iPhone OS PreviewApple’s announcement and presentation of the forthcoming iPhone OS 3.0 features was far more evolutionary than revolutionary. There was really no earth-shattering reveal – in reality, many of the features Apple displayed should have been included in the iPhone OS at the 2.0 mark. Nonetheless, Apple definitely has us salivating for iPhone OS 3.0 because of a few features we previously discussed and some we had not thought of at all. Here we roundup the new features in iPhone OS 3.0 we predicted as well as some additional thoughts.

Copy and Paste – Correct

The single most sought after feature of the iPhone OS has finally made it in to the third major revision. For the life of me I can not figure out why it has taken Apple almost two years to included such a simple feature in the iPhone OS. But now that it is here I guess I need to be grateful?

According to reports, it apparently works as follows: Double-tap over some text to select the text and then have the “cut, copy, and paste” dialog appear. Double-tap again and a “paste” dialog appears if data is present on the clipboard. Accidentally paste unwanted data and merely shake your iPhone to undo the action. As expected, this all works across applications.

Additionally, it appears photos can be copied and pasted, with the ability to select multiple photos, copy those selected, and then paste them in an email. No more having to send multiple emails to send multiple pictures.

Background Notifications (aka Push Notifications) – Correct

The long awaited push notification service will finally make its debut in iPhone OS 3.0. While many folks were wishing for full background processing, I did not expect that feature to be added to the iPhone OS 3.0 because of the battery power requirement. Sure enough, Apple cited this exact reason for the lack of background processing capability included in the iPhone OS 3.0. I expect this to happen at some point after Apple releases updated iPhone hardware with better battery life. Until then, it’s all push notifications.

MMS – Mostly Incorrect

MMS replaces SMS in the iPhone OS 3.0, allowing for the inclusion of everything from pictures to sounds to all kinds of nifty things to be sent via SMS. What this really means if you have a friend who has MMS capability on their mobile phone, but does not have email, you will still be able to share images and multimedia content from your iPhone with them.

I find those people who do not use email on their mobile phone, yet stick to peculiar services like MMS, to be odd. This is 2009 people – use email!

Flash – Correct

There was absolutely no mention of Flash capabilities in iPhone OS 3.0. Is anyone really all that surprised?

Spotlight – Unknown

In iPhone OS 3.0, when you are situated on the home screen and swipe right once, you are presented with the Spotlight application, which essentially is a search engine for your iPhone. Like the OS X application of the same name, Spotlight allows for searching app names as well as data within email, notes, music and more. If you have pages and pages of apps, Spotlight will definitely help you locate specific apps with ease.

Additionally, applications may make use of the Spotlight API, allowing their data to be indexed and searched through Spotlight. I am really looking forward to playing around with this feature because it sounds like a much better way of searching for data and applications as opposed to paging through pages of application icons.

There is a host of additional new features, over 100 for the user according to Apple, which you can read about on almost any other tech blog. In our coverage I just wanted to touch on the features we previously discussed in addition to the one new feature we did not talk about (Spotlight) but which I consider to be pretty important functionality-wise.

One final item of interest, especially if you are a developer, is the addition of approximately 1000 new APIs. Apple is finally opening up the iPhone to a world of new possibilities.

1,000 new APIs for developers.

With the new SDK, members of the iPhone Developer Program can build applications that do even more. Developers will have the tools to enable in-app purchases — like subscriptions, additional game levels, and new content. They can also create apps that connect peer to peer via Bluetooth, communicate with hardware accessories, and use the Apple Push Notification service to provide alerts.

That is quite substantial because it means a whole new world has been opened for iPhone OS development. The possibilities were previously almost endless, but now you can truly expect to see some revolutionary applications make their way in to the App Store in the future. This specific announcement is quite exciting and should prove to be a lot of fun.

Availability

iPhone OS 3.0 will be a free upgrade for iPhone owners but will cost $9.95 for those desiring to upgrade their iPod Touch. Although Apple did not nail down a specific date, you can bet the OS will be available some time around WWDC, expected to go down around June. Maybe at that point we will finally see some new Apple hardware announcements?