Well, the biggest thing in the tech world lately is the iPhone OS 3.0 event Apple held yesterday (2009.03.17) I’m not going to rehash the full run-down of the features – head over to Gizmodo for that. I just want to touch on a few of the ones I’m looking forward to the most; those that I will get the most use out of.
Cut, Copy and Paste
This is the most rumored and hoped-for feature ever since the first iPhone came out. It will certainly make a lot of things easier, but to be perfectly honest, I haven’t really missed it that much. There’ve been a few times when I wished I could copy a chunk of text, but for the most part, I don’t do a lot of text entry or editing on my iPhone, so I wasn’t as adamant about this feature as others.
When you double-tap over text, you will get a "cut, copy, and paste" bubble dialog. Double-tap again and a "paste" bubble will appear if there’s anything stored in your clipboard.
I wonder: how is this going to work with the double-tap zoom feature? While browsing a website, you can double-tap a column of text to have it fill the screen. Will Copy and Paste only work at a certain zoom level, so that the first double-tap will bring you in closer to the text, then another double-tap will initiate the Copy dialog?
Stereo Bluetooth A2DP audio
You will be able to pair your iPhone 3.0 with a stereo Bluetooth A2DP device, like headphones or speakers.
This is cool; I have a pair of BT headphones that I would love to use, but currently I’d have to have the bulky receiver/transmitter dangling off the iPhone.
Push Notification
This was another big feature that’s been rumored for a while. Basically, this will allow applications to receive messages, data, information from the web automatically, even if the app isn’t running. This will open up a wide avenue of possibilities for third-party developers; I’m eager to see what some of them come up with.
What I would love to see come out of the new Push feature would be to have a weather app that can display the current temperature and conditions on the icon, the same way the Calendar app shows the current date. That way, I wouldn’t have to wait for the app to load just to see if I need a jacket or not.
Apps Running in Background – Not This Time
Probably the biggest thing missing from the 3.0 update is the ability of applications to continue running in the background. For example, if you tap a link in an email, the iPhone will launch Safari and take you to the site. With background apps, the Mail application would still be running. So to get back to your mail message, you would just flip back to Mail instead of having to exit Safari and relaunch Mail.
I think they mentioned this in the presentation yesterday, and cited battery and processing power as the main hurdles for this feature. Having applications running in the background chews through processing power, which translates into massive battery drain.
I would love to have background apps, but I fully understand Apple’s reasons for its absence.
All in all, I think 3.0 is a very robust update. I came into the whole iPhone game with the release of the 3G, which coincided with the release of 2.0, so this will be my first major OS upgrade. Too bad we have to wait for summer to get it.
I love tech, but don’t have as much time or money to spend on it as I’d like. I get what I need to sustain my Geek vicariously through other sources and pass it along to you.
