iPhone 3.0 Software Announced 619
Apple unveiled the iPhone 3.0 software just now in Cupertino. Here's MacWorld's live-action blow-by-blow coverage. The announcement included new features for developers and users. For developers, the big items were in-app purchasing (for example for game upgrades, map content, and subscriptions) for paid apps only; peer-to-peer connectivity via Bluetooth; giving apps access to hardware via the dock connector or Bluetooth; maps embeddable in apps; and push notifications. For users, there's finally cut-copy-paste available in all apps; search across everything in the iPhone; landscape keyboard; MMS messaging; and voice memos. Developer beta starts today and 3.0 will be available in the summer — free for all 3G phones, $10 for iPod Touch.
Blame Sarbanes-Oxley (Score:2, Informative)
I wish I had a reference for you, but it has to do with SOX compliance. The 3.0 software is free to iPhone users because it's part of the AT&T contract. For iPod Touch, there's no such contract. Because of some legal accounting obligation under SOX, and because there is no contract for iPod Touch users, Apple has to charge for software upgrades for the iPod touch. This was mentioned by Jobs I believe at tone of Apple's media blitzes last year.
Sorry.
Re:Touch users have to pay??? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:what's STILL missing (Score:2, Informative)
Exchange syncing more than one folder ..
Exchange displaying e-mails with the correct attributes
Exchange handling appointments in a sensible way
Those would be low on the priority list. The iPhone's primary target market is consumers, not corporate users. Features like those are more aimed at corporate users, not home users.
Re:Now about that 32GB issue... (Score:2, Informative)
Not SOX, just GAAP (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Touch users have to pay??? (Score:5, Informative)
The short answer is that our financial regulatory environment forces them to do so, kinda.
If Apple books profits for iPod Touches at the time of purchase, but then books expenses for iPod Touch development later, they are vulnerable to the accusation that they were hiding expenses on their balance sheet, which is illegal.
After getting burnt by this once in the past (Airport basestations, I think), they started charging for feature updates. When they book expenses for the development of iPod Touch 3.0, they can account for it like a new product for sale, and either make a profit or loss on those sales.
The other solution to this issue is that they book profits for iPhones on a "two year subscription basis". That means they only record 1/8th of the sale profit of an iPhone as profit in the quarter it was purchased. They can then charge further development costs against this same income, and they don't have to account for it like a separate product for sale.
Whether they should account for *everything* on a subscription basis is totally open for debate. It has been suggested that this subscription accounting is one of many factors that could be depressing Apple's share price. When they have a killer quarter for iPhone sales, that profit gets smeared across 8 quarters of earnings statements.
IMHO, it could be argued that this is a good thing, and forces shareholders to consider longer term value. So maybe they really should account for everything this way. The question is how profitable are these $9.95 iPhone OS updates & $100 Mac OS updates. Iduno.
Re:Congratulations, Apple (Score:1, Informative)
Jailbreak, add the calendar program from BigBoss.
Allows you to have your events displayed on the lock screen.
Re:So push notification but no background apps? (Score:1, Informative)
You don't get new data pushed. What you get is a notification pushed. So for example in the case of an IM app, you get a push notification that says you have N unread messages waiting to be read and it can also play a sound so if you are in another app you will know something has come in. Then when you are ready to read your messages you will close the current app and switch to your IM app and the new messages will be downloaded.
It actually makes a lot of sense and should be very scalable.
Re:For crying out loud... (Score:3, Informative)
Patches to not enabler hardware features in most cases.
In the case of the Wireless N post-sale activation on the MacBooks a couple of years ago, apple DID charge $4.99 to get that patch update!
Re:Touch users have to pay??? (Score:4, Informative)
They can estimate expenses for continued support and development.
They choose not to, however, because they want to hide the expense (and hope to later recoup it by selling the updates).
It's all bullshit, and it's all typical Apple.
Re:Sorry Melinda (Score:2, Informative)
Nice! I do agree, the ZUNE is a pretty poor substitute, but..
Thanks to a couple of 3rd party apps, I find my Windows Mobile 3g touchscreen phone to be much more useful than my wife's 3g iphone. I can do just about everything she can on hers, including browse the real web, use my wireless network, and listen to all of my music (on a bluetooth headset). It's just missing the flashy graphical nonsense, which I admit is cool, but the addon software I got makes the interface quite graphically appealing on its own. Oh, and it has a real tactile keyboard.
And I can use it as a work phone- it always had the ability to sync to exchange, connect to messaging services, and a whole lot more. I guarantee I paid less for the phone (+software) too, and will continue to have more features than the iphone, especially since I can download and install all sorts of software without needing itunes, and not have to pay for it (unless its commercial).
But the iPhone works great for my wife. It does what she wants, most of the time, and it's "cute"..
Re:My God! Since when does Cut-n-paste merit bulle (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My God! Since when does Cut-n-paste merit bulle (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Touch users have to pay??? (Score:4, Informative)
Uh? You can run linux on a mac just fine. Not the iphone, true, but the others, yes.
Not to mention that Darwin, the unholy marriage of mach and BSD that mac os x is built on, *is* open source. It's the graphics layer on top that's not, and that's not built on anything open source anyway.
Apple actually releases quite a bit of open source code. You need to get a better handle on the actual facts.
Re:My God! Since when does Cut-n-paste merit bulle (Score:4, Informative)
Every one of the 4 different Palm OS smartphones I've owned had cut/paste. And not just between Palm apps either, I could cut/paste between the phone dialer interface as well.
Real handicap (Score:3, Informative)
I bought an iphone after I learnt that compatible bluetooth keyboards were available for pre-order [gearlive.com]. Yes it's true, I'm admitting that I've been done.
Re:CRAAP (Score:3, Informative)
My XBOX has had increased functionality added multiple times (mp4 decoder, NXE, NetFlix support). To me, this seems like a cheap money grab. If I was an iphone owner, I would be pissed were this not par for apple's course.
Re:My God! Since when does Cut-n-paste merit bulle (Score:2, Informative)
In fact, my wife's phone cost EUR 70 in December 2006 and it has copy-paste... She even uses it occasionally. Sometimes to work around the memory limits caused by ~2000 SMS, but nevertheless
Re:My God! Since when does Cut-n-paste merit bulle (Score:5, Informative)
So, what you mean is, you've never owned a smartphone. My corded landline doesn't have cut and paste either, but every smartphone I've had has had cut and paste.
Lucky you. I have a fairly recent Nokia "business phone" with Symbian S60 as the operating system (Nokia E61i). It does support cut and paste, BUT you can only cut and paste (or copy for that matter) in edit mode. What this means is that you can't copy from a webpage, and to copy from an email you have to select "forward" or "reply". I guess you could call that smart if you stretch things?
Re:Flash (Score:3, Informative)
Yes apps might opportunistically take adavantage of available memory but they can't count on it. Moreover they have to respond when told to quit for any reason. So managing persistence has to be handled in 5 seconds and made seamless on restart. Thus the hurdle I described is as I described it even if some apps are opportunistically using memory.
Re:Flash (Score:2, Informative)
All very true. However Apple is selling the iPhone as a smartphone that can access the "real web." The thing is, "the real web" uses flash a lot. If you can't run a fundamental plugin for modern web browsing, don't advertise that your product as a full featured web browser.
Re:Still no Adobe Flash (Score:2, Informative)
So far the only site you demonstrably use is Slashdot, and this doesn't require Flash.
Re:Skype over 802.11? (Score:3, Informative)
I currently use fring on my iphone to skype out when I'm on an 802.11 connection. The app is free and just uses standard skype-out billing if you are calling a normal phone number. It supports a variety of voice chat options (skype, msn, generic SIP and google talk...sorry no yahoo yet) integrated into a single interface. My only complaint (working for an IVR company) is that it doesn't currently support DTMF (touch tones) like the normal desktop skype client. Hopefully it will also take advantage of the new push APIs to support an always on mode...that would really make it shine.
Re:Flash (Score:3, Informative)
You can. Jailbroken phones run sshd. You could port Apache if you'd like, but lighhtpd is more reasonable -- and has already been ported.
Re:Flash (Score:4, Informative)
No, some Apple apps are allowed to stay in memory (and run) whereas no third party apps are given the privilege. Mail will download emails in the background for instance, and Safari maintains your open tabs.
Safari isn't guaranteed to maintain your back button/forward button history, however; sometimes it loses them.
Your open tabs are kept in stable storage, so they survive Safari shutting down and being restarted. The same is true of newer versions of Safari on Mac OS X, although you have to use History->Reopen All Windows From Last Session after restarting Safari.
Your back button/forward button history isn't maintained in stable storage (whether in Mac OS X or iPhone OS), and that gets lost if Safari is restarted.
And, yes, Safari on the phone will be killed off in the background on occasion; I've had that happen on occasion when switching to Mail, for example.
Re:Mass storage device? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Camera card reader -- please (Score:2, Informative)
iPod Touch gets Bluetooth after OS upgrade [cnet.com]
Re:what's STILL missing (Score:3, Informative)
you need a visual cue to tell you your hand has gone off the edge of the phone??
To tell me I've I'm at the bottom of the document or list.
If I try and scroll down past the bottom of a document on the iphone, it pushes the document up a bit and stops to show me visually that I'm at the bottom, there is nothing below, when I release it slides back down.
On the storm, it just does nothing.
So if I'm scrolling a long list and arrive at the bottom after moving my finger 3/4s of the way down the screen, the iphone pushes up a bit and shows me I'm at the bottom. The storm just stops scrolling.
So on the iphone I know I'm at the bottom of the list. With the storm I'm not sure if maybe my finger just lost good contact 3/4 of the way through, and have to try another swipe to see if it really won't go down any more.
Yes I know about the scroll bar, but that's not nearly as good feedback, especially in long documents or lists.
Re:iEverything (Score:3, Informative)
TL;DR