Prince McLeanCopy and paste priority
When asked by a reporter from Time why Apple took so long to deliver "obvious" copy and paste features, Forstall replied that it wasn't that easy, and that security issues needed to be resolved with copying information between applications.
Unlike most other smartphones' operating systems, the iPhone offers real security between applications managed by the operating system, rather than implicitly trusting whatever software a user might load from any source.
Flash panned, again
Asked about support for Adobe Flash, "video is still a blackhole if you visit a website with Flash," Apple said it has no announcements on that front, instead deflecting attention to the fact that the phone supports H.264 video streams, and adds new support for HDTV streaming for audio and video.
Video playback is the main use of Flash on the web outside of animating advertisements. However, a variety of major sites that use Flash for video on the web, including YouTube, CBS Mobile, and the BBC, now push standard H.264 video to the iPhone directly.
Tethering
When asked about tethering, the use of the iPhone as a gateway for sharing its mobile connection with a notebook computer, Forstall answered that the issue involves two parts, working with the mobile carriers and building the technical support into the iPhone client itself. "We’re absolutely supporting tethering in the client side in iPhone 3.0," Forstall said, "but we’re working with carriers around the world to see when they can add tethering support on their networks. But we are building that support into iPhone 3.0."
Peer-to-Peer and Bluetooth
The new Bonjour-enabled discovery of other devices will use Bluetooth exclusively, Apple said. That will enable the discovery service, used to allow gamers to participate in multiplayer titles for example, to work without disconnecting from WiFi internet, without needing any configuration, and without requiring mobile network access.
When asked if developers could send out audio files over Bluetooth, to trade files, say music files, through iPods, the group remained stumped for a moment before Forstall answered, "I think probably not — you couldn't move the file."
"We have the ability to stream music to music apps, and certainly a game, if a game has music in the game it would be possible to download game tracks, but if would be confusing for other music apps with downloadable music that isn’t through the app store."
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86 Comments
Still think they should just put Flash for iPhone in mothballs.
Peer-to-Peer and Bluetooth
The new Bonjour-enabled discovery of other devices will use Bluetooth exclusively, Apple said. That will enable the discovery service, used to allow gamers to participate in multiplayer titles for example, to work without disconnecting from WiFi internet
Nice, but why bluetooth exclusively? Why wouldn't Bonjour work over Wi-Fi? Will we be able to print (directly) without having to have a bluetooth access point?
In my humble opinion anyways the update delivers a lot of what I was looking for. Right now it is hard to say if it will deliver everything I want because 3.0 is HUGE! Really; this is one huge update.
From the standpoint of development I need to find out more about several things that I was hoping for. The support for hardware is interesting but I need to know exactly what that means, does it turn the USB port into a master, enable access to the serial connection or allow for Bluetooth profiles that support serial interfaces. What more is being done with Bluetooth in general. It is going to take awile to digest aol the APIs. hopefully I will have this downloaded tomorrow.
While everybody is excited about copy & paste, I think more people will get better use out of landscape mode. I'm also glad they aren't ignoring the stocks app, as that is really useful. It looks like this is a two pronged update in that user land is getting a big improvements right along with the developer space. Dave
Additional charges for MMS, MMS only works on 3G network, networks need to add support for tethering? WTF is this guy talking about... I have a 2 year old phone that could do all of this on 3G or EDGE and it's an AT&T phone (A707)...
I see a couple of wanted updates but I am not paying more money to use MMS on my Iphone when I used it almost daily on my old phone on the same network and wtf am I supposed to do when I can't get 3G signal because I'm 10ft out of range of their sparse 3G network?
Big Fail.
networks need to add support for tethering? WTF is this guy talking about... I have a 2 year old phone that could do all of this on 3G or EDGE and it's an AT&T phone (A707)...
Exactly.
I've been doing this for YEARS via bluetooh to my Macs with my Sony Ericsson P810 and P910 phones connected to T-Mobile's flat fee GPRS service. (I don't have a 3G phone yet, but the main requirement will be out of the box tethering)