iPhone OS 3.0 and what it really means to me
I know that every blogger and their dog is probably posting today about the iPhone OS upgrade, and every avid iPhone user watched it all announced live on the Apple webcast yesterday. Hopefully not everyone did, hopefully some of us were busy celebrating St. Patrick’s day, and even it if wasn’t a holiday yesterday some of us just have more important things to do than follow an announcement for a beta software release. I didn’t watch it live myself I was at lunch with my buddies, but I picked up on the highlights via Twitter #iphone as they came out (we were all interested, I’m not that anti-social!) So I’ve had a day to take it all in and digest, there really is a lot to it (over 100 new features I think). This isn’t a review of the iPhone 3.0 OS or even a summary of it, it’s just me highlighting a few of the new features it has to offer that I think are going to make a big impact for me:
Improved SMS Texting
This is biggest for me, this is HUGE! I am a big texter, and when I made the switch to the iPhone I had no idea about it’s lack of texting features, this was the hardest pill for me to swallow about the iPhone and the one area where it went in the wrong direction for me. Yes the conversation bubbles the iPhone has are nice but only if they improve upon the standard SMS features of a regular phone, not deteriorate from them. The amount of times I have wanted to forward a text or just forgot to include someone on the list and have had to type the whole thing out again from memory, ugh. Well enough of my negativity regarding that, it’s all in the past now :) Oh yeah and this upgrade will include now being able to send MMS (multimedia text message – pictures, videos etc.), not such a big deal to me not have that feature but I’m sure I’ll be glad to have it back.
Landscape mode for all Apple apps
A no-brainer really, native iPhone apps like Mail, Notes, and SMS are the most amongst the common apps we use on the iPhone and should have always had landscape mode (like when you turn the iPhone sideways and it gives you a wider view), but they didn’t. Now they will, yay!
Cut, Copy and Paste
Torn about whether this feature will have an immediate impact on me or not. The only time I’ve ever found myself wanting to copy and paste is when I want to resend a text message cos there is no stupid forward functionality! Now that it’s no longer an issue who knows? I guess there have been times when I would’ve liked to copy&paste something from a webpage I was reading to do a search. I think because I never had a phone with this feature and I knew it didn’t have it before I bought it, coupled with the fact typing a couple of search keywords isn’t exactly time consuming, I’ve never found myself frustrated over the the fact it’s missing. I’m sure over time I will start to treat the iPhone more like a netbook, rather than just a phone on steroids, because of this added feature.
1000 new API calls
The developer in me has to list this as one of the hugest new features. Will it make an immediate impact for any of us? No because it takes time for us developers to learn the new API (actually it might make an immediate impact on me if I find time to start learning it), come up with sick new apps to create, and then get them built and up on the App Store. But when we are talking about 1000 new calls you can guarantee some crazy new apps that will hugely impact your life are a coming!
There’s no official release date yet, just sometime this summer.
