MacMost Now 217: iPhone 3.0 New Features

Take a look at the new features announced for the iPhone 3.0 OS and what new abilities for iPhone developers will mean for you in the future.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: MacMost is brought to you by square space for a great way to build a website check out MacMost.com/squarespace. Hi I'm Gary and on this episode of MacMost Now let's go take a look at the iPhone 3.0 preview announcements and see what it really means for us the iPhone users. So yesterday Apple held a special event for iPhone developers but they certainly knew that iPhone users were listening a lot of the new features they announced weren't for developers at all but were things that we'll just be getting when the new release of the software comes out some time this summer. The three big ones I think for most users are going to be support for cut copy and paste across all applications is something everybody has been asking for since day one, another big one is the ability to turn your iPhone and type in land scape mode which presents a bigger keyboard and do that in things like mail and notes and other applications that we weren't able to do it in before. In addition a lot of people were asking for MMS messaging as opposed SMS this just means you can attach things like photos and audio files all sorts of things to your instant messages and send them to other's and receive them as well. In addition there's some other things that I think are going to make a big impact one of them is stereo bluetooth this means you'll be able to use headsets and some of the car interfaces wirelessly, that will be great and also the ability to sink notes we've had that notes app since the beginning but no way to except mail to get the notes back to you on your computer, and another big one is going to be search not just search inside of mail and other applications but spotlight meaning we could search everywhere on the iPhone at once so it looks like were going to see some enhanced standard applications for instance, there's going to be a better counter applications, there's going to be a better youtube application that allows you to  log on to your account, there's even going to be a new voice recorder application and all this is also going to have parental controls on it now well see what that is that was just listed as a bullet item but it should be interesting for parents wanting to get their young kids iPhones. But the big announcement are really all about developers support there's going to be whole bunch of new things in the software development kit a bunch of new things that developers are allowed to do and this is going to turn into a third party application to go way beyond what's there now. So let's run it down and see how there going to impact us. The first one is the ability to have purchases inside of an application so for instance you can be playing a game and you could purchase an additional level for say a buck or you could maybe subscribe to a book reader or a magazine ready and purchase additional issues of the magazine or more books through the application instead of going back to the store and buy a completely new application, I can see this also being used by a localization type of applications where you buying like directory's or maps for a local area or subway or something like that and you could simply purchase new ones as you go and visit new places they'll be a lot of different uses for this. Next up they said their going to enable peer to peer so this means that you'll be able to communicate with another iPhone that's in the same room basically using bluetooth not through another network so this is really going to open up a lot of gaming applications where you'll be able to play somebody like a game of chess or maybe in a game of cards now the iPhone is going to be perfect for a game of cards where only you can see your cards and they can see their cards, can you imagine 10 guys sitting around a table playing texas hold-em but everyone just has iPhones, be hard to cheat that way. I think the announcement that's going to have the biggest impact is that the developers have the ability to control external devices with both bluetooth and the dock meaning that they'll be able to control devices like say the electronics in your home or get input from devices like say an external bluetooth keyboard. This will really open things up for having the iPhone be interface for all sorts of things, there may even be devices that come up that don't have any interface at all and just rely on basically on a iPhone or i-pod touch to have a really cool user interface and have to control it from there. Now I've also talked about opening up the maps API this basically means it's going to be real easy for an application developer to put maps inside their app using existing google maps functionality and the also be able to do turn by turn directions but the catch is you can't use google maps for that. So my prediction is that we will have turn by turn directions on are iPhones soon but it's not going to be from dozens of different developers it's probably going to be from one or two major developers that are going to come out with a pretty expensive app to allow you to go and add that to your iPhone. And of course your going to hear a lot about push notifications what this is, is your basically an application and you turn it off right now if it's off it's off there's no way to communicate with or have any information come in to that application.  With push notifications you'll be able to install an app and it will know it's suppose to get notified when something happens like for instance you get a message in if it's a messaging app, then that message will then go through to the application and you'll get a little notice that you got a piece of information. So this is really going to expand the instant messaging portion of all the applications it will all sorts of cool instant messaging apps that we'll get and all sorts of cool little things that give you alarm and alerts when different things happen. Now there was also mention of streaming audio and video and of course your probably thinking there's already streaming audio and video apps but this should make it easier for developers to put that in, so maybe not for making a application that's for streaming video but for adding streaming video to some other type of application that could use it. So also there's going to be support for in-game voice chat so you'll be able to have games where you chat back and forth like hardcore gamers are use too. So it'll be really cool to see how these things can combine to make something so instance I can see really cool ultimate reality game you play with your iPhone the application shows you map and uses your GPS location so you could zero in on goals then once your there it can use bluetooth to basically mark that you've accomplished that goal and in addition you can then go ahead and use audio inside the application to communicate with other people as well as push notifications to tell you new goals that happened even when your not playing the game, so there's going to be a lot of cool stuff coming out for the iPhone I think really this has opened things up exponentially for what can be developed, so we have that to look forward to probably going to see it this summer but were going to hear a lot more about it as developers continue to play iPhone 3.0 and work on it over the months till next time this is Gary Rosenzweig with MacMost Now.

Comments: 2 Responses to “MacMost Now 217: iPhone 3.0 New Features”

SC Hoke

16 years ago

It would be good for MacMost to focus on radiation emitted by iPhones and iPod touch. Esp for kids' use.

There's too little understanding about these dangers, and the contexts within which the radiation levels rise, and the dangers that are suspected for kids brains.

Great to talk about the whiz features but also need more pressure on Apple for health and safety. Thanks

Gary Rosenzweig

Here's an interesting article about this, for those interested in knowing more: http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4117

Comments Closed.

MacMost Now 217: iPhone 3.0 New Features

Comments: 2 Responses to “MacMost Now 217: iPhone 3.0 New Features”

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