Technology Guides

When I first heard about this update through my friend, I questioned it because why would Apple jump from firmware 2.2.1 all the way to 3.0? Well in fact, when I looked it up, it was dead true. Now I’m here to tell you about it. Apple is planning a major revamp of its OS which includes many cool things that might just blow your mind when you put it all together. There are loads of features, 100 last time I counted but these are the ones that I decided to highlight.

iPhone 3.0 Software

Push Technology

Apple was late to the push technology game and so when it released it, it basically killed the battery life. Now, it’s reconfigured its system so that it eliminates background processes and thus improves battery life. This makes the iPhone more business friendly because it automatically updates you if you receive new mail for instance even when the application isn’t running.

Push Notification on Apple iPhone

Cut, Copy & Paste

This to me is one of the biggest improvements for the iPhone after preserving the battery. How many times have you had a URL or some sentence that you wanted to copy and paste but couldn’t? I know I have many times. Now you’ll be able to use it with text messaging and even in Web pages and photos from the camera album. With this feature, you’ll be able to move the copy points and shake to undo. Now why did it take so long to do something so simple? My take is that Apple as we know them likes to control as much as possible which is why they delete apps with no warning. There excuse is that they wanted to deal with the security issue and make it work well with the touch screen.

Undo Paste on Apple iPhone

Real GPS Capabilities

Now you’ll be able to get applications that will have turn-by-turn directions making it a fully capable GPS with the free upgrade for iPhone users. The bad thing is because of licensing issues, the Google Maps app will not be used in conjuction with the GPS so developers will need to get their own maps which leads to the fact that these applications will probably cost users money.

Peer to Peer Connectivity

This is big as well for me at least because I remember I could play Worms on my Sony Ericsson phone with my friend who used to have a Sony Ericsson phone and it’d be great. We’d be sitting like 5m apart and be playing against each other. I was totally surprised to find that the iPod or iPhone could not do this. I’m an iPod Touch user and I was delighted to hear that the Apple iPod Touch does in fact have Bluetooth but Apple kept it locked. Now with this update, both the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch will have Bluetooth so you’ll be able to use this feature. Apple will build upon the original framework of the iPhone Bluetooth system and unlock the iPod Touch system. On top of that, Apple will have add onto the peer to peer system by putting in “in-game voice communication”.

Spotlight

This isn’t huge but it’s still nice. Before you could only search one area of your iPod/iPhone, but now Apple has designed this nice feature that will allow you to search everything at once including mail, iPod library, notes, contacts and calendar. What Apple has done is unique in my mind because it’s very easy to access this feature. Go the home screen (which you can do by clicking the home button anytime) and swipe left and then search away.

Landscape Keyboard

You may ask, we already have this? Well you are technically right but what about when you’re in an app such as Mail? In that situation you can only use the portrait keyboard which can get tiring. The landscape keyboard will now be accessible in any app which to me is long overdue. If you don’t know already, the landscape keyboard has larger buttons, more buttons and the buttons are more spaced out.

Landscape Keyboard

Multimedia Messaging

This is such a basic feature yet it was not apparent to Apple to include it on the iPhone. Many of the basic cell phones have it yet one of the most sophisticated phones doesn’t (most sophisticated can be argued). If you bought the basic Apple iPhone, then you’ll be out of luck since it does not carry the required radio to run MMS on it.

Upgraded Bluetooth

If you own the newer version of the Apple iPhone you’ll now have the opportunity to buy wireless headphones/earphones to use with the upgraded bluetooth. Listening to music with Apple’s version of bluetooth headphones may be closer than you think.

Conclusion

The strange thing about this software is that for the people that would want it the most, it costs $0, or free, whichever way you flip it. For the people who might not need it and has less benefit, the Apple iPod Touch users, it costs $9.95 which makes me wonder who the sales and marketing department are.

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