In case you're wondering what happened to day 5 in this series of news items, it was actually the article titled "Location Sensitive Programming" which dealt with the use of navigator.geolocation in JavaScript.
Today let's look at the newly released iPhone OS 3.0 and what new features this will add for you. As usual the release of an update has been marred with problems such as activation problems and and iTunes error (-4). As a friend said on Twitter, it's usually best to wait until such failures are not trending topics.
Anyway, once you've got your iPhone OS 3.0 update you'll have a few new features to try out - the first and foremost of these being the addition of the long awaited "Cut, copy and paste" capability. It's amazing how long it's taken for such a basic feature to be added, but they have had UI issues trying to figure out the best way of representing the feature across all applications in a consistent way. I think it still has a few problems - there have been numerous times when I've tried to move the cursor back through the text but have instead activated this feature. Landscape mode is now available for more applications as well, so if you're writing an email you can get a landscape keyboard to type with.
Spotlight search is now available to the left of the home screen meaning you can easily search your iPhone for whatever it is you're after. The results include little icons to represent the type of result it's found as well. Suprisingly I've barely needed this feature yet as most programs now have search built in as well.
iTunes is now built in to the iPhone's interface meaning you can purchase music, audiobooks, tv series, etc. online without having to synchronise with your desktop... that is assuming what you buy is less than 10mb as anything larger will notify you that it won't download and will instead need downloading from your desktop and will need to be synched.
I'm not sure why this wasn't a feature already as it's a nice easy feature for a phone to have - a way of recording voice memos. In this latest revision of the OS they've added the ability to record voice memo's and to be able to share them with other people. It's kind of like using AudioBoo, but without the social networking aspect it gives.
For most people this has also included the addition of MMS, though for iPhone 3G users this is for images and audio only - the ability to send video MMS is restricted to the iPhone 3GS. I found it took about 48 hours for MMS to be enabled after I bought my iPhone and I've not actually used it yet - I've been using email instead. It's certainly useful though if you've got a picture or some audio to send to someone who doesn't use email often, or if you have their phone number but not their email (but how often would that be the case).
Mobile me has added a simple yet brilliant feature - the ability to track and remote wipe your iPhone should it be stolen. I have had some reservations about this, mostly based around what complications this would give if someone gained access to your Mobile Me account. With access to this your movements could be tracked without you knowing about it, but realistically I'm guessing there won't be many cases where people's accounts are hacked. In fact, in the first few days of this feature being available someone successfully used it to track down someone who had stolen their phone. Whether this was a publicity stunt or not I don't know, but it certainly sounded real.
