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Introducing iPhone Firmware 3.0 (Full Article)

Jan Zdarsa
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Today's Apple event was unusually held directly at the headquarters of the Apple company in Cupertino, California. Steve Jobs was of course still absent due to illness, so Greg Jaswiak took the opening remarks. At the beginning, there was an evaluation of how things are with the iPhone in the world. We learned that the iPhone is in 80 countries and that they have sold a total of 13,7 million iPhone 3Gs so far, with a total of 17 million with the first generation. If you add another 13 million iPod Touches sold to that number, it's a pretty nice market for developers on the Appstore.

50 people and companies participated in the development of an iPhone application, of which a full 000% had never created an application for a mobile device before. These people have released more than 60 thousand apps on the Appstore. A total of 25% of applications were approved in less than 98 days, which is quite surprising to me personally.

After summarizing the basic facts, Scott Forstall took the stage, who presented us with the main changes in iPhone firmware 3.0. Scott set a tone right from the start that the developers were sure to like. He announced more than 1000 new APIs that will greatly facilitate the creation of new applications and should open up new opportunities for developers to develop interesting applications.

However, the developers complained about only one business model, where they receive 70% of the sold application. This made it difficult for developers to use some other approaches, such as paying for monthly use of the app. Developers also lacked payment for new content for the application, and they often solved it by releasing new parts of the given application and creating a nice mess on the Appstore. From now on, however, Apple has made their job a little easier when they can offer the purchase of new content for the application. Here I can imagine, for example, selling maps to navigation software.

Apple also introduced iPhone communication via bluetooth, which doesn't even need pairing (but the second device must support the BonJour protocol, so it won't be that simple). From now on, the new iPhone firmware 3.0 should support all known bluetooth protocols, or developers can create their own. It should no longer be a problem to send, for example, a business card to another device via bluetooth. The iPhone should also be able to communicate with accessories in this way, where, for example, you can control the frequency of the FM radio in the car from the iPhone display.

Hard work was also done on the maps, and Apple has since allowed their Core Location to be used in the iPhone. This means that now there is nothing stopping turn-by-turn navigation from appearing on the iPhone!

Next on the agenda was the introduction of Push notifications. Apple acknowledged that their solution was coming late, but the incredible success of the Appstore made things a little more complicated, and only then did Apple realize that the whole problem was a little more complicated. They probably didn't want another fiasco after the MobileMe problems.

Apple has been working on push notifications for the past 6 months. He tested background applications on devices such as Windows Mobile or Blackberry and at that moment the phone's battery life dropped by 80%. Apple revealed that with the use of their push notifications, the battery life on the iPhone dropped by only 23%.

Apple introduced push notifications to the instant messaging application AIM. The application could send notifications to the display both in text form and using an icon on the screen, as we know for example with SMS, but the application also alerted itself using sounds. Push notifications were created so that all apps use one unified system that takes battery life, performance, and optimization for phone carriers into account. Apple had to work with carriers in all 80 countries because each carrier works a little differently.

Then some developers were invited to the stage. For example, Paul Sodin came up with Meebo (a famous IM web service) which confirmed what we all know. Push notification is that important thing that everyone has been missing. Then EA's Travis Boatman took to the stage to introduce the new iPhone game The Sims 3.0. EA does not deny and like a true gold digger presents how the new business model can be used and shows the purchase of new content directly from the game. But it is nice to play music from the iPod library directly from the game. Hody Crouch from Oracle presented their business applications, where he presented push notifications and new API interfaces on their applications that monitor events on the stock market or in the enterprise.

Next up was the introduction of ESPN's iPhone app for sports streaming. For example, if you are watching a match in the application and go to write an email, the application can notify you with a sound that a goal has been scored. For the ESPN app, it is assumed that the ESPN server will have to deliver 50 million push notifications per month, which is why it took Apple so long to create push notifications. Another iPhone application, LifeScan, is designed for diabetics. They can send data from their sugar level measuring device via bluetooth or via the dock connector to the iPhone. The application then helps you choose the right food with regard to the situation or can calculate whether we need smaller doses of insulin.

Ngmoco has become the company with the best iPhone games. They introduced 2 new games. Touch Pets and LiveFire. Touch Pets is the first pet game using social networks. You may receive notifications that someone wants to walk the dogs with you. Does that sound crazy? Undoubtedly, little girls will love it. LiveFire is a shooter for a change, where you will receive invitations to join the game from a friend using push notifications. There is also buying new weapons (for real money!!).

The last application introduced was Leaf Trmobone, which will introduce playing musical instruments on a social network. The app comes from the creator of the famous Ocarina iPhone app, Smule. The entire presentation of the applications was not very exciting, if you can imagine how such push notifications or the new API interface works. Personally, I have not had any really exciting moment that exceeded my imagination.

After the introduction of these applications, the audience in the hall was bored. Fortunately, Forstall came back and continued to talk about the SDK. It started with a bang right away, the new firmware 3.0 will have more than 100 new features and, surprise of the world, Copy&Paste is not missing! Glory! Just double-click on a word and a menu will pop up to copy the text. This feature works across all apps, which is great.

For example, you can copy the content of a website, where you can mark how long a passage you need. Copying text into Mail will also preserve formatting. If you shake the phone, you can go back one action (undo). VoIP support should also be added to applications, so you will be able to chat with a friend over the Internet while walking the dogs.

There is also sending multiple photos in the Mail application. The Action button in the Photos application allows you to insert several photos from the photo album directly into the email. Another small but important feature is the possibility of a horizontal keyboard in applications such as Mail or Notes.

From now on, you will also be able to delete SMS messages individually or possibly forward them. The big news is the support of MMS messages, which many people complained about. There is also a new native application called Voice Memos, where you can record voice memos. Applications such as Calendar and Stocks did not escape improvements either. You can already sync the calendar via Exchange, CalDav, or you can sign up for the .ics format. 

Another important iPhone application in the new firmware 3.0 is the Spotlight application, familiar to MacOS users. It can search in contacts, calendar, e-mail client, iPod or in notes, and maybe there will be support for some 3rd party applications. You invoke this search by swiping quickly on the iPhone's home screen.

Some other functions have also been improved, such as the Safari application. It now contains an anti-phishing filter or can remember passwords for logging in to various sites. The keyboard was also improved and support for some new languages ​​was added.

And now the most important thing. What I was afraid of since the beginning of the announcement of the new firmware 3.0. Namely, when will it actually be available? Although I was full of optimism and hoped that it would be as soon as possible, I will disappoint you all. The firmware won't be available until the summer, although developers can test it today.

It will be possible to install the new firmware even on the first generation iPhone, although you will not be able to use all of its features on it, such as Stereo Bluetooth support or MMS support will be missing (the first generation iPhone has a different GSM chip). The update will be free on iPhone, iPod Touch users will pay $9.95.

We learned some additional insights in the Q&A. They didn't want to talk about Flash support yet, but such support for tethering, for example, is said to be on the way, Apple is working with operators on this possibility. The new firmware 3.0 should also see improvements in speed.

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