Apple raises the competition bar with iPhone OS 3.0 (part. 1)

For the past 24-hours, the blogosphere is flooded with news surrounding the new iPhone OS 3.0 software, which just been introduced by Apple on Tuesday at the company’s Town Hall in Cupertino campus.

There’s no doubt most of you, especially you iPhone owners, were following the live coverage at tech blogs all over the net. You were all staring anxiously at your monitor screen, waiting impatiently one after another new features being unveiled, hoping that each of our own wish list of features will come true in the new iPhone OS 3.0 software.

But unfortunately, even though Apple did deliver most of the missing features that should be in the first place since iPhone was introduced, not all of the users’ wish lists are granted. Including two of the 6 features that I predicted from my last post, but I’m going to discuss them later at the bottom of this post.

So if you’ve missed the iPhone OS 3.0 preview, or maybe you fell asleep half way through the preview, or just maybe you can’t get enough of the upcoming software for your iPhone; let’s run them down again by the most compelling new features:

Cut, Copy & Paste

Yes, finally! General iPhone users can now stop whining about how their cutting-edge mobile device can’t even do one of the most basic features in today’s smartphones, and not just that, Apple also gives extra functionalities to this feature.

Users can cut, copy and paste for text and photos. The new software allows users to select multiple photos and send them through Mail, works the same way for text messages too. The feature goes for iPhone’s Safari as well, can be used for copying URLs or the content of the web.

To start the feature; double tap the screen to show the option to cut, copy and paste. Then drag the start and end point over the text or photos you want, double tap again or tap on the action button. It is said, you can use a large rectangle that can be moved around to include the whole paragraphs at a time.

MMS

Another basic feature for nowadays smartphone finally will become available too in iPhone 3G, but not for the first generation of iPhone due to hardware limitation. Not much to tell right now besides that you can now send and receive multimedia messages (photos, videos, voice recordings, etc).

And yet again, Apple gives MMS a cool ability: send messages in the background, meaning users can type the second message while waiting for the first one to send. Also the ability to forward and delete multiple messages. Not to be forgotten; the iPhone OS 3.0 allows users to undo or redo the typing.

Spotlight

This is one new feature that no one ever see coming, in fact Apple seems listening to the users’ complaint about how troublesome it is to flick upon pages of apps or notes just to find the one they’re looking for. So Apple decided to bring the Spotlight search on Mac OS X into iPhone OS 3.0, it is accessible by flicking to the right from iPhone home screen, the Spotlight page is indicated by a magnifying-glass icon.

User will be presented with an open search box, typing in the key words will search for specific emails, apps, contacts, and any data within apps. When Spotlight can’t find the emails you’re looking for, it’ll continue to search the mail server over the net. The iPhone’s Spotlight works as mini universal search engine, and also act as a quick app launcher. Nifty, yet pretty awesome.

Voice Memo

Apple is including an app that lets you record voice memos, trim the records, and then sent them through Mail or MMS.

To tell you the truth, it feels like Apple is taking out an app which 3rd party developers can make for a living by include it as a native feature in the iPhone OS 3.0, but then at the same time Apple is like giving users a good reason to make the most of the new MMS feature. Cheers or boo? Aw, shucks. Whom I’m foolin’ rite? ~LOL~

Landscape keyboard mode

Apple finally agrees that writing long emails or text messages in normal mode is indeed so tiresome, so now the iPhone OS 3.0 will permit landscape keyboard in key apps such as: Mail, Stocks, Notes and Messages. Happy? Oh, you betcha! ;-D

The little tid-bits

• A2DP Stere Bluetooth; not available for first gen iPhone due to hardware limitation.
• Tethering; will be built into iPhone OS 3.0 but depends on wireless carriers to let this feature available or not.
• iPod Touch (2ndGen); will get unlocked Bluetooth and must pay $9.95 to get the software update.
• The iPhone OS 3.0 software will be released around summer this year.

There are many other new features that I couldn’t possibly list all of them here, but you can head on to Engadget’s page for the comprehensive features that will be in iPhone OS 3.0 software update. Engadget has done a great job in separating the features based on functionalities for users and developers.

And as for the feature that is strange enough not to be included in the new iPhone OS 3.0 is the theme option to customized the look and feel of your lovely iPhone, one of the compulsive reasons why users all around the world want to jailbreak their iPhone. But perhaps Apple will shed more light on the ability to change theme when the iPhone OS 3.0 SDK has reached final version, until then jailbroken iPhones are going to be growing bigger in numbers no matter how tight the security is in the new software update.

Lastly, the second missed feature that everyone have been expecting for in iPhone OS 3.0: the multitasking ability, it’s not exactly not present but Apple decided to use the long delayed Push Notification from iPhone OS 2.0. I’m going to get more into this Push Notification feature in the next post, so stay tune! ;-)

The iPhone OS 3.0 screenshots are courtesy of Apple Insider & Engadget.