iPhone 3.0 Event

Yesterday, I went down to Cupertino with my friend Steve from Demiforce to watch Apple unveil their new 3.0 iPhone OS and SDK. The iPhone OS 3.0 is going to be an awesome update this summer, and I thought I would give my thoughts from a developer's point of view on the new features and how it relates to our current products. If you want my quick fav-feature list, you can check it out at my favorite list making site here.

Pairing

Pairing allows two devices to easily talk to each other over bluetooth. This works for short distances and only seems to connect two devices. Seek N Spell creates a multiplayer environment by connecting devices over the network to a central server, allowing us to have many players over larger distances, but it takes a bit more battery life.

Cut-Copy-Paste

This is not just a great feature for the obvious reasons, but also it can be useful to help apps interoperate.

Embedded Email and Embedded Maps

This is going to be fantastic. Maps have drastically improved over the years and now much more power is available to users.

MMS

I personally would like to see MMS just go away. Email is a better solution to sending audio and video around.

Peripherals

The iPhone is going to have lots of peripherals soon, and other devices like Android, Palm Pre, and Blackberry will not. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, there are many peripherals already available for the iPhone. The process of developing, manufacturing and distributing peripherals is already in place. There are also many iPhones/iPod Touches all with the same connector. Manufacturing requires a large up front investment and is cheaper as you make more of a product.

Subscriptions and In Application Purchases

This is going to be another huge innovation. At first, it seems like this is just a way to charge the customer for a rocket launcher, but it actually brings the long awaited micro-transaction to reality. This enables new kinds of products and services that have never been seen before. Remember, this lets you purchase things other than apps through the App Store.

Built in Voice memo app

Recorder, our (very popular) voice recording application for the iPhone, can send recordings in emails and download recordings over wifi. Now that Apple includes their own Voice memo application (complete with flattering lightning bolt!) will that render Recorder obsolete? Apple's voice recorder includes mms, email and records using a nice audio codec. Stay tuned on this one.