iPhone OS 3.0 Update
A major update is on its way to the software of the iPhone, and of course the iPod Touch devices. On March 17th (St. Patty’s!) Apple held a conference in which they divulged what exactly all this would be about. They introduced the new 3.0 operating system that runs on the phones and the touch iPod’s, with it comes over 1,000 new API’s (application programming interface, stuff programmers use to interact with the hardware). They went on to explain the explosion of the app store which is sitting at more than 25,000 apps (much higher than they anticipated).
Here is a rundown of some of things covered:
App Store
What’s also impressive is that there has been over 800 million downloads from the store, and that spanning more than 30 million iPhone and iPod Touch devices. That is incredible! This is a world wide figure of course.
So what’s coming now is a new way for publishers (app developers) to make money. They call in “in app purchase” and it gives the developers an API to let people who paid for your app to inside the app request more content and pay for it using their iTunes account. Now this does not apply to free apps, meaning no one can swindle you into a free app only to find you have to buy more once you get it.
They said this model would work great for games where you could buy the app with 10 levels, then once you are done right inside the game purchase the next 10 without having to download any new app. Good idea. The cut Apple takes is still the same (30%) and again the developer can set the price. The beauty is all the e-commerce is handled by them, making this very easy.
Peer to peer
The iPhone has bluetooth, and now Apple is really cranking up what you can do with it. With peer to peer, there is now a way for developers to discover other nearby iPhones (and 2G iPod touches) for things like sharing and games. It uses bluetooth and involves no pairing. No idea on what the security around all this is, but the concept sounds great. I’m not around a lot of people that have iPhone’s but maybe with this I’ll discover more! But if they are like me, I have my bluetooth radio turned off to conserve battery life. I would guess using this feature you would want to turn off your Wi-Fi or else your battery will be dead quick.
Accessories
Apple has opened up the API to include the dock connector. While similar to peer to peer you could work with other devices over bluetooth, the latency issue may mean you want to connect to the device through a cable. The examles that were shown were a blood pressure tool that any doctor’s office would use. You could get your reading shown on your iPhone and stored. Another demonstration was using a blood-sugar devices for people with diabetes.
They also showed how with a stero you could plug your iPhone in and see equalizer controls on your phone that can control the stereo, sounds cool, but even better along this vein is that they have enabled A2DP support. Now this is stereo bluetooth, so now you can use those wireless headphones or wireless speakers from like 30 feet away! This is much more interesting to me.
Maps
The maps app that Google help Apple build is incredible. Now they created an API to allow you to embed the complete functionality of the maps into an application. I can’t wait to see what comes out of this! Good news is that now Apple will allow turn-by-turn navigation apps, but the bad news is that they won’t let you use the Google maps. That means you would have to download all the map details with the app. However, the fact that the license now say’s it’s okay and you can use the core location API’s is pretty encouraging.
Push Notification
While there is no back ground processes since the battery life and user experience would suffer, the push notification stuff from late last year is now going to be a reality. The idea is that Apple always has a connection to every iPhone, which is amazing if there is more than 10 million of them out there! The app developers can send a single to Apple to push down to the devices. They can send a text bubble with a message that would have buttons that can open the app, they could send “badges”, which would be the little red number you sometimes see on top of an app’s icon, and they can trigger a sound down on the device.
This kind of thing would be great for IM’s (instant messengers) and other services for late breaking news, my only worry is can you get yourself into trouble getting flooded with these updates?
More API Enhancements
To round out a bit more of the new API changes, you can now email from any app. This is a global thing so app developers can allow you to create an email using the same standard email application on the phone. There is now an API to get into the iPod library for music and video, this could open up some interesting oppurtunities. They now have a “Shake API” which I’m not sure what you do with, and there are new Voice Chat API’s that you can use in games.
Over 100 New Features
Apple has of course added new features that help make this a very big update. Here are just a few I found very interesting
Cut, Copy and Paste
Ok, now now it’s here! I can’t wait to try this for myself to see how smooth it is. But the idea is that you can double tap on a single word or paragraph and the text would be highlighted with little grab dots. You can move these grab dots around to change the text you want to select. Then there will be a bubble above with the Cut and and Copy buttons on it.
Next you go to a blank area and double tap to bring up the bubble again, this time you have Paste available to you. This functionality works globally on the device, so any app can make use of it. For example you can copy HTML from the web and can even do image copying! Sounds simple but this is a big deal for the iPhone users out there. For the images, you can go into the photos app and go into a selection mode to let you pick mulitple images to copy, then you could go into something like an email and paste them in.
Landscape Keyboard
Now when sending text messages, writing email or making notes, when you turn the iPhone on it`s side you get the wide keyboard. I`ve learned to type with the normal one, but for Safari it works good for me landscape, so I can`t wait for this one, so how many words per minute I can get up to now!
Text Messaging
In the SMS app you can now forward single or multiple messages around, which could be very handy. Also with this is MMS support, or the ability to send multi media to another phone. Most phones have this and I think it would be great to take a photo on the phone and send it a friend. It shows up in a little bubble like a text message which is cool. For a lot of people I know they don`t have iPhone`s so their phones won`t let them check email the same way I can, so sending a picture like a text message will be great.
Voice Memo
There were other apps in the app store for this, but now Apple is adding their own that can record your voice for future reminders.
Calendar
The calendar was updated support CalDAV plus can now handle subscriptions, so you can subscribe to other peoples public calendars or holiday calendars or whatever. I sync my calendar through Gmail using their licensed version of ActiveSync so this is no biggy for me.
Spotlight
There is a new home screen just left of the normal home screen. You swipe to it and you are on spot light. Here you can type a search term in to find contacts, email (and even IMAP or exchange accounts where the mail is on the server still), calendars, iPod library and application titles. I`m very interested to see how fast this is, sounds really great for narrowing down what you want to find on your crowed iPhone.
Other
A couple other noteworthy items is Notes can be synced with a Mac or PC (obviously) but I don`t use notes that much and I`m not sure which programs they are syncing with. The iPod shake to shuffle feature has been added, I don`t run so this might be fun but I probably won`t use it. They added Wi-Fi auto logon, so you can save your credentials for hot spots and auto join the next time easily. There is also some improvements to Safari like anti-phising and general performance.
Conclusion
The beta of the software was available on the 17th, and you had to be a $99 USD member of the developer program to get it (enterprise people pay more). The upgrade will be free for 3G owners, and about $10 for iPod owners. A neat note is that 2G iPod Touch devices will suddenly get Bluetooth support with this upgrade.
What`s missing is the ability to record video and have flash support in Safari, but I`m sure that will be coming soon.
I can`t wait for this upgrade, I will be downloading the day it`s available. I don`t know exactly what date that will be, but Apple said look for it this summer!