iPhone 3.0 wrap-up: Cut and paste, MMS, Push, and more


We’ve just finished liveblogging the event, and the iPhone 3.0 press conference has definitely yielded some delicious morsels of functionality. Here is pretty much everything you need to know, though as things get more clear throughout the day, we’ll update this post. You guys will probably be seeing these features sometime this summer.

We’ll have pictures and a hands-on in just a few minutes so keep your eyes open.

    iPhone 3.0 Features for you:

  • Push
  • PUSH!
  • Bluetooth will be used to auto-discover nearby people for games without any pairing. They then can communicate via Wi-Fi. Hopefully it’s secure, it could be nice.
  • There will NOT be background processing, no matter how much you want it. Reduces battery life. As if battery life could get much worse, noted a commenter.
  • Cut, Copy and Paste: This feature was seen riding a dinosaur into the auditorium. Anyway, it’s finally here and it even applies to image(s). Simply double tap a word and it gets highlighted with “cut, copy or paste” above. For a block of text you just tap a word and drag the edges. It works across all applications. It seems like anywhere the magnifier works, copy and paste will work. If you accidentally paste the wrong word or phrase then just shake the iPhone for an “Undo” prompt. To redo just shake again.
  • Meebo coming as a native app for iPhone. That sounds nice.
  • New “home” screen to the left of your current far-left one. It has a Spotlight search, looks for stuff all over your phone.
  • Calendar supports CalDAV now, you can subscribe to other calendars online. Useful for syncing with your spouse or whatnot, even if they’re on Google or Yahoo.
  • Many apps will now support internal search, including Mail. It’s incomplete (doesn’t search message contents) but it’ll search IMAP servers, so if you’ve got GMail for instance you’ll be good. A collective sigh of relief emanates from iPhone owners.
  • Landscape keyboard all up in every app you can think of.
  • Multimedia Messages! This feature flew in on a Pterodactyl.
  • Stereo Bluetooth. I know how much you love that, honey, so I just went and got it for you.
  • Hotspot auto-login. Because you love Starbucks but don’t want to waste time inputting passwords.
  • Send and receive files between your iPhone and iPod Touch. That’s awesome.
  • 3.0 features for App store and Developers:

  • Apps can talk directly to accessories — FM transmitters, stereos, anything you like. Expect a lot of bundled apps with your iPhone bundled apps. How about an NES-like iPhone controller for those emulators?
  • You can get subscription apps now, in case you weren’t paying enough already.
  • Apps can now use voice communication. I foresee controversy.
  • Embeddable maps for developers. Now they won’t have to launch Maps outside their application. Handy for shopping apps.
  • Buy stuff in-app: I’m calling this the “Sims” feature. You could also use it to buy books for a reader, or new maps for a game, that sort of thing.
  • Turn by turn directions in navigation apps now. First one probably from Telenav.
  • Apps can access the user’s library of music and videos, so you could have the background music in a game be the user’s.
  • Lots of new APIs, too many to list here but if you’re a dev you’re gonna check it out.
  • Tethering support is in there, but “will depend on each carrier on supporting it.”

The upgrade will be free for iPhone users, but iPod Touch folks will have to shell out $10, like last time.

Well, we didn’t get fixes for a lot of our issues with the iPhone, but a lot of this stuff will be really handy. Search and push in particular will make this a lot more useful for business types. We’ll let you all know as soon as we know anything more, say about the release date for this big mother of an update.