Apple showed the world its new iPhone OS 3.0 software this week at Apple HQ in Cupertino, in what is a downbeat affair for a usually chest thumping company. It said the software was ready now for registered developers and includes a new SDK with over 1,000 new APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). We had JRPG’s Gerard Halloren at the show (our investor partner in the US).
Some of these APIs are pretty far out. You can now buy things from inside applications, this one intended for buying subscriptions to magazines from inside the mag itself or new game levels from within a game; and APIs which support Peer-to-Peer connections, so that P2P games can operate.
One of the big things that most people have been asking for ‘ cut and paste between applications using touch, has been added. Apple also announced about 100 new features which can be retrofitted to existing iPhone and iPod touch devices which include cut, copy and paste; a landscape view for mail, text and notes; stereo Bluetooth; syncing notes to the Mac and PC; shake to shuffle and parental controls for TV shows as well as Spotlight search across the iPhone or iPod touch. Developers will also finally be able to integrate Google Maps into their applications, something they have been screaming for.
Apple iPhone users will also be able to view shared calendars on their iPhone and sync them with iCal, Yahoo, Google and Oracle calendars.
Apple also said that it has solved a major mystery with the addition of what it calls Push notification. Without this IM applications or anything that requires presence data tended to eat a handset battery’s life. Apple said that it had to re-architect this for a large number of applications, to squash constantly running background processes.
It looks like Apple has made a lot of developers happy and this update will accelerate sales of the 25,000 Apps that are already in the App Store.