iTunes 8.2 was released with the major update offering support for the iPhone 3.0 operating system. I have been a registered iPhone developer for some time, so I have been playing with the new iTunes while in beta.
iTunes hasn’t changed too much, which I was a little disappointed. I would like to see some development with the management of the Applications. You can make Playlists for music – but you can’t sort Applications in iTunes other than it’s default alphabetic. I love the iPhone, but I want a mouse when I have 8-9 pages of Apps on my phone that I want to sort. Matt with usrlocal.com posted that after he restored his configuration from before the beta upgrade, the order of the applications on your iPhone are not saved to iTunes. So, if you spent a good amount of times getting all those apps in the right spot, currently those apps will go back to default order. I will be upgrading my phone with the release as soon as it comes out – so I will report if this is still true out of beta, but I have a sneaky feeling it will act the same.
With the iTunes update coming out this week – it is looking very good that the iPhone 3.0 will be annoced at the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference next week. Rumor has it, that Steve Jobs will be there as well. I do hope he will show up for this important release (and also a release of a Apple Tablet? Hmm….)
Brent Apple, TechNews Apple, iphone, iPhone OS
I haven’t had an iPhone too long yet, but was very excited to hear that there will be some new things already coming announced today. First, I love the numbers of the iPhone sold. The market was expecting 10Million, and Apple blew them away by selling 13.7Million in 2008. They next went to the AppStore where they bragged 25,000 Apps have already been approved, and that they approved 96% of all submissions from unpopular thought. Lastly for summary information, they have had 800Million downloads from their AppStore already. That’s quite impressive with about 50 downloads per phone with the numbers we have.
Ok, on to the iPhone OS 3.0. Here are the major items that are going to be included in the release slated for this summer:
- In-App Purchaes: This allows a developer to sell items within their app like an eBook or another level in a game
- Peer-to-Peer: This will expand the ability to find other iPhones or iTouches that are using the same app by IP or Bluetooth
- 3rd Party Hardware Development: Apple is now allowing your app to talk directly to a device that is plugged into the device. This can be used for such things as a heart monitor
- Maps: You can now embed Google Maps directly into your application instead of calling it outside your App
- Turn-by-Turn Directions: This is now able to be done, but you have to supply your own maps. You cannot use Google’s due to licensing
- Push Notification: This should work how all developers hoped it would. You pass notifications to Apple – and they in turn pass it to the notification service on the iPhone. They still aren’t allowing background processes to be developed due to the battery drain it causes. (Just install some of those Apps on a Windows Mobile device -ugh)
- Cut, Copy & Paste: They finally got this in their OS! Hurray! This is how it works. You double click on the word you want to copy (must like in Microsoft Word) and continue to drag on all you want selected and it then pops up a bubble asking if you want to do one of the 3 functions. You can just shake the iPhone to cancel (how like Apple to throw some fun in).
- Pictures: You can now select and copy and paste multiple pictures into other apps such as mail. Bravo!
- Landscape Keyboard: Yes, they finally did it. Across all their apps, you can type now in landscape for Mail & SMS! All those big fingered folks out their are cheering!
- SMS: Not only can you Forward and Copy messages now – they are adding support for MMS!
- Voice Memos: Allows you to record audio from your phone to a file for later or to tag to an appointment or message. I’m sorry for all those developers that have made an App for this. Looks like you better make yours with more functionality
- Search: Finally – If scrolling through alphabetic lists wasn’t your style, they have added searching to your contacts, calendar, email, and SMS. They claim it will be added to all of their core applications. It’s a new application called “Spotlight” to search across all applications if you choose that route.
This upgrade will be free to all iPhone 3G owners, and a $9.99 price for the iTouch. Engadget did a great job taking pictures during the presentation – check them out on their Live Blog.
My final thoughts are Bravo, Apple. They included most things that really annoy us, and gave us some great new things to develop with. I can’t wait to download the new SDK and start playing around.
Brent Apple, TechNews Apple, iphone, iPhone OS