iPhone OS 3.0

[Libra Monkee]

Blurb.

Well, at least we all got a little warning this time: Apple today announced plans to preview the latest version of its iPhone software--OS 3.0--on March 17th. The company will be holding a press conference to detail the new software that day, starting prompt (after a little Coldplay and/or John Mayer, we assume) at 10 AM PST. This is only an "advance preview of what [Apple is] building," aimed likely at letting developers get a jump on things and just generally whetting everyone else's appetites.

Reference

[Sabre]

Well this should be interesting!

[complacent]

Of all the days! Really??!?!

dotsonamothafunkinpage.

[ElZorro]

Sounds like the update will be free for iPhone, but $5 for Touch users... :-/ We'll see what it brings.

[Osiros]

I anticipate the same thing the previous OS releases have brought:

Months of anticipation, countless hundreds of web page views of rumors from well regarded sources telling us that MMS, bluetooth profiles, landscape text, video, and application push notifications are finally upon us, an incredible build-up to download day, and then the crushing letdown of of the readme opening to tell us that this releases features "bug fixes."

Please please please let me be surprised by this one.

[complacent]

Don't be so jaded!

I'm honestly curious to see what is coming.

Given their popularity, they'll probably have to take a stronger stab at the enterprise. This means more features usually.

(for the love of FSM! Search, copy+paste, mms, bluetooth, landscape enable EVERY typing app, etc - i'm getting tired of hacking my way into yet another apple device.)

/fanboi

[Osiros]

Latest rumors a la Kevin Rose (whose accuracy when it comes to the jesusphone leaves a bit to be desired so keep that in mind) have completely confirmed copy/paste and killed any hopes of multitasking and video. He's also said that his "contact" has stated that they've done everything to negate the features of the coming Palm Pre....which is strange because the Pre has multitasking and video....so round and round and round we go.

Best we can do is hang tight till the 17th and hope for the best. Now, where did I hide my little jar of optimism?

[chicken n waffles]

hell at this point i'd be happy with just native copy/paste and landscape ability for typing apps.

and yeah it'd be nice if they un-raped the phone's bluetooth ability. what is this... verizon?!

[Mr Kleen]

well, they've got till 10 May to get this thing perfected...

[Osiros]

and yeah it'd be nice if they un-raped the phone's bluetooth ability. what is this... verizon?!

Well said. One of the things I was really looking forward to when I switched to att from verizon was phones that weren't crippled out of the box. The fact that the BT profiles on the phone are the way they are is highly irritating.

[Libra Monkee]

Ye olde rumormill be grindin again. Gyar!

iPhone 3.0 to have copy and paste, Pre-like features -- but no background apps

[complacent]

I'll believe it when I see it.

That being said, although I've resolved most of the shortcomings of the platform through jailbreaking and cydia, it would be nice not to have to do it this way.

[WRXWagon2112]

Looks like at least one of your wishes has come true:

Cut and paste comes to the iPhone

After about 10,000,000 requests, Apple has finally given in and delivered the super-basic feature that the iPhone has been missing since day 1: cut and paste. Took you jerks long enough.

Here's how it works: you double tap on a word to present a cut, copy, paste popup. Two draggable icons appear for customizing the selection. Double tap in an empty space to bring up the cut, copy and paste bubble and paste it in. Double tap again to select again, select entire block of text and paste again. Easy as pie.

You hold your finger down on an entire paragraph to select it. If it's got rich formatting, such as links or bold text, it'll copy it all for you. You can copy and paste across all apps, including web content. To undo, simply shake the phone.

It looks like they really did it right this time. I wonder why it took so damn long?

--Alan

[Osiros]

actually, I've been sitting here reading tweets from the announcement and drooling the entire time. They've really done some great things with this version....it's going to make the phone much much better. Assuming we don't have to wait a year for the release I'm counting this as an epic win for them.

[zaxrex]

Looks like your jar of optimism rolled off the counter and broke, slathering you from head to toe with its contents.

[Mr Kleen]

I'm not sure that releasing features in 3.0 that should have been included in 1.0 counts as an "epic" win.

[Osiros]

that sounded oddly sexual...but yes...consider me slathered.

On review: good point Gabe, but I'm still happy. This was the one happy thing that happened to me all day. Please don't take it away from me.

[Mr Kleen]

I must admit that landscape keyboard, MMS and copy/paste went a long way to addressing my personal issues with the jPhone.

[ElZorro]

IF the release actually includes all of that stuff, and IF it comes out on time, I'll be impressed.

[Libra Monkee]

OS 3.0 Walkthrough

http://cdn-static.viddler.com/flash/sim ... ey=3c41a6e

[complacent]

I'm not sure that releasing features in 3.0 that should have been included in 1.0 counts as an "epic" win.

I find a lot of the issues people take with the iphone to be, um.. interesting.

I often remind people that they've been making phones for about two years now (give or take, more like 18 months in reality)

How long have Palm, Motorola, HTC, Samsung, Nokia, etc been making phones? Quite a bit longer.

I'm inclined to give a product like iphone/iphoneOS a little time to mature. At two years old, I'd consider it to be a very young platform.

Did people renounce MS Windows just because they released ME edition? No, of course not. Christ, they've been doing iterations of WinMobile for almost 20 years now and they still can't get it right!

I'm not singling you out at all Gabe, I'm simply using some of the comments here to help illustrate what is in my mind a common misconception about the platform in general as well as a common short sightedness regarding the smartphone industry as a whole. People seem awful quick to forget. Then I ask them to grab an old iPaq phone, or one of the first Treo devices. Even Google's own jesus phone has had its share of teething problems. Or what about the first crackberry pagers that were released? Good products take time to develop and mature, plain and simple.

Bottom line - I'm excited to see the platform mature. I'm also even more excited to see what the competitors will develop in the coming months and years. I'm really, really believing that "mobile convergence" and integration into a truly wireless digital lifestyle is gaining some serious ground... I'm looking forward to innovation and breakthroughs in the near future from the likes of Google and Microsoft. These are certainly neat-o times for mobile geeks.

(As a an apple fanboi, I also believe that they've done an awful lot in an awful short period of time. A reeeeeeeally short time.)

[Mr Kleen]

if you start a new car company in 2009 there will be certain features that people will expect on a car released in 2010. even though your company is only a year old your car will need these features.

[Libra Monkee]

Did people renounce MS Windows just because they released ME edition? No, of course not. Christ, they've been doing iterations of WinMobile for almost 20 years now and they still can't get it right!

I did! Sort of. At least when ME proved to be coded shit I wanted to get a Mac. But around that time is when the Apple was all about the "clamshell" laptops and the G3 iMacs were still on the shelves. I didn't much care for their design. I didn't see myself buying one of them and still claiming to be a dude. So I went the way of Linux. To this day I only keep a Windows box for gaming purposes and certain programs that aren't available in other platforms.

But I will NEVER own another WinCE device for as long as I draw breath. Damn iPaq, I can't GIVE the thing away.
= END

[ElZorro]

Colin, I can see your point. So lets compare apples to apples - iPhone OS to Android. They both are very young. They both have some bugs. They both have essentially a single hardware platform they are on. They both have very robust APIs and development environments. But one has a more complete 'standard' feature set (going to gabe's point, I expect a radio, airbags, antilock brakes, a windshield on a car) than the other. I guess the room for argument/discussion here is what is 'standard' and what isn't.

[complacent]

if you start a new car company in 2009 there will be certain features that people will expect on a car released in 2010. even though your company is only a year old your car will need these features.

Tell that to Verizon Wireless customers who want to use the internal GPS on their phones with third-party applications, or want full OBEX support via bluetooth. There's only a few models that do allow this.

Tell that to G1 users who'd like to be able to use a touchscreen keyboard on a touchscreen-enabled OS. IIRC, they're still waiting.

Tell that to HTC (non-android) owners that would love to have a stable WinMo OS without resorting to "cooked" rom images.

Tell that to Helio users who should by all rights roam (data) on all of Sprint's EVDO networks coast to coast (they currently don't). Or take a look at their current crop of products... The ocean 2 doesn't allow copy/paste either, released just this year.

Tell that to Sprint Blackberry users who cannot send/receive MMS messages. Same for certain Verizon BBs (8830, etc)


Like I said, it's a young platform with a lot of needed growth. I don't think it's fair to single them out, as many other companies and products lack the same basic features that "modern car companies" require.

And again, not attempting to single you out, just pointing out the fact that there are many companies with products that don't completely fill out the "required features" that are expected amongst smartphones. Personally I don't consider it that big a deal.