Location : Cupertino, California. Date : 17.03.2009. Time : 10:00 AM . The new iPhone OS 3.0 to be announced. You can listen to Coldplay than Jack Johnson. And , let the game begin….
SDK
First thing on the list was about about what Apple’s doing for developers in 3.0. The SDK gives developers the same APIs and tools that they use (almost, there are some parts of the phone hidden for security and performance reasons). 3.0 brings 1,000 new APIs.
App Store enhancements
FSM EXCLUSIVE DEAL Some developers have said they like to have other business models other than the current sell-once model that’s in the App Store. What are some? Subscriptions for magazine developers, additional levels for game devs, and eBook devs, who want to sell one app and sell eBooks inside the app. They’re supporting ALL of these things now with In App Purchase.
Inside the app you will get prompts like continuing to purchase issues of magazines (6 issues for $5, for example), or buying more levels (add ten more levels for a game for $2).
It uses the same iTunes password and username, using the same APIs and same purchase scheme.
Another example is for city guides. Instead of selling a huge city guide app, you can sell one city guide app, then sell each individual city separately (and for more money) inside the app. The entire scheme is tied into the iTunes store.
The business model for in-app purchase is the same as the store. The developer sets the price for each in-app item, 70% of the revenue goes to the developer, and there are no credit card fees. They continue to be paid monthly. This is ONLY for paid apps, not for a free app that developers want to charge for once you’ve already downloaded it.So in essence, free apps are still totally free. You won’t be tricked into paying for anything.
Peer to Peer connectivity
The new multiplayer connectivity allows you to bring up a dialog that lets you find local devices. The services provided are Automatic Discovery over Bluetooth (no Wi-Fi), no pairing, Bonjour, and isn’t just for games.But this isn’t just for games, it works for ANY P2P application. For example, apps that can send business cards to another phone, in a handshake-like manner.
Accessories
With the iPhone 3.0 SDK, they’re going to enable accessory developers to make custom applications that can communicate directly with the accessory. For example, an equalizer application on the phone that can control the equalizer on the speaker when it’s docked.
An even more esoteric application is for medical devices, like a blood pressure monitor that can dock into the iPhone that allows you to send your blood pressure directly to your doctor after you’ve measured it.
These accessories can talk to the phone over the dock connector AND over Bluetooth.You can use standard protocols or build your own custom protocols.
Maps
Many developers have asked Apple to use Google Maps inside of their application. And it’s here. The Maps app can now be used as a public API and be embedded directly into any app.
Everything is in there–pinch and zoom, custom annotations, satellite views, location tracking and location tracking.There is also ONE MORE THING to do with Apps. Developers can now use CoreLocation to make Turn by Turn applications.
So now you can build a turn by turn application app, but you cannot use Apple’s Google Maps because of licensing issues. But you can bring your OWN maps (as a developer, very important to note), and make turn by turn directions for the iPhone.
Push Notification
“You know, we’re late on this one.” “There’s a few reasons for this, most importantly, within two months of launching the App Store, we had over a thousand applications on the app store.”Apple had to completely rearchitect the structure for the push notification in order to make it scalable for all the millions and millions of downloads. But now, they’re “good to go.”
Developers asked them to do background processing, because it’s “easier to do background processing.” But Apple says it’s “not good for the customer.”Apple’s been testing background processing on other phones (Windows Mobile, Android) by opening up an IM app, and just having it run in the background lowers battery by 80%.
By using Apple’s push notifications, battery life only dropped by 23% when an IM app is “open” in the background, listening for messages.
Here’s how Push notification works again. The Push notification service has a persistent connection to the phone, so you can get notifications all the time. The three things you can send are badge alerts, text alerts and audio alerts. Text alerts appear like SMS alerts, badges show up on the app icon, and audio alerts (like AIM) plays in the background.
To be perfectly clear, this means no background processing yet. Just push notifications.In game voice chat is also one of the various APIs now open, as is iPod library access, proximity sensor, audio recorder, battery API, streaming audio and video, data detectors, text selection (oh??? is this for copy and paste??) UI alert view, sake API (for rumble) and GPS lingo.
Customer Side
iPhone OS 3.0 has over 100 new features.As usual , a ridiculous number. The question is, if all those “over 100 new features” will rise the iPhone to our expectations.
Cut, Copy and Paste
Double tap onto a bit of text and it automatically places a “CUT, COPY, PASTE” bubble above your current selection. Double tap to bring up a paste bubble later to paste.To select an entire block of text, put your thumb on the right drag point and drag it to where you want your block of text to end. You can drag the left drag point as well.
You can drag between apps as well (obviously), through the same process. Double tap, then drag in order to select what text you like, then double tap and paste to paste it.You can also copy and paste web content. The phone uses the same analytics engine in Safari that they do for zooming in order to know which selection to select for copying. Yes, HTML paste for copying. If you didn’t mean to paste something, shake your phone in order to Undo (or Redo) your paste. Undo by shaking
Cut and paste can work across multiple apps, has undo support, can work with developer APIs, and can use Cocoa Touch support for regular text.
MMS ?
There’s a photo icon inside the SMS app,called the “Messages” application. “Messages”, which they will enhance in 3.0. You can forward and delete messages–individual messages or multiple messages.
You can send and receive Photos right over the network. Contacts (VCard). Audio files. Or your location. No word about video yet though.
Photos
You can now send more than one photo at a time with 3.0 by tapping the action button, selecting a bunch of photos, copying, and then pasting it into the Mail app.
Voice Memos
You can record voice memos to yourself, lectures, interviews using the built in microphone or an external microphone. You can trim it using the phone itself, then send it on using email or MMS.
Calendar
They had personal calendars first, then Exchange (last year) and MobileMe. They’re now adding CalDAV, a calendar standard that’s supported by a lot of people like Google and Yahoo. It’s useful for shared calendars. Second is subscriptions, using the .ics format.
Stocks
They’re adding support for news stories (headlines) in the bottom of the app, plus details like highs and lows and PEs. There’s also landscape view.
Search
Not only can you search inside the Contacts application, which was there in iPhone 2.0, you can now search in all of the key applications, including Mail.Search in Mail, works on the server using iMAP.If your search isn’t found on your iPhone, the search continues on the server.There’s also search in Calendar, iPod (search by artist, album, etc) and Notes.
There’s now a new home screen where you can search across all those applications, and they call it Spotlight. The search is to the left of your regular home screen, and you access it by flicking left from your standard home.
You can also search Apps and use Spotlight as a quick launcher instead of going all the way to the 8th screen and searching for your app.
Other features
- Notes Sync
- audio/video tags
- live streaming
- shake to shuffle
- Wi-Fi auto login
- Stereo Bluetooth
- LDAP
- iTunes account creation
- YouTube ratings
- Anti-Philshing
- Call Log
- Parental Controls
- Media Scrubber
- OTA profiles
- VPN on demand
- Languages
- YouTube subscriptions
- YouTube accounts and Encrypted profiles
- Auto-fills
When is it going to be available?
First as a Developer Beta available TODAY. It’s going to be available to everyone in the iPhone developer program. You can join now and get access to the beta. They’ll have more info on their website as well.They’ll be hosting developer forums where you can share 3.0 development information with other devs.
They’re going to ship it “this summer.” It will be a free update to iPhone 3G customers. It works on the original iPhone as well, so that not ALL the features will be available (like MMS and Stereo Bluetooth) on the 2G iPhone.So the old iPhone won’t get the MMS or Stereo Bluetooth
Phil Schiller and Scott Forstall Q&A :
Q: Josh Quittner, Time: Why did it take so long so get Cut and Paste into the iPhone?
A: There’s a user interface you need to design, security issues, and “there’s a lot of pieces you need to worry about instead of getting osmething that doesn’t work right.”
Q: Video is still a blackhole if you visit a website with flash.
A: We have no announcements on Flash today.
Q: Could you qualify a bit more about the peer to peer. It looks like it’s available across the two iPhones, but it seems like you can do peer to peer with other Bluetooth devices.
A: It’s really a device to device Bluetooth connection. It’s 1 to 1, using Bluetooth and Bonjour to discover other devices and make an IP connection.
Q: So you can control devices…?
A: Yes, now you can, with third-party applications, control and talk to accessories over Bluetooth.
Q: Are people able to trade files, say music files, through iPods with this?
A: We have the ability to stream music to music apps, and certainly a game, if a game has music in the game it would be possible to download game tracks, but if would be confusing for other music apps with downloadable music that isn’t through the app store.
Q: Where do you stand on tethering?
A: There’s two pieces needed to support that: client side and working with carriers. We’re absolutely supporting tethering in the client side in iPhone 3.0, but we’re working with carriers around the world to see when they can add tethering support on their networks. But we are building that support into iPhone 3.0.
Q: Netbooks?
A: Nothing to announce today.
Q: Can you say anything about hardware?
A: No.
Q: Bluetooth human input device profile for external keyboards.
A: We have nothing to announce.
Q: Will you make any promises about push notification in terms of uptime?
A: No. We want it to be as reliable as possible.
Q: On the voice memo, you mentioned external microphones. Could you use an off-the-shelf microphone?
A: Yes absolutely, if you have an adapter.
Q: Are you addressing some of the performance issues in the current OS? It’s slightly laggy, are you going to address that in 3.0.
A: We absolutely take performance very seriously. These units, because they’re tethered, are more laggy than you would see on standalone units. But we are addressing lagginess in our own ways.
Q: Is there a physical hardware problem on the first-gen iPhone that prevents it from doing MMS.
A: It’s a different radio, so it is a physical issue.
Q: With Peer to Peer, can you have access to other iTunes library?
A: You can see them but I don’t know if you can play them.
Q: Do you have any comments on your app acceptance scheme?
A: We want to help developers to be very successful. We also want a store where customers feel great about the quality of what they get, so the numbers speak for themselves. [Kind of a non-answer here]
[thanks to gizmodo]
