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iPhone OS 3.0 – how was it for you?

By Matt Radford on March 20, 2009

iphone3The dust has settled, mostly. Apple have made their big iPhone OS 3.0 announcement – covered very well by posts at Intomobile and iPhone, Therefore I Blog. The video podcast of the announcement has been released. And those who have installed it are rapidly finding more than Apple was prepared to demonstrate on Tuesday – internet tethering, finding your lost iPhone, better podcast scrubbing, uploading video. iLounge has a great gallery of screenshots.

Personally, I’m glad some of the frustrating omissions from iPhone OS are being filled (MMS, handling vCards, cut ‘n’ paste). It’s basic stuff but it makes a difference when it’s not present. But aside from filling in the blanks, what did Apple really announce on Tuesday?

Could Do Better

A few misses from my personal wish-list:

  • I believe not enabling background apps is a mistake – other smartphone vendors seem to manage it without too much of an impact on battery life. Push is a great idea, but no substitute.
  • vCards can only be sent over MMS, not SMS. That leaves out 1st gen iPhones (which are left out of the MMS party), and also makes it more expensive for the rest of us.
  • No video. But – the upload video option that has subsequently been discovered, plus the fact you will be able to login to YouTube (and upload to it?) indicates that there will probably be a video option in OS 3.0.

Some of these omissions perhaps reflect growing pains, with only so much time to concentrate on the stuff that Apple wants to implement. Maybe that’s being too kind. Either way, there will always be omissions based on your personal preferences, and every device choice is a trade-off.

And the good news is that the Dev Team have already announced that iPhone OS 3.0 can be jailbroken (that was quick!), so if you do want to use your iPhone in a way that Apple has not enabled, then you still have another option (don’t upgrade yet though if you want to retain an unlockable baseband).

On To More Innovative Stuff

Bonjour Bluetooth

I really like this idea. It speaks of Apple’s approach that they’d rather leave this feature out until they are ready to do it in their own way. Making Bluetooth connections zero-configuration is an excellent idea. It definitely passes the Mum test. Please, let’s have the ability to connect a keyboard as well.

In-app Purchasing & Subscriptions

I think this was the biggest announcement of the morning – the App Store moves on. Content will be made available to buy (and maybe also download for free) from within your purchased application. At the iPhone event, EA demo’d the SIMS playing music already on the device, but this could go much further. What about buying iTunes music? Or, as I suggested in “The Unborn, Watchmen and interactive mobile billboards“, dedicated apps could be made available to buy movie-tie in items, maybe even the movie itself.

Subscriptions are also likely to make interesting waves. Recurring payments are currently impossible within the App Store.

But what device?

However, for me, the most important question is: what device will this software run on?

The new iPhone is likely to be revealed in 12 weeks, 16 weeks at most. We’re could be looking at a new iPhone 3G (probably a storage bump and camera improvement), but I don’t see much changing otherwise. The device’s familiarity is an advantage. There’s also the possibility of Apple making another leap – to the next-generation of iPhone. Could we see a multi-core device making an appearance? That would really shift the processing capabilities on the iPhone up a notch.

Also, during the OS 3.0 presentation, I thought: medical monitoring? Wouldn’t that be done much better from a tablet? There are rumours of Apple taking an order for a boatload of 10″ touchscreens. Does it make sense for them to make a tablet? Possibly. Right now? Not sure. But there are hints that new designs are on the way.

I do believe that iPhone OS is being positioned as Apple’s platform for the future. Within a few years there will be more iPhones & iPod Touches than Macs.

And don’t forget this was only a preview…

  • http://www.allaboutiphone.net James Burland

    So now we can guess the overall theme of Mobile World Congress 2009.

    In app purchasing, seamless bluetooth handshaking between phones and 3rd party accessories… and I can’t wait to see others fall over themselves in the rush to bring iPhone-esque push notification services to their platforms.

    The killer combo of push/pull (push notification and pulling new paid content) will have most, if not all of the competition, up against the ropes in 2009/2010.

    In short, Apple are on fire right now. In a good way, of course! (^_-)

  • Nikolay Andreev

    Background 3rd party native Apps is a BAD concept and Apple proved it. There are more efficient substitutes. It takes the same amount of tabs to switch between 2 Apps on the Palm Pre and on the iPhone. The difference is in speed and the fact that some 3rd party makers have not put enough effort in their apps to enable the user to return to last position before quitting.
    What Palm Pre does is currently available on the iPhone but only in Safari. Fast efficient switch between windows, and memory of what you were last doing.

    How many characters is one Vcard? 160 as is the standard SMS? NO. In fact depending on the content of the Vcard (if it has picture) you can get stabbed in the back by your mounty SMS bill if you are sending Vcards via SMS.

    For me, the biggest announcement was the fact that Apple introduced a lot more for developers than users. Luring developers to the Apple platform is the best way to fight the competition. Also developers can introduce a lot more innovation to the iPhone than Apple.

  • Iain 117

    Ok first things first: About time you got this up :-p

    I’m quite pleased with this update, I was disappointed to hear no video again seems as though my JB iPhone handles it quite well (Nearly a year on and my internal memory hasn’t failed yet). But I really couldn’t care less about the MMS announcement tbh, receiving them was good enough for me and finally I agree with Apple – Email IS much better and MMS is old technology that needs to go, anything that makes less money for the operators the better In my eyes :-) At least it’ll shut all those people who kept banging on about it up 😉

    Now the Bluetooth announcement was better, but I still don’t know if it’s proper BT yet? Does it allow file transfer? Or is it just for multiplayer gaming?

    I also hope Apple release some new about the next iPhone as I’m really wanting video recording out of the box – when that hits I’ll be a happy man :-)

  • Iain 117

    Also you don’t really know how expensive MMS will be, o2 don’t charge for data, they could do the unthinkable (or be forced by Apple?) to include them in your txt bundle? I dunno how that would apply to the PAYG model though?

    I’m also glad that Apple have finally given devs access to the dock, I think well see some very nteresting apps in coming future

  • ares

    @nikolay, try using Push notifications to make use a streaming radio aplication while you are doing other stuff. Or have location services always on. It is suited for IM and such, but not for all the needs of background apps.

    Therefore i will happily jailbreak 3.0, to get the full potential of my device yet again.

    Then there´s the notifications. I was hoping they had changed the annoying notification system we see now with SMS to something more like what exists on Androis. No luck…imagine when all the Push Notification apps start sending your iphone alers. Nightmare. Again, thank God for JB…if Rock Your Phone (new appstore) app “Elert” is updated to handle all types of notifications like it does email right now, it will make the iphone much more usable.

    Other thing. No “today screen” functionality on lockscreen, again. Guess will have to jb and use intelliscreen. Also, no to-do app, and no to-do sync. WHY apple?

    Plus, no video, no themes, no quick shortcuts like SBSSettings do so wel…yeah, i will still need jailbreak to make it a proper smartphone

    Still, Apple is doing an moderately impressive update, for free, for millions of devices, at the same time, worldwide. That is impressive, comparing with Nokia, SE, etc…

    I also agree the better part of this update will come when 3rd parties start presenting new apps using all the new APIs

  • ares

    By the way, i´m using Swirlly MMS and i don´t pay for MMS, like i didn´t with my SE P1. I expect that to remain when i use 3.0, here we are not forced to use a specific iphone tariff/plan

  • http://www.allaboutiphone.net James Burland

    The thing is this, however you slice it, multi-tasking *does* slow concurrent processes and it *does* reduce battery life and it *does* cause some memory issues. Clearly Apple want the essential iPhone experience to be smooth and painless for 90% of its customers. Push, along with the other wealth of upgrades and fixes seen in 3.0 will further that end.

    I keep badgering on about this because I think it’s an important point. Customer satisfaction surveys show iPhone users to be happiest of all phone users and that’s without MMS, Copy/Paste, etc.

    This is undeniable evidence that Apple are making the correct decisions. You may be able to argue against that for your personal iPhone usage, but you can’t when considering the entire iPhone user base, which is obviously what Apple has to consider.

  • http://www.allaboutiphone.net James Burland

    As an aside, I’m wondering when Apple will get round to producing some of their own Mac/PC tethering apps. Not data sharing so much, but rather monitoring and control apps. I’d love to be able to use my iPhone as a tiny second screen for my Mac. Or how about an official trackpad app, something like Air Mouse but with those little Apple touches. What about a app that shares GPS data with your Mac or PC in realtime. Or perhaps an app provides ‘one click’ video streaming to the iPhone from any Quicktime application?

  • ares

    they at least could have alowed limited background processes…only specially authorized apps could do it, after rigorous avaliation. Like google latitude, etc.

  • Leon Buxton

    I can’t imagine anything more frightful than to have a streaming radio app running in the background – it would just be a complete battery killer. For those with special needs such as that the Backgrounder app in Cydia will enable it, providing you’re prepared to jailbreak.

    For the needs of most customers this update is simply superb – in fact it might as well have been tailored to me. The inclusion of mms and cut and paste saves me having to use Swirly and Clippy, and I should think the general stability of the device will have been tweaked too.

    I’m particularly excited about background push notification – much as I HAVE been able to run background processes on my jailbroken phone the push system seems ingenious and very resource and power friendly – a much better solution than simply having all your apps ticking away in the background, using ram and (more crucially) the cellular network.

    An app such as Beejive keeps you logged in to, say Facebook or MSN even after you press the home button, so once push notification is enabled in this programme I will never miss another IM. The alternative solution – for example Meebo for Android – stays running as a background process, and the result? The G1’s battery goes flat within a couple of hours.

  • ares

    Agreed regading the streaming radio…but i´d like to have the option! And that is just an example not covered by push notifications. Those step counter apps are also limited on their usefulness by not being able to run in background…same goes to gps trackers, etc…

    And yes, i am prepared for jailbreaking my 3.0 iphone, i will do it for sure. But it would be nice to see some more openess in this.

    And i go back to the notifications system…its archaic…face it. Imagine sms + calendar + a series of Push Notification enabled apps jamming your screen with alerts….that had to change to something less intrusive. Again, jailbreaking i will probably avoid all this, but Apple should do it themselves…i hope that duringt the beta testing this comes to discussion, and they change it…again see what Android does, and see what the Elert aplication does

  • http://www.allaboutiphone.net James Burland

    I agree it would be nice to at least have the option, and I’m sure that will come in time. But I don’t think that Push Notification is “archaic”, it seems to me that it will do very nicely for a whole host of applications. In fact, I’m going to trust Apple’s engineering on this one. I can’t think of any reason why they would *unnecessarily* hold back multi-tasking, so I have to believe that it is necessary, for the time being at least.

    The reasons might be many, and clearly some of them have to do with weaknesses of the current iPhone (i.e. the battery), but if anyone has proved that they have the skills it’s those guys, right? Just take a look at how their work has shaped the industry in the last 2 year… simply amazing…

  • ares

    You did not understand me. Its not the Push Notification system that is archaic, but the way the iphone UI handles all notifications, be it calendar or sms (right now), and all the alerts from push notifications (with 3.0)

    I would like something more elegant instead of having that box jumping to the middle of the screen over and over. That´s why the Android solution is so good…

    I´d like that whenever something wanted to alert you, it appeared in quickview format, for a short time, then to go a system bar tray, untill the user clicked on it, or cleaned the tray by swiping it

    See how Elert email notifications runs

    http://twitpic.com/28vjg

  • Nikolay Andreev

    Just because other platforms have decided to enable background processing doesn’t mean Apple should do it.
    Listening radio in the background can be done either via a iPod App plugin (new category of apps, I hope Apple will introduce).

    Apple marketed the iPhone as a 3 in 1 device. A phone an iPod and a internet communicator. Those should be the only 3 background processes allowed. All other should come trough one of those 3.

    The people in a dire need of background processes will have their jailbreak solution.

    the one consequence of background app I personally miss is not being able to return to the exact same position when I left the app.

    If Apple/Developers fix that and the software becomes as responsive as in 1.0 I will not even talk about 3rd party apps.

  • ares

    Fine…but the background processes is not the worse.

    Its the notification system…engadget wrote about it:

    “A big problem that Apple has yet to address with OS 3.0 is its obnoxious, obtrusive notifications. Where Android and webOS slide a handy “tray” into view to let you know you’ve got something incoming, the iPhone regularly piles on one notice after another, leaving you with a stacked, productivity-stalling, ugly mess of pop-ups. Apple, you kill this kind of annoying garbage in your browser — why do you think users want it in their phone? Even older systems get this one more right than Apple does — both Windows Mobile and the BlackBerry OS use a mixture of pop-ups and background notifications. It’s perplexing that a company so concerned with usability and simplicity has done nothing to address the situation in three iterations of its software.”

  • Nikolay Andreev

    A notification that is non noticed is no notification at all but I agree that once Apple has more experience with the issue and more after-release user feedback we may see an improvement in the current system.

    Note, there are 3 types of notifications currently available. Its not just popup messages. You can also get custom sounds and badges, which are unobtrusive enough

  • ares

    Nikolay, i hope they solve it BEFORE release. Badges are not enough.

    And there is plenty of time to work it before 3.0 release. Remember, the first beta of 2.0 was not the same has the version of 2.0 that was released (funilly enough, push notifications were removed, and other stuff was added)

  • http://www.allaboutiphone.net Matt Radford

    I’m glad the article has kicked off a good discussion :)

    Personally, I see no reason why Apple couldn’t allow the best of both worlds, for both background apps and notifications.

    Just allow the user choice:

    (1) allow a few apps to be enabled in the background, with the understanding that it will degrade battery life (depending on the app running)

    (2) allow users more control over the notifications that do show. Why does Apple get to decide that a text message should get a prominent notification but an email should not?

    I have to agree though, that the Android/Pre method of subtle notifications does scale much better. How annoying these notifications will become will only become apparent once Push Notifications are released.