Well the Apple iPhone OS 3.0 Preview event took a (long) while to really get going, but when it did it was well worth the wait. Going by gdgt ‘s live blog time stamps, it was about one hour and five minutes into it that the application demos ended, and we started to hear about some major new features “ starting with cut, copy and paste “ hurrah for that!
I followed the event via three excellent sources “ gdgt, Gizmodo, and EIC ‘s Not So Live live blog. The first two offered excellent play-by-play, analysis, and photos “ and EIC offered some of that, plus live chat and live surveys to gauge folks ‘ views on the announcements.
Read on for some very quick initial thoughts on what Apple announced
First off, I think I agree with Ryan Block ‘s assessment near the end of the event:
Time-out for a sec here: seriously, I was actually not expecting this much stuff from 3.0. This is pretty big ” they ‘ve answered almost everything I ‘ve seen commonly asked for in the iPhone, including a lot of things I thought Apple might never do (including A2DP and accessories via dock connector).
Unlike Ryan, I think a lot of people were expecting a lot from this, partly because the Palm Pre is promising to offer some things the iPhone lacks in its current version.
Here are some other initial reactions to what we learned today:
- Apple really did knock out a lot of the missing features so many people have been clamoring for “ MMS, copy & paste, landscape keyboard mode across all built-in apps, Stereo Bluetooth, Notes sync, and more.
- The in-apps purchasing system seems a cool feature if used well, but also makes me think we ‘ll be nickel and dimed incessantly by quite a few apps with this capability. One screenshot showed an app wanting to charge you to buy an additional weapon “ that doesn ‘t sound cool.
- I like the idea of the new built-in Voice Memos app. I ‘ve been looking at several apps in this category and have found one I like very much, but I ‘m keen to see what Apple will offer.
- Also like what they said in terms of timing of the release of 3.0 – ‘this summer ‘. I hope that means early summer “ partly because I just want it, and also because I think that will help them meet the new Palm Pre head on (assuming Palm is on time with the Pre).
- I love that they ‘ve built in the Spotlight feature to match (or better) the ‘universal search ‘ that the Pre demos have shown. If this is well implemented, it should be a hugely useful feature.
- I ‘m very keen to hear what iPhone devs have to say about 3.0 “ but it seems like the new SDK offers them a lot.
- I ‘m disappointed they ‘re still saying no to background apps. Push notifications will be very good to see, but they do not make up for no background apps, for me.
- I ‘m also disappointed we didn ‘t hear anything about better ways to manage and arrange apps and home screens “ that is desperately needed. They also had nothing to say about the App Store approvals process “ hopefully that will be getting a lot of attention, even if a mention didn ‘t fit into the program today.
- I thought it was a little surprising to hear Apple admit that push notifications are so long overdue (originally promised for last September) because they were surprised by the sheer volume of what was needed: ‘We had a huge number of devs asking for this in volumes we hadn ‘t considered, so we had to completely re-architect the architecture for this. ‘
- The cut, copy, paste implementation seems impressive “ worth the wait for an elegant and effective solution.
That ‘s my very quick reaction to the iPhone OS 3.0 Preview. I ‘m sure I ‘ll have more thoughts when some of this stuff has soaked in a little more, and I ‘m sure we ‘ll be hearing lots more about all of this over coming weeks.
What do you all think of iPhone OS 3.0? Excited, impressed, not impressed? Share your reaction in the comments .
Continue reading:
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