Looks like a lot of nice new features coming in the iPhone OS 3.0 update. This also applies to the iPod Touch where possible, including A2DP.



Beta will be open to registered developers today, with ship date stated simply as "summer".

Sweet, palm supported IR beaming '98.

So, almost like a simple serial connection to talk to peripherals? Huh. I'm remembering the palm III again.

Well, blackberry invented this one, but Apple did promise it six months ago.

No comment.

Really? Now? When they've got cut and paste they can now put that stupid code in to the web viewing portal so much faster. MMS is the forefront of tech though, it must have been a challenge to implement.

Great! Another feature at the forefront of technology.

Ok, this one I like and was wanting on my windows mobile phone just the other day.

More catch up.

Sweet, I loved that feature of my Waypoint 200. Thanks eternalsun.

That'll go great with Leopard's notes functionality in mail. It's like they were made for each other. Two years apart.

Can someone send some Kool Aid? I obviously need some.

It is true that many of these features have been in various other platforms in some form or function for ages. The iPhone however didn't start life as a Palm III, or Windows Mobile phone, so Apple has had to build this functionality up. The clearly had a list of features they wanted, worked on them, then released the first iPhone. Some people bought it, and were happy with what it could do, thus returning cash back to Apple to invest in further work. They then iterated, released 2.0 and the iPhone 3G, and many more people bought it. And now the cycle continues. This is really no different then how any other company does things, including the device that started this community. 1.0 worked and the Mark 1 was a good start. 2.0 added a lot, along with the Mark 2 hardware.

The alternative would have been for Apple to hold on to all this tech, build everything in so some web site could show 500 checkboxes checked, and released it sometime in 2013.

Yes, this release is more of a 1.9 than a 3.0 but what can you do? No one else has a product that's even 1/100th of the iPhone all-around, so it's all moot.

IrDA beaming - tons of phones had this before Palm. You know who else had this? Apple on the Newton.

Guess who had serial communication before Palm? Apple. And everyone else.

Guess who doesn't have a touch-screen product out right now with any features at all? Palm. Reminds me of Apple three years ago.

Anyway, cut and paste is nice to move data between apps, but I would LOVE to see a feature NO ONE ever mentions. Shared datastore. In basic concept, a shared documents folder that can have additional sub-folders created by apps and can be locked with permissions and public/private key system.

This would give applications a good way to share data and a repository for documents other than photos (which is the only other read/write API-accessible universal repository available on the iPhone as far as I know). It would also allow apps to create share spaces to be used by select partner apps. This IMO, would be KILLER, especially for developers wanting to roll out multiple applications that might use the same types of data.

It would also provide the bedrock to considering this system a true computing "platform" given the ability to create and manipulate data within specific document objects. Like PDFs, Word Files, Text Files, etc.. Whatever.

I would have liked to see some type of backgrounding supported, but not so people can stuff arbitrary apps into the background or have all sorts of daemons running. I'd like to be able to have a particular app keep running while running the PHONE in the background. For instance, imagine how well your turn x turn GPS will work when you get a call or quickly need to check something else in another app?

Everyone is harping for full background app support but they don't know what they're talking about. They have yet to see how the Pre will handle any of this, but that's the system everyone's touting. Seems to me like it would be trivial to keep a web page in the background. Seeing as that's what Pre 'apps' are, I won't put much faith in it until I see it running and doing the (big) things that make this type of feature worthwhile.

USRobotics had a much easier time with the original Pilot, the device that became the Palm. They just had to look at what Apple had done, take out most of the good features, whip something up on fugly hardware with way less electronics, cobble together a wimpy little OS and then release. It took them a long time to go from the original Pilot to where they are now. For many years the development was extremely slow going and in fact less changed in five or so years than from one generation of Newton to the next.

The only thing that surprised me years back was that Microsoft didn't come in and clean Palm's clock. But after seeing multiple iterations of Windows Mobile I knew that was likely never to happen. They just didn't get it. Losing all applications and data on your PDA because your battery runs out is not a good design choice. Pathetic products, including the latest. Generally there's no upgrade path for WinMo devices either. At least with Palm many customers had the chance to update their OS.

Yes, you've got to start somewhere, cut and paste, MMS, syncing notes and tethering? Those aren't 3.0 features. They're 1.0 features. But then, I thought that an SDK was a 1.0 feature also.

It's a great phone, but every last 3.0 feature is a me too feature.

While I agree that these features would have been better received rolled into 2.0, they're not necessarily "Me Too" because many of them are just basic features. It's not about copying anyone or adding them because someone else has them. They're basic features that may have been intended all along but for one reason or other just didn't get the priority to make it into past releases. The perfect example is Cut and Paste. It's rather basic, but in my opinion, not of dire importance. Now that it's here, it may very well be better implemented than it is elsewhere.

You won't find Spotlight elsewhere, will you? You don't see API-based Push notification on other products that I'm aware of. API support for Google maps? Seamless in-app purchases?

Frankly, I couldn't have cared less if MMS were left out completely. Not a compelling feature once you have email. It's just a money-grabbing feature for carriers like SMS.

Like it or not, things take time. You can just throw a ton of people onto something thinking it can be done much faster. That's how MS seems to operate and look at the junk they produce - and how long it ends up taking WinMo is at least 9 years old by my count and it still sucks balls. If you want to talk about slow development, really, look also at Palm. It's taken Palm over 13 years to get to the Pre. And it's still not out.

Say the iPhone sucks and it's slow to debut features, whatever. At the end of the day it still sucks less than everything else and has ramped more features in a much shorter span than anyone else. It's also completely changed the mobile/handheld industry forever. The only other company that I can say has made that much of an impact has been RIM. Neither MS nor Palm has ever done anything significant in the mobile space yet.

It's not just "a web page". It's an HTML5 web page with a JavaScript hardware API. And realize that the specification of HTML5 includes a SQL-based storage backend and an offline web application cache.

I'm a tad annoyed that as an iPod Touch owner this upgrade isn't free. I'll still be buying it I'll finally be able to use A2DP with my car stereo, although I'm not sure how the stereo will cope with using my iPod for audio and my phone for handsfree. Maybe I'll just have to buy an iphone.

The HP 48G/GX series calculators had it since 1990

I can see it from both sides, but free is always better than plopping down more money on a device you've already paid for of course. What bites is that a lot of these things are enhancements that one might not expect to pay additional money for had they been part of desktop software.

Rolling them into a 3.0 product however makes the whole thing a new OS and therefore you can compare it to moving from one desktop OS to another, which always comes with upgrade fees for the Mac.

I suppose it can be argued to death on both sides. The ultimate point is that developers wishing to take advantage of new features must rely on customers making the paid upgrade. That's the part I fear most of all. If for not other reason than to stimulate upgrades, Apple should make the update available for free.

They can do without the extra $150 million (give or take a few million) in upgrade fees, especially since moving to the new version would enable in-app sales that are likely to surpass that quite easily.

Bitt, until the Pre is out, all its apps are nothing more than static web pages. It's a total unknown and they can change dramatically what's in the product versus what they've announced. I'll believe it when I see it. Most importantly, people will judge it when it's tested. Right now it just doesn't exist. And I doubt for a second it was any factor whatsoever in Apple's design and implementation choices for iPhone OS 3.0 as Apple-haters are speculating.

Um, okay. Why don't you wait to judge it, too?


Idiom fail


That said, it behooves them to have a new version come out when their competitor's product comes out. Other than that, though, I can't see any reason why they would change their strategy.

That's a fair point, but I'm judging the company mostly. It doesn't matter whether they come out with a Pre, Pro, Centro 5 or whatever. I'm super-critical of Apple as well, including over the iPhone. I'm just quite confident that given Palm's track record and financial situation that their product line isn't going to be the big hit some people think it will, regardless of what it's made up of.

Apple stuff is generally a long time in the pipe, but I have no idea if we'll see new hardware this summer. I'm sure there's at least one person here that does know one way or the other.