oh well, still, good to finally have.
  • Push notifications so that applications can get updates without "running". Completely re-architected to deal with performance and battery life issues. Now "good to go" though.
  • In-app voice and video APIs. Yay, no more shelling everything to youtube!
  • Copy, cut and paste. Finally. Geez... was starting to get mad that they could do scalling, streaming video but not a simple text operation that's been around for 30 years now.... The UI is nice, but not a 2 year development effort I'd hope. Shake to undo (very iPhone-y), copying HTML, images, works in all apps, etc. Nifty, welcome to 1984!
  • Landscape keyboard support in all core apps. IE: Mail.
  • More big stuff.... MMS (multimedia SMS) will let you send photos/contact vcards/audio/location over SMS.
  • More little stuff... calendar has ICS subscriptions now, stocks have a landscape mode and support for news details at the bottom.
  • Global search!!!! Well, "key applications" search anyway, so mail, calendar, etc. All nicely integrated in something familiar to Mac people called "spotlight" :)
  • Sync your notes, auto-fill, youtube accounts, stereo bluetooth headphone support (finally again!).
  • Developer beta available today (cool), full release available in the summer (meh, want it now), it's a free update for the iPhone (yay) and $9.95 for the iPod Touch (boo (but standard apple fare if you remember the 2.0 upgrade)). No MMS or stereo bluetooth for 1st gen iPhone users (boo (not affecting me though)).

So that's the end of the bulk of the announcements. My thoughts? This brings a close to 99% of the complaints that people have about the iPhone. Copy and paste, background notification, global search, MMS, turn by turn GPS, all fixed. There are still a couple of holes, such as flash and tethering.

I'm fairly excited to be honest, I'm looking forward to what people can do with this in their apps, and I'm happy there aren't any silly "new feature XXX only will work on our new iPhone 3.0 hardware" restrictions. At least not yet :) I'm also glad they haven't radically changed the iPhone, but have added to it significantly. I'm especially interested in the spotlight app, and seeing how it works in practice and how well. It sounded like it was an 'always open' app in the leftmost screen, which makes it more useful than a search app you have to open up each time.

Still, we'll see :) Going to download the SDK tonight and start programming something to make my millions with!!



Posted by Arcterex at March 17, 2009 09:28 AM