iPhone 3.0 and Why I Want It
Last week, Apple introduced the new iPhone 3.0 software that's hitting the public this summer. Looking back at the launch of the original iPhone, I'm wondering if there's anything that Apple is still missing. On the hardware side, we got our 3G network and GPS. On our software side, what is there to want?
The new iPhone 3.0 software update finished up my list of requests for Apple. I'll no longer have to struggle to view picture messages sent to me online in a poor flash browser. Sharing photos with people without e-mail will finally be easy. Read on as I sum up the changes.
New Features
The new set of features included in iPhone 3.0 is a long list, but I'll condense it into the "what's important to me" list. I'm probably a fair representation of most casual iPhone users, so hopefully I'll hit what you want to hear.
- Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) - Send and recieve pictures, audio, contacts, and locations from others without email. Thank god this finally came. However, for you original iPhone users, no such luck on this one. The radios changed, and MMS won't work on the original.
- Forward SMS - Now you can easily spam others with annoying "Send this to 12 friends before midnight or you'll never find a true love" schemes. Excellent.
- Copy and Paste - You can now copy and paste text between iPhone applications. This only took them two years?
- GPS Applications - We're finally going to see some turn by turn navigation for the iPhone 3G. This was something that caught my attention when I was first buying my 3G. Took them long enough to open it up to developers.
- Tethering - Hopefully we'll see tethering enabled at last. That is, being able to plug your iPhone into your computer and use it to share internet capabilities. Carriers will probably end up charging more than we're willing to pay for it though.
- Landscape Keyboards - Tilt your iPhone and you're bound to find the majority of the standard iPhone applications now work both portrait and landscape. And with these new landscape applications come the much beloved landscape keyboards. Praise the lord for faster texting and emailing. Again, two years?
- Spotlight Search - Search your entire iPhone for whatever it is you're looking for. This'll probably end up absolutely fantastic when you're looking for that text message where someone told you their address, etc.
Outside of these changes, Apple did update a lot of other stuff, especially for developers. Expect to see a lot of cool apps designed specifically for accessories you might have purchased for your iPhone.
Expect to get iPhone 3.0 on your phone sometime this summer. Hopefully Apple won't find too many major issues with the beta they recently released. I want this new software ASAP.
Permanent Link · Published on March 21st, 2009