iphone3.0

On March 17, Apple presented the blueprint for iPhone OS 3.0, the next version of the world's most advanced mobile platform. In addition to previewing its innovative features, Apple gave members of the iPhone Developer Program immediate access to the iPhone OS 3.0 software beta and an updated Software Development Kit (SDK) with over 1,000 completely new APIs.

For iPhone owners, it just keeps getting better. When iPhone OS 3.0 arrives this summer, it will introduce over 100 new features, including the ability to:

Search your iPhone

If you want to search on the iPhone, you can-if what you want to search is your own contacts list. If you can't quite remember which e-mail message had your friend's phone number in it or which week in October you have a dentist's appointment or the name of the rep for a company you work with, you're out of luck. Which is why it's time for the iPhone to get a phone-wide search feature, one that will trawl through any data that an app has deemed searchable-and yes, that means third-party apps too-and bring you back a list of results.

Cut, copy, and paste

It's been arguably the most requested feature of the iPhone OS since day one. Apple's tried to predict where people would want to use copy-and-paste and provide suitable workarounds, like being able to mail links from Safari. But anyone who's ever had to transfer a scrap of arbitrary text between two applications (taking a quote from a Web page to Mail, for example) has eventually had to resort to the poor man's copy-and-paste: jotting a note down on a piece of paper and then laboriously typing it back in. It's time to finally bring the iPhone's capabilities up to par with the 1984's Mac OS in this department.

Send photos, contacts, audio files, and location via MMS

Any iPhone user who's ever received a picture message from a friend's phone or tried to send one has probably found themselves bemused by what should be a seemingly simple task. Despite being an incredibly "smart" phone in many contexts, multimedia messaging is one arena where the iPhone falls behind even the cheapest phones on offer from most carriers. Yes, MMS (short for Multimedia Messaging Service) is a money-making bonanza for cell-phone carriers and we'd all be better off being able to e-mail pictures to each other, but until that day arrives, at least give us the option to spend our money unwisely.

Read and compose email and text messages in landscape

Viewing your screen horizontally is available on many third-party apps for the iPhone, but landscape mode is only available on three Apple applications: Safari, YouTube, and iPod. There are a number of advantages to having landscape mode available in all apps. For example, the text and images are significantly larger when viewed in landscape. That's advantageous for the accuracy of double-tapping on text and images, as well as making the experience more enjoyable if your eyesight isn't what it used to be. The keyboard is also much larger in landscape mode, which helps those of us with big mitts to make less mistakes when typing. The larger layout gives Apple the opportunity to add more speciality keys too, like the .com button used in Safari. Having landscape is just one of those things you figure a device like the iPhone should naturally have.

Related tag:
iPhone SDK for iPhone OS 3.0 beta