iPhone OS 3.0

Picture hijacked from Apple's Website

Apple has announced on Mar 17, 2009 in the Apple Developer’s Forum that there will be an update to the iPhone / iPod Touch operating system, dubbed the iPhone OS 3.0. This would be an exciting update for all the iPhone / iPod Touch users as this new update contains about 100 new features, some, long awaited. You can view a Quick Time video of the conference here. Be warned though, it’s about 1 hour and 30 minutes long.

Here are the highlights:

1. Cut, Copy, and Paste: Finally, this essential feature finally gets implemented. This should quite down some of the critics.
2. Undo / Redo: Just shake the iPhone / iPod to undo / redo
3. Landscape in Mail, SMS, and Notes: some genius left it out in the previous updates finally realized that it was a mistake not to include them
4. MMS: now you can send photos, contacts, and audio files over the cell network
5. Forward / Delete multiple SMS / MMS
6. Voice Memo: goody! Now I don’t have to keep a separated voice recorder for lectures, meetings, and interviews
7. CalDAV subscriptions: another feature that finally made it into the iPhone / iPod touch. Now you can sync Google Calendar, Yahoo Calendar and other calendar services that uses the CalDAV standard without going through iCal
8. A unified search, which is appropriately named Spotlight: Now they have one search for everything on the device instead of each program keeping its own search
9. The new Spotlight search will be located at the home page
10. Stocks updated: now with News, highlights, specific point value, and many more
11. Notes: FINALLY, it can be synced! Gee… that’s late. Well, at least we know the Apple guys are listening
12. Shuffle: a feature that is solely available on the iPod Shuffle is now being implemented, shake to shuffle!
13. Bluetooth A2DD support: now you can use that stereo Bluetooth headset with iPhone
14. Auto-fill function: a feature that fills up common fields automatically. Nice feature but I don’t use them. Sounds kinda dangerous to me. Will you use it?
15. VPN on demand: now you can tunnel into your own secured network. Meant mostly for business users, though it can be convenient for power users too.
16. Call Log: details now with each call instead of an aggregated total.
17. Peer-to-peer on Bluetooth: apps can now utilize Bluetooth for anything they can think of, and the most likely to utilize this is gaming. Multiplayer games in iPhone! YEY!
18. Push Notifications: you can’t launch multiple applications at the same time, so you can’t IM while surfing the net. With push notification, you can do that… well… virtually.
19. Meebo goes native: now you can have all the IMs in one sweet package. Coupled with push notification, you can now be on IM anywhere, anytime!
20. EA’s the Sims 3 on iPhone: for those of you who can’t get enough of the Sims, you can now bring them along on your iPhone / iPod Touch
21. ngMOCO – FPS on iPhone / iPod Touch
22. …and may more!

There are many more to list down, but the listed are the most prominent features that almost everyone is waiting for, plus a few apps that will come to the platform. As the last update, it will be free for iPhone users, but cost USD$9.95 for iPod Touch. It is slated for release in June or July. The SDK (Software Development Kit) and the iPhone OS 3.0 Beta is now available on the Apple Developer Connection website, and is exclusive for members of the iPhone Developer Program. You can go over to Apple’s Developer Connection website for more info on the SDK and Beta.