Copy and Paste now natively possible in iPhone OS 3.0

As a proud member of the iPhone family, I love to flaunt my gadget everywhere I go. As an avid iPhone follower, I always felt, there are some features, missing in an iPhone, which when natively included, shall make the already user-friendly gadget, more user friendly.

I had a wish-list for the next firmware upgrade of iPhone :

• Natively support cut, copy and paste of text
• Support Stereo Bluetooth coupling with the Stereo wireless headphones.
• Multimedia Messaging in iPhone
• Landscape Texting and Typing

Well, it seems like Apple has received about a million similar wish-lists from iPhone users around the world.

Unveiling iPhone OS 3.0

On March 17th 2009, Mr Scott Forstall, the head of iPhone software Development team unveiled iPhone OS 3.0 which has 100s of new features for its iPhone users in an event in Cupertino California.

Some of the main features

• Cut, Copy and Paste :

This is one major inclusion to the iPhone which will stop atleast a million people from whining. You can now drag the GRAB POINTS around to select the text for editing. When you finish selecting the text, 3 options pop put, making editing literally a cake walk.

• Spotlight on Unified Searching

Now you can use a single app to make unified searching of your entire iPhone. You can search like the way you search your PC. Spotlight Searching is one major valued addition!

• Multimedia Messaging (MMS)

You can now attach photos while chatting with your friends, record your voice and MMS it across to your friends. Another major feature addition according to me.

Attach a photo from your camera!

• Landscape Texting/Typing

For all of you who found the Landscape mode to be comfortable to text, now iPhone 3.0 has native support for Landscape texting. Life is simple now!

• Stereo Bluetooth and Peer to Peer networking

Finally, iPhone now supports Stereo Bluetooth pairing. Grab your bluetooth headphones and seamlessly pair up with iPhone. Also, you can now detect your friends playing similar games in your network and seamlessly connect to them. No pairing required! Bonjour is the back-end technology that's used here.

• Improvised iPhone SDK with more APIs

Apple has added more than 1000 APIs for the developers to make the better use of the gadget. In-App email, Battery API, UI table view, Map support etc to name a few.

• Core Location, the GPS Technology
• Voice Memo feature
• Shake to Shuffle feature
• Parental Control for Videos
• Youtube Account feature
• Auto Fill option
• Anti Phishing
• WiFi autologin etc etc

Some FAQs :

When is iPhone OS 3.0 Available for users?

ans : This summer. The release date is not announced yet.

Is the upgrade free for iPhone users?

ans : Yes

Is the OS upgrade free for iPod touch users?

ans : No ! They have to shell out $ 9.95 for the upgrade. This is keeping in account the different accounting treatment for iPhone and iPod. Grrr!!

How can iPhone stream Youtube Videos without Flash?

We all know that our favourite Apple doesn't support Flash and as few technologists predict, will never support Flash natively in iPhone/iPod Touch for some strategic, technical and practical reasons. This clearly meant that all the online flv videos of Youtube, the most popular online Video Sharing site, would never run in iPhone. If that was the case, I would never buy an iPhone. Its practically impossible to imagine a rich internet browsing experience without Youtube!

How can iPhone play Youtube Videos?

But now that we've seen iPhone playing Youtube videos, its a general question, how can this be possible? Has Apple allowed Flash only for the Youtube videos?

The answer is NO. iPhone supports H.264 video compression standard. H.264 is an equivalent to MPEG-4 part 10 or MPEG-4 AVC (Advanced Video Coding). YouTube has encoded the plethora of videos available in the site and iPhone can play that format. The audio encoding is in AAC.

Some facts to interest you:

• The compression is more in EDGE network than in the WiFi network. The reason is very obvious.
• iPhone is the first handheld/smart phone to support H.264 video encoding.
• Apple and Adobe are "supposedly" working very hard to make Flash available in iPhone. Until now, no significant development is observed.
• There was a rumour that Flash Lite 2+ would be supported in iPhone. Almost all big players in smartphone industry like Palm Pre, Windows Mobile, Symbian etc supports Flash Lite (some even support Flash Full version) but not Apple iPhone.

Shantanu Narayen, the CEO probably has itched the modified version of this famous statement by Martin Luther King Jr. in Adobe's lobby, "I have a Dream that one day, my kids and his (Steve Jobs) kids would be playing multiplayer Flash Games in their iPhones without knowing the pain that we had to undergo, I HAVE A DREAM"