Apple previews iPhone OS 3.0, adds copy and paste, Spotlight search, plenty more
By Paul Miller 
posted Mar 17th 2009 12:53PM
posted Mar 17th 2009 12:53PM
App and developer functionality (more here)
- Peer-to-peer connectivity over Bluetooth for gaming and other info-swapping.
- Paid apps will have the potential to be subscription fee-based, and can include optional paid content that can be bought from right inside the app.
- Developers can now build apps that call out to Google Maps, and can also finally bring Apple-blessed turn-by-turn to the phone.
- Devs can also connect with hardware accessories over in their apps now, such as a blood pressure monitor -- or perhaps a keyboard? Connectivity works through the dock connector or over Bluetooth.
- Long-promised push functionality will at last be included, but apps won't run in the background.
- Developers can add streaming video and audio to their apps, along with in-game voice use.
- Cut, copy and paste. At last! You can shake the phone to undo and redo the action, and it works with both text and photos, allowing Mail to send multiple photos at a time. (more here)
- MMS, along with forward and delete for multiple messages. (more here)
- A2DP stereo Bluetooth.
- Unlocked Bluetooth functionality on 2G iPod touch. (more here)
- Spotlight has been added to a new home screen page to the left of existing pages, allowing for universal search on the phone. (more here)
- Tethering is built into 3.0, and Apple will work with carriers on that -- who will have the last say on its implementation, most likely.
- App Store will be available in 77 countries.
- Parental controls for TV shows, movies and App Store apps.
- Auto-login for WiFi hotspots.
- A new app called Voice Memos which lets you record notes and reminders.
- A revised Stocks app, with news stories and a landscape view.
- Landscape view available for Mail, Text and Notes.
- CalDAV support has been added to Calendar, along with subscriptions support in the .ics format.
- Apple's major apps have all been expanded with search functionality.
- Note syncing to Mac and PC.
- YouTube account support.
- Form auto-fill.
- Phishing protection.
- Shake the shuffle iPod playback.
Blood pressure monitor FTW!!!!
Something for Steve Jobs illnes?
So now we can expect medical equipment to have "Made for iPod" stickers? lol
Umm... no. Works with iPhone stickers.
http://a248.e.akamai.net/7/248/2041/1445/store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Images/madeforcombo.gif
...and this app will monitor your pace maker.. Oh, a call one se... NURSE NURSE HE'S HAVING A HEART ATTACK!!!
Well that was boring as shit... did they really need to hold a press event for this?
No new model
A handful of features that should have been included since launch
Won't even be available until some vague point later this summer.
Sorry I wasn't there in person... perhaps my loud snoring would have gotten my point across more eloquently then words can.
But not unless the pressure-cuff doesn't have the Apple chip!
@richf2001
The iPhone's features stay active when you receive a call. fail...
I guess I'm the only one that's excited about this update, then.
You guys are still forgetting that the things that iPhone does do (ok, so there are 1000 things it doesn't do), it does better than anyone else.
I'm still wondering, why iPhone was considered revolutionary at the first place. It's OS is still catching up with features.
Good Luck to you iPhone and this might be a happy moment for Apple Fans.
But for the rest; it's still doesn't have bought something revolutionary!
oh but wait, you must pay your subscription fee for the measurement to be done, and an extra DLC fee for the actual number to be displayed. oh well, apple strikes again.
i kid i kid, eventhough i dont like the company as a whole, i must say this is one of their better products.
btw did anyone else notice all this apple and Google coming together now. what are they upto, destroying Microsoft? an enemy's enemy is an ally? The war has just begun.
Video Record Plz !
and copy and paste !
Wow.
Cut and Paste.
Truly an advanced operating system.
Copy and Paste Functionality
Congratulations. You now compare to Windows CE.
Wow. So copy and paste is the most important feature a PHONE can have, bar none? Like, more important than being a phone? I like the Win CE comparison. Say, how's Win CE doing these days? Oh right. Gee, I guess copy and paste isn't as important as you think it is after all. If it were, Win CE would rule the universe. Right?
Even after the iPhone gets copy and paste, people still bitch about it. Unbelievable. What's the matter, run out of excuses to hate the iPhone?
So since the iPhone just NOW gets the ability to copy and paste, I guess I'll have to wait 5-6 years for Flash.
How's Win CE doing?
Well if you mean the WinMo version about 10% better than the iPhone.
@Zak
You're an idiot. Copy and paste isnt a necessecary feature for a phone really.... but the iPhone is a smartphone isnt it? and it is/was the only smartphone without that. Its pretty beneficial for the iphone to have copy and paste, seeing as it has a good web browser and copying text is useful on the internet. i copy and paste text to people quite a lot, its great for sending people movie times and wiki entries :)
WinCE is doing fine. It may not be the smartphone choice of everyone, but some people like me like it, and it actually works for them! (*GASP*) Im sorry to say but my phone has crashed though... the other week was the second time :(. Not bad for a TyTn II that ive had for just over a year now though right? and i think i deserved it after not deleting 47000 text messages :) And id like to see iPhones run portable apps that McDonalds, Woolworths, Shipping companys ATMs just to name a few use. i see these things on a daily basis, and they work flawlessy. WinCE is a platform for a solution, and if executed right is very good at what it does.
Oh, and i still have excuses to hate the iPhone, iTunes for one :)
Forget it, Zak; this is not a day for rationality and reason. This is a day for the iHaters, admirably lead by Engadget's super-snarky (and riddled with errors) liveblog. Apparently the haters contain a lot of bile and they are going to spew it forth, along with the usual misinformation and misunderstandings they have been peddling in the comments section for more than a year. Oh, and if people actually desire WinCE in this age of iPhones, Pres and Androids (as it appears some do) well then ... they deserve everything they're going to get! Go for it, boyos, you're not hurting anyone but yourself!
Windows CE will pwn the iPhone
Well, there is already video recording capability.
Turn by turn.... very nice, Apple.
Dude I have that on my freakin Razr V3xx. Copy and paste too for that matter.
but who the hell want to be seen with a Rzr in their hand for crying out loud! except for loosers like you.... lol
Who is still insecure enough that they care what phone they're seen with.
lol im still rocking my 3 year old verizon razr and like said above its been able to do all the stupid shit the iphone does for years.
and yet again apple will charge ipod owners for the update, WHAT A JOKE!!
@Feelinggood:
I take offense to your scathing remarks.
I have a RAZR V3xx and I love it.
If you guys truly believe your Razrs are more advanced than the iPhone 3G then you're truly lost. I went from a RAZR to an iPhone 3G and thanks god I did. I don't know how I survived with a razr.
@ grull27
Yet you somehow did, grull27, you somehow did...
Turn By Turn, when it eventually delivers some proper GPS navigation applications is the highlight of the "big" features announced. However, I do tend find the majority of what was announced to be rather uninteresting, not least because most of it should have been delivered on Day 1. Still, I am interested to see what developers can do with the new APIs and I suspect that is going to be of more long-term importance.
took them fucking long enough.
Whoa wow revolutionary "peer-to-peer"
You mean I could send a file to another phone via bluetooth? that is so crazy new tech....
sarcasm aside my moto razr had that years ago....
keep on playing catch-up Apple aside from your UI you really need to get up to date.
Your Razr has 8-16 GB of memory built in? Ability to browse web pages better than any other Mobile Phone (I guess I answered that there), standard headphone jack, WiFi, a large touch screen, App support even close to on-par with the iPhone, etc etc etc.
How you can compare one feature to a feature in another phone and think that makes the phone "playing catch-up" is truly beyond comprehension. Even if Apple is just NOW adding Copy/Paste, better Turn-By-Turn (which it had already, it just wasn't as good as what they are proposing), and so on, they are still making it many times more usable than anything else out there.
Its not just about having the feature, its how well it works. My last phone, a HTC Titan, had Turn By Turn and Copy/Paste, but the GPS apps sucked, or were a PITA to install or find maps for, and the Copy/Paste wasnt even close to as good as what they are proposing in the iPhone, and had pretty limited support in most applications I used.
So, before more of you write this stupid ass stuff, actually think for a minute not about what they added that someone else has, but find problems in how they implemented it, or you just waste everyone's time.
@Derek
I like most people have moved on ages ago from the RAZR you missed my point. I'll spell it out for you: A very dated dumb phone from years ago had functionality that the iPhone has been lacking to date. I could send MMS, copy Paste etc. on the Razr, forward a sms etc etc.. All in a well implemented OS that functioned well for its day.
I have had an iphone and found it to be a piece of nice looking crap that would perhaps have been fine if I had not had other smart phones first (I wouldn't know what was missing).
I now use S60 and Blackberry and find them both to be much better. Though the UI is not a pretty (though just as functional). Plus I can have a non crippled feature set that works and are better at making and receiving calls. I found the iphone to be lousy in weak signal areas and to have less than stellar incoming and outgoing sound quality.
Apple has met some of their limitations with this update though still the iphone is insufficient for my needs as a business user.
I am going to side with Derek on this one.
Knock the iPhone all you want, it is still the best phone on the market is just getting better. It's packed full of untapped potential and this OS update just proves that point. This "3.0" OS is just what they could come up with in a years time, give them another year and a new device and show me a phone that will compete with Apple and their 3 solid years of mobile phone developing.
All I have to say is, when Apple says they want to build something, they don't just build it and sell it, they build it, test it, make sure it's the best, show it off, build up anticipation, then after you are craving it so bad you can taste it, they release it, and finally when you get your hands on it, it's the best piece of hardware/software meshed together that you have ever had. Cause Apple doesn't build the software and expects another company to take advantage of it, nor does Apple build the hardware and pick an OS from a pile of them and try to make it work with a device design, they take both hardware and software and mold them together into one device and sell an experience. And you start that experience when you first remove the cover of the to of the box and the first thing you see is the device itself.
But honestly, if you can't respect the work, design, and dedication people put into a product of this caliber you shouldn't be carrying one anyways. It really doesn't matter when the iPhone got these features all that matters is that it got them, and it's just an expansion onto an already great platform.
Sorry you feel the way you do about the iPhone.
@7egend
"Knock the iPhone all you want, it is still the best phone on the market is just getting better."
Why? certainly in terms of functionality and specifications it is not.
I had one and IMO the only thing worth saying it was the best for was the UI (well the web browsing was good too) the rest was just not even close.
Typing anything on it got annoying even with practice my big fingers and lack of tactile feedback got in the way of typing (maybe this will be better with the landscape setup).
Now if Apple came out with a tablet using touch and none of the crippling.... I would buy one and keep my Blackberry....
I knew the phone's limitation when I bought it...all this is extra stuff for me.
Also, the RAZR was a shitty shitty phone and even worse multimedia device at that.
Saying that your phone has been able to do that for years is a bit of a stretch. Some of the very first palms, with the terribly low resolution one color screens technically could share files wirelessly.... does that mean that it's the same thing that's happening here? Even if you had a phone that could share files with each other over bluetooth, what they were saying is a FAR richer experience than simply sending some small file to the other phone. Most of Apple's genius with this phone is the open ended app store that any developer can make things for. Allowing multiplayer is going to change the phone world once again. Like the iPhone or not, it has driven the phone market faster than it has ever driven before. There's been some innovative phones in the past, and they do come out with new things every once in a while, but it was just ridiculously slow on innovation.
Second point I want to make is how impressive it is how quickly Apple became a market leader in cell phone technology. It's been kind of bumpy, there's been some features that should have been there all along, but Apple went from 0 cell phones, to the number one selling phone in the world....... in 2 years. I tend to agree with people who are saying that this press release wasn't a huge deal, and it's mostly stuff that should have been there all along, but considering Apple's been in the cell phone business for less than 2 years, I'd say it's still pretty impressive. The other thing that is really remarkable about this is that these updates are coming to everyone that already has a phone. What other phone company has ever done that? You buy a phone, you're stuck with it for 2 years, then you get the newer model. That newer model might have new features, but since when has the phone company offered a free update for you that adds a bunch of new features to your existing phone?
Third point I want to make is about the $9.95 charge for the iPod touch users. I think it's a little annoying that they keep charging to update those things, but it is a little irritating to me to hear people bitch about what a rip off Apple is by charging just under $10 for a software update, but everyone with the phone is paying a fortune to AT&T every single month, and that's just the status quo. I've worked with both companies a LOT with the iPhone, and I can honestly say that 99.9% of the problems seen with the phone are AT&T's fault... but we give them money every month.
My point with AT&T, and every carrier for that matter, is that the iPhone, the Blackberry's and a whole lot of other phones have advanced pretty close to as far as they can without the carrier companies getting their act together and actually offering some advances of their own.
The point of Heathen is that dumbphones from ages ago had a certain basic functionality that now gets introduced as something special. Guess what all that´s in OS3.0 isn´t new, all other smartphones, even plenty of dumbphones have this already.
Further claiming that Apple is #1 is simply wrong, Apple sold 10 to 15 milion phones while Nokia sold 1.4 billion phones. Even in the smartphone segment is Apple not number 1. I won´t say that Apple didn´t introduce a bad phone but its far from special. Even the idea of smartphone I feel isn´t truly right since the iPhone doesn´t support many basic functions, and one of the most important to be actually smart would be multi-tasking. To me the iPhone isn´t anything else but a dumbphone as long as there is no multitasking support and the tons of basic functions aren´t avaible yet. Yes it´s touchie, but so is the Prada, the Prada won´t give you the same experience maybe as users claim but in the end they are both as smart, or stupid as you want to claim it.
Further the worst of all is that Apple even considers to let users pay for basic functions which should be there since introduction. There is no excuse in this, Apple should´t even consider doing this.
@JZ
Background Processes are running on the phone all the time, and FW 3.0 introduces Push Notifications which is an additional background process. Now Multi-Tasking is a whole different thing cause it is physically impossible to do on the phone. No matter how much you want it, or think you want it, it's not feasible. Multi-Tasking requires the ability to run applications side by side on the same screen at the same time.
Now here you would probably say the Palm Pre allows multi-tasking, but that isn't multi-tasking, it is having multiple "windows/cards" opened on your desktop and they are merely minimized, by sliding one of the cards over you are minimizing one, and maximizing another, not once on the Palm Pre do you ever multi-task. Yes application switching is much faster due to the process already being initialized, but that's because the Palm Pre apps are very lightweight compared to the iPhone apps.
Also, Multi-Tasking is highly over-rated. If you are trying to do 2 things at once that means 100% of your attention is being divided by 2, so you are only putting 50% of your effort into each task, which leads to mistakes, and mistakes cost money. Sure people will say they can multi-task and do this and do that all at the same time while juggling 20 bowling pins and holding a spoon on their nose.
But to get to my point, multi-tasking is useless on a mobile device of this size, on a tablet, yes where there is plenty of screen real estate, on a phone where the device is big enough for one app at a single time, no.
Keep wishing and hoping for multi-tasking capabilities, cause they aren't coming and if they do you won't be able to take advantage of them efficiently.
If I could only use my bluetooth headphones...
They did some research and found that it wouldn't be "good for the consumer".
It's not "good for the consumer" if Apple can't get a licensing cut from A2DP headsets and speakers. Don't worry, in iPhone 4.0 Apple will introduce iAi2iDiP.
But you can, don't you feel like a fucking moron now.... Anything else MMS? Copy Paste? No? Ok
@ Dillinger
No you can't have MMS or A2DP if you have a 1st gen iPhone.
The iPhone: saving lives one at a time.
What a revolutionary update to a revolutionary phone.
Yes to Apple ~
You joking, right? I don't see any revolutionary changes here.
Another Apple Fanatic.
Just maybe he was referring to the medical app targeted at diabetics? Not sure any other phone can do that.