Along with iPhone 3.1 and the new iPod nano, iTunes 9 was the big news at Apple’s It’s only rock and roll but I like it annual music event. And for iPhone and iPod touch users — our focus here at TiPb — a large part of that 3.1 update (see our iPhone 3.1 walkthrough) comes from iTunes 9.

Last things first, no, it wasn’t re-written as a 64-bit app, or in Cocoa for the Mac. (Get of our iLawn!) However, with iPhone and iPod touch users firmly in mind, let’s take a look at the new features we did get…

Improved Syncing and App Organization

Syncing is more robust in iTunes 9, with more panels and more options within each panel (especially Applications).

The Summary tab, if you’re syncing an iPhone 3GS, now includes a “configure for universal access” option, which pops up something very similar to iPhone 3.1’s universal access menu if home button triple-click is enabled.

The Applications tab received the most stupendous make-over. Instead of a raw list with check boxes, you’re presented with a more useful list view on the left, showing app icons, category and the file size. You can sort by name, category, or date of download, and there’s even a handy search box. On the right is a replica of your iPhone home screen, along with thumbnails of additional home screens along the right hand side. (iPhone 3.x allows 11 home screens).

You can still add apps to the sync list by checking or unchecking them, but you can now also add them by dragging the icon directly to the home screen — and exact position on the home screen — you want them. To delete them, just select the app on the home screen and click on the X, just like on the iPhone in “jiggly” mode. (And no, you still can’t delete Apple’s built-in apps, sorry!) Likewise, you can move icons around on — and between the different — home screen representations, making it much easier and faster to get the exact iPhone layout you want (when you apply your changes and sync them over). You can also drag iPhone home screen pages around to re-order them, much like PowerPoint slides in thumbnail view.

The Music tab (yes, we’re skipping Ringtones, it’s fairly pedestrian) gives you a bit more control, as now in addition to the previous ways you could sync music, you can also choose to move across entire artists and genres. You can also choose to have iTunes automatically fill up any space you may have remaining on your (now potentially beefier 32GB iPhone and 64GB(!) iPod touch) with music. (We didn’t test this, but presumably it doesn’t do Genius fills… yet!). No album art deco, here, however.

The Movies tab has been liberated from the generic iTunes 8 “videos” catch-all to get its own space, and it uses it well. Poster art is displayed, along with run time, file size, and age-rating. You can choose to automatically sync, or just check the ones you want.

The TV Shows tab, similarly liberated, now has a two column view showing artwork and, in the epic win category, a second column where you can choose exactly which episodes of a given show you want to sync over (no more generic “last 3…” whatever! — though you can still choose to automatically fill that way if you like.)

The Podcasts tab allows for the same episode-by-episode custom syncing options as TV Shows. Did I say epic win already?

The iTunes U tab, independent now from Podcasts, nevertheless gets the same new features.

The Photos tab, for iPhoto users on the Mac, is a much more significant update than it is for PC users. If you have iPhone 09, you can now sync based on folder, event, and faces (if you’ve gone through the facial recognition process and set some up). You can also choose to sync and videos in iPhone, such as those you took with your iPhone 3GS. Once synced across, they’ll appear in the photo galleries on the iPhone just as they did in the camera roll on the 3GS. Great addition.

Bottom line, the syncing really is much improved, especially for apps.

iTunes App

Subtle differences the gradients in the iTunes chrome aside, there are a few changes worth noting in the iTunes app itself. First, the sidebar has been tweaked, with iTunes U broken out and iTunes Genius Mixes added (though you need to update Genius first to get it to show — more on that later).

Music gets new column displays, and better options for organizing them.

Apps are now full citizens in the iTunes interface, with list, “album”, and CoverFlow views, to help better manage all of our growing app collections.

For Music, Movies, and TV Shows (but strangely now Applications, Ringtunes, or other purchasable content), if your library is empty, instead of showing you that emptiness, iTunes will show you how to go about filling it.

If you let iTunes automatically manage your folders, there’s a new, better organized way of doing it. If you’re upgrading to iTunes 9, however, you have to manually tell it you want to switch to the new format (File > Library > Organize Library). The new format stops dumping movies, TV shows, and other video at the same directory level as music artists, and now puts the alongside the top music folder proper (though the overall folder is still, strangely, still called iTunes Music). Regardless, a great change and about time.

Speaking of about time, one of the new folders is called Automatically Add to iTunes, and iTunes will watch this folder and automatically add any new, compatible content to the library. (Incompatible content is isolated and flagged as such). So, if you get your content from a service other than iTunes, you can have it download here and iTunes will still see it and add it. Longtime coming, this feature. And — pow! — take that faux-monopoly pundits.

Lastly, on the Mac, the green widow button at the top left no longer switches between the regular iTunes window and tiny player. It now uses default Mac behavior of switching between full size and user-defined size. To get to the tiny player, you can alt-click the green button or use the menu or keyboard shortcut (shift+cmd m).

Genius Mixes

Added to Genius Playlists are Genius Mixes, though in a very un-Apple-like way, it’s not immediately intuitive where to find them. That’s because you can’t find them until you go to the Store menu and choose Update Genius. (Tip of the hat to TUAW).

Once that’s done, Genius Mix will pop up in the sidebar beneath Genius Playlists and… create a few mixes you can’t view a list of or edit or alter in any way (you can only see 4 album covers stitched together to represent the mix). Apple made them sound like radio stations, which aside from calling in requests, you have zero control over anyway, but still, this feature feels a little incomplete right now.

iTunes will create up to 12 Genius Mixes depending on how much music it finds and can work with. I got 4. 2 of those were soundtrack mixes with similar soundtracks. Apple says you might discover music you forgot you had. I sure did. Deleted some of it…

Your results will hopefully be better, and if they are, you can sync the resulting Genius Mix Playlists over to your iPhone or iPod.

iTunes Home Sharing

No, it won’t let you elegantly sync your iPhone or iPod from different, authorized machines. Unfortunately, that holy-grain of functionality still eludes us. (Granted, it may be complicated to properly sync when, for example, you have a movie in your iTunes library on a large desktop drive, but don’t happen to have it on your smaller laptop library — but we know you can do it, Apple!)

Home Sharing is, however, an improvement on the plain vanilla streaming that was provided in previous versions of iTunes. Now, once you’ve properly authorized your computer for Home Sharing (and you’re limited to 5 authorizations, as before) using your iTunes username and password, you can not only see and play media on other machines, you can copy it from one machine to another. What’s more, you can set up iTunes to automatically copy any new media from one machine to another, allowing you to keep that home theater machine in sync with the home office machine and laptop, for example. However, iTunes will only automatically copy content your buy over the iTunes store. If you get your media from somewhere else, it’s up to you to copy it over, manual-style. Also, display of a shared library is limited to list view, which is odd considering Back to My Mac can display network folders in icon or CoverFlow view just fine. Perhaps Home Sharing is another of those early introductions that will mature in time (with multi-machine iPhone sync, right?)

One really nice feature that is in place, however, is a handy Show drop down at the bottom. You can flip it from All items to Items not in my library, a perfect way to find content you may have missed copying over.

iTunes 9 Store

The iTunes 9 Store has a new look and feel. First of all, it’s whiter. The backgrounds, that is. Except where they’re black, in the Movies and TV section, and framed in blue for iTunes U. Way to nail down that consistency.

The new backgrounds, expect for iTunes U (which has been re-organized and separated out from Podcasts where it used to live), look both roomier and less well segmented at the same time. There’s also a new, almost iPhone-esque black menu bar which introduces the the drop-down to iTunes. It’s convenient, if a tad gauche at this point.

When you search, results share the new, breathable layout, and easy, iconified filters appear in a sidebar on the left.

Definitely more usable than before, though I’m not sure the little “buy now” with drop menus on the side will ever grow on me. You can, however, use them to gift, add to wishlist (yes, wishlists replace shopping carts in iTunes 9), copy the link, tell a friend, or share via Facebook or Twitter.

Social media integration was one of the big rumors preceding iTunes 9, with everything up to a “social app” and massive cloud-served, crowd-sourced recommendation engine said to be on the horizon. Turns out you can just autofill a Twitter form with the item in question. It’s a first step, to be certain, albeit a tiny little one.

A few of the larger changes, we’ll cover separately.

iTunes LP and iTunes Extras

iTunes LP, much gossiped about under the code-name Cocktail, is an attempt to either harness the nostalgia of by-gone days when vinyl records played on turn-tables and hours were consumed listening and pouring over cover art, liners, lyrics, and other assorted goodies, or dodgy scheme to get people to buy entire albums again instead of cherry-picking singles.

Likely its equal parts both. There are only 7 iTunes LP-format items available as of this writing, some for purchase (like the Doors), some as part of an iTunes Pass (like Dave Matthews). Four more are listed as available for pre-purchase.

iTunes Extras are the movie equivalent, similar to the extra features you could previously only find on DVDs. Like iTunes LP, there’s limited selection right now, and half of that is pre-order. And, what’s a deal-breaker for me, it doesn’t appear to be in HD (yet?)

There’s a lot going on under the covers (so to speak) with both iTunes LP and iTunes Extras, including more WebKit interactive goodness, and a refreshing lack of DRM (keep it up!), but the 720p format of some of the material makes us think it’s less intended for the iPhone (indeed, it’s iTunes bound right now), and more for eventual Apple TV and… iTablet use.

Says Apple’s support article:

The songs or featured movies can be viewed directly on iPhone, iPod touch, or Apple TV, but iTunes LP or iTunes Extras can only be viewed from within iTunes on an authorized computer. In order to view the complete iTunes LP or iTunes Extras, transfer the song or movie from your device to your iTunes library on the computer that contains the downloaded iTunes LP or iTunes Extras.

Like any new feature, or variation on a format, they’re going to squeak a little right now when they turn around too fast, but it will be interesting to see how they develop.

Conclusion

iTunes 9 is free and has enough great new features for iPhone and iPod touch owners, especially the new App Management interface, that it’s an easy upgrade to recommend. While not all of the new features appear fully mature yet, that’s why they’re new and hopefully Apple will continue to both evolve and refine them as they have with previously introduced features.

What will be especially interesting is watching Apple handle iTunes growth and — according to some, — bloat. The equal and opposite reaction to increased functionality is loss of focus, and iTunes going from a simple music player to a complex media and sync manager hasn’t come without a price. Apple will need to work hard to make sure it’s a price most users continue to be willing to pay.

As always, if any of you iTunes ninja notice that we’ve missed whole swathes of great new, if harder to find, functionality in the latest release of Apple’s media hub, let us know in the comments and we’ll update.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iTunes 9 Software Walkthrough

On the fence about downloading iPhone 3.1? Wondering what’s changed since iPhone 3.0? Need a handy link to send your friends who may have questions? TiPb’s got your back with our complete iPhone 3.1 Software Walkthrough.

Previously, we took you through all three beta versions, now we’ll take you through the final release.

And we’ll get started, right after the break.

What Hasn’t Changed

A lot. Too much to list neatly this time around. When you finish reading this walkthrough, go back and read our iPhone 3.0 walkthrough. It’s a giant compared to this.

Still, there are a few talking points…

iTunes 9 Features

It’s also worth noting that a couple of new features touted for iPhone 3.1, like Genius Mixes, and App Management are actually contained in the simultaneously released iTunes 9. See our iTunes 9 Software Walkthrough for more.

Bug Fixes

Big .0 releases are typically followed up swiftly with quick .1 bug fixes. While the swift part here is debatable — though on par with last year’s update — the bug fixes aren’t. Among the issues addressed:

• Better iPhone 3G Wi-Fi performance when Bluetooth is turned on
• Fixes issue that cause some app icons to display incorrectly

Note, we’d heard iPhone 3.1 would also fix the Spotlight issue that displayed deleted emails, but Apple doesn’t list it, and we’ve heard reports it isn’t yet fixed. (Though it apparently was in iPhone 3.1 Beta 3. Strange.)

Home Screen

With the iPhone 3GS and its accessibility features, you can now enable triple-clicking of the Home Button to toggle VoiceOver, Toggle White on Black, and Ask (which then will pop up a menu offering Turn VoiceOver On, Turn Zoom On, Turn White on Black On).

Voice Control

Voice Control in iPhone 3.0, after holding down the Home button for several seconds, let you speak simple commands to place calls and control music. With iPhone 3.1, it will now also work over Bluetooth.

Just hold down the Bluetooth call button as you would the Home Button, let go, and Voice Control pops up. State your command into the BT mic, and Voice Control will “speak” the confirmation (whether it gets it right or not) through the BT earpiece.

MobileMe Find My iPhone Remote Passcode Lock

Expanding on the Find My iPhone remote tracking and wiping service that came with iPhone 3.0, you can now also remotely assign a passcode lock. This is a nice half-way ground between leaving your iPhone wide open, or having to wipe it clean, if you can’t find it but aren’t sure you’ve permanently lost it.

Messages

Still no MMS for AT&T users. That’s being released on September 25 (though whether it will require an iPhone 3.1.1 update, or just a new carrier file is unknown).

For those outside the US with working MMS, you can tap the action button at bottom, left to save them to the camera roll, just like you could previously do with pictures under iPhone 3.0.

Calendar

Calendar gets a minor tweak in iPhone 3.1. Now event alerts also display the location of the event in the popup. Presumably, this is now considered important glance-able information.

Photos

Video trimming is now non-destructive. Previously, if you trimmed a video, it was automatically saved over the original, meaning you could never undo or go back to the full clip. Now, a Save As… dialog gives you the option of preserving the original and creating as many version copies as you want (an short clip to email, a longer one to share to YouTube, and the full clip to sync and bring into iMovie, for example).

Maps

We haven’t seen this show up yet ourselves, but during Steve Jobs’ iPhone 3.1 overview, the slide behind him listed Sponsored Links in Maps as a… feature. (Maybe that’s why Google CEO, Eric Schmidt was there?). Not quite sure how we feel about this in a built-in app either, as opposed to a site we choose to navigate to in Safari…

Settings

Setting usually accounts for the longest list of changes in a new iPhone firmware, but this time it’s fairly short.

Settings: General: Usage now includes a separate meter for Tethering Data. Apologies again, AT&T users, but for those outside the US — if it proves reliable! — it could help avoid nasty overage charges if you exceed your data cap.

Settings: General: Accessibility includes that aforementioned toggle for the Home Button triple-click to enable quick Accessibility switching. Options include Off, Toggle VoiceOver, Toggle White on Black, or Ask which will launch a pop-up and let you choose between the above and Turn Zoom On.

Settings: Safari now, finally, has that toggle to enable Fraud Warnings for malicious web sites (like phishing sites, malware sites, etc.).

iTunes Store

iPhone 3.1 lets you display available iTunes account credit both iTunes Store, and in the App Store, and allows you to redeem gift cards and other promotional codes.

Also, iTunes U is now “better organized”.

In addition, displacing Podcasts (which moves to the other side of the tracks beneath the More tab) is Ringtones, displayed like music, and available ready-made for $1.29.

App Store

Since the App Store is closer akin to a local WebView, it’s fairly easy for Apple to update the App Store (or iTunes Store) without updating the firmware. Case in point, the night before iPhone 3.1 went live, the App Store was updated to feature “Top Grossing” as one of the view options.

Apple has extended their Genius technology to recommend apps as well in iPhone 3.1. The Genius tab appears under Featured, taking the left-most slot. Once you log in, activate, agree to the terms of service (twice!), Genius will crowd-source other iTunes App Store users with similar tastes in an effort to suggest apps you don’t have but might enjoy. (The app on which the recommendation is based is listed on top of the suggested app — nice touch).

As mentioned above, you can now also see your current iTunes Store credits in the App Store, and you can now also redeem iTunes gift cards, promo codes, and certificates here as well. Feature. Parity.

Phone

Copy and Paste comes to the Phone Keypad. Just tap and hold and the input area will change from dark blue to light blue, and the Copy Paste menu will pop up.

The iPhone Paste feature is “smart” enough to change alphanumeric phone numbers to pure numbers (i.e. 1-800-FLOWERS to 1-800-356-9377).

Contacts also get direct copy, so you can hold your finger down on a contact field, just like a picture in Photo, to trigger the copy pop-up menu.

Conclusion

Like the recently released Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, iPhone 3.1 doesn’t provide a lot of fancy user-facing updates (we likely won’t see those until Mac OS X 10.7 and iPhone 4.0 respectively). What it does is fix things that needed fixing, and fill in missing functionality that needed filling in. And, it throws in a couple small feature enhancements, just because.

Free for both iPhone and iPod touch 3.0 users (iPod touch 2.x users will still need to cough up $9.95 to pay the subscription accounting devil’s dues), if iPhone 3.0 was a must-have for the sheer magnitude of its new functionality, 3.1 is a no-brainer update to make the must-have that much nicer-to-have as well.

[Thanks to everyone who contributed screenshots and descriptions for this walkthrough, especially Justin, Jeremy, and James. If you noticed we missed anything, drop us a note in the comments and we'll update as needed.]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone 3.1 Software Walkthrough

iPhone 3.1 Beta 1 has just been released, and unlike the major new version that was iPhone 3.0, it’s still unclear how many features — compared with bug fixes — will be added. However, enterprising developers have already discovered at least a few things we can all look forward too.

So, here’s TiPb’s iPhone 3.1 Beta Walkthrough, and we’ll keep it updated as/if Apple releases future betas.

Home Screen

The jigglies — what Dieter lovingly calls the little dance icons do when you hold them down long enough to make them moveable and rearrangeable — now make the iPhone vibrate once to further indicate the change of state. Whether or not this will somehow factor in to the iPhone 3GS accessibility features is uncertain.

Voice Control

Voice Control, after holding down the Home button for several seconds, let you speak simple commands to place calls and control music. In iPhone 3.1, it will also work over Bluetooth.

The exact process isn’t clear yet, but it’s hard to imagine anything other than holding down the call button on a Bluetooth headset function similarly to how the Home button currently works.

Messages

After being present in iPhone 3.0 Beta 1 through Beta 4, before being stripped out in Beta 5, AT&T users will again find MMS functionality restored to the interface. However, it’s not functional without hacking the carrier file, and it’s unknown if it will survive until release or be stripped out again if AT&T still isn’t ready for the feature to go live.

Calendar

Calendar gets a minor tweak in iPhone 3.1. Now event alerts also display the location of the event in the popup. Presumably, this is now considered important glance-able information.

Photos

Video trimming is now non-destructive. Previously, if you trimmed a video, it was automatically saved over the original, meaning you could never undo or go back to the full clip. Now, a Save As… dialog gives you the option of preserving the original and creating as many version copies as you want (an short clip to email, a longer one to share to YouTube, and the full clip to sync and bring into iMovie, for example).

Phone

Copy and Paste comes to the Phone Keypad. Just tap and hold and the input area will change from dark blue to light blue, and the Copy Paste menu will pop up.

Reportedly, the iPhone Paste feature is “smart” enough to change alphanumeric phone numbers to pure numbers (i.e. 1-800-FLOWERS to 1-800-356-9377).

When Will it Ship?

If history is any indication, iPhone 2.0 was released on July 11, 2008, and iPhone 2.1 followed some two months and 4 betas later on September 12, 2008 hot on the heels of Apple’s Let’s Rock introduction of the 2nd generation iPod touch. Will we have to wait for another new iPod and music event before we see 3.1?

Our guess is Apple will try to get 3.1 out earlier to fix a few of the more onerous bugs, but as always, only Jobs knows for sure…

Note on Using Beta Software

Unlike iPhone 2.0 Betas, where access seemed much more limited and leaks were few and far between, 3.1 like 3.0 seems to be on every iPhone users want-now list. Also, unlike 2.0 when many devs were seasoned pros, now Apple is touting thousands upon thousands in the program, some seemingly happy enough to enable 3.0 access for the general user base.

However, betas are intended for developers to test and report back on. They’re not as stable, not as snappy, not as feature-complete and anyone trying to use them as a production OS on their main (or worse, only) device is likely to have something less than an ideal experience. People trying to use it as such may wish they could go back to iPhone 3.0 almost as much as they wished for 3.1. Think thrice before taking the plunge.

[Via Chris, Muero, WhenWillApple, and BGR. Thanks to everyone who sent in descriptions and screenshots.]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone 3.1 Beta Walkthrough

Waiting to download iPhone 3.0? Trying to figure out exactly what’s included in the new OS? Wondering what’s changed since iPhone 2.2.1? Need a handy link to send your friends who may have questions? TiPb’s got your back with our complete iPhone 3.0 Software Walkthrough.

Previously, we took you through all five beta versions, now we’ll take you through the final GM (gold master) seed. (And when it goes live on iTunes for one and all, we’ll update any changes we find as well, so consider this your one-stop-shop for everything iPhone 3.0).

And we’ll get started, right after the break.

iPhone 3.0 software offers a host of new features (100 according to Apple). However, not all of these are available on every hardware generation. Here’s a list of the differences, and we’ll mention them again, as appropriate, below.

• 2009 iPhone 3GS: All features
• 2008 iPhone 3G: no video camera, voice control, compass, or related features.
• 2007 iPhone 2G: no video camera, voice control, compass, stereo Bluetooth, MMS, or related features.

Also note: iPhone 3.0 launches 2 days before iPhone 3GS, so until we can get our hands on the new hardware and take proper screenshots, we’ve included captures from Apple’s video. We apologize for the lower quality and will swap them out as soon as we can.

What Hasn’t Changed

As has become our custom, we’ll start off by listing what hasn’t changed in iPhone 3.0. It’s amazingly short this time:

• Weather: Still unchanged from iPhone 1.0. Still no HTC TouchFlo 3D-style animations, and no landscape mode with more/different information. Nada.
• Calculator: Previously upgraded for iPhone 2.0 with landscape-activated scientific mode, calculator doesn’t sport any additions this time around.
• That’s it!

Home Screen

At first glance the SpringBoard app behind the iPhone 3.0 Home Screen seems identical to earlier versions. Sure, SMS is now labeled Messages, the Stocks icon has had a make-over, there’s a new Voice Memos icon and app and — exclusively for iPhone 3GS owners — a new Compass icon and app.

With iPhone 2.x, Apple introduced 9 Home Screen pages, allowing 148 apps total. iPhone 3.0 expands that to 11 pages, allowing 180 apps total (11 built in, leaving 159 for 3rd party apps and WebClip Safari bookmark shortcuts — rumor has it you can load more, but their icons won’t be visible).

Not much else looks different. There are still tiny dots above the dock that signify your additional app screen. However, there’s now an equally tiny magnifying glass icon to the left of them…

Spotlight

On the Mac, Spotlight is the system-wide indexing and search feature that allows you to find files by scouring through metadata and text strings. Apple re-purposes the name and icon here for a new, system-wide iPhone search feature that serves up Contact names, App names, iPod media file names, Email headers (from, to, and subject), and Calendar event names.

You can access Spotlight from the main/primary Home Screen by swiping from left to right, or by clicking the Home Button. When on the Spotlight Screen, you can return the main/primary Home Screen by swiping back from right to left, or clicking the Home Button again. (Yes, clicking Home will toggle you back and forth between those two screens).

Spotlight starts with a blacked-out screen with a search box on top and the portrait keyboard on the bottom (no landscape mode for Spotlight thus far). As you type, results begin to populate the screen, narrowing as you refine your search term. At any point, you can tap on a Spotlight search result to launch the app and/or take you to the resulting content within an app.

Hitting the blue Search button at the bottom right will slide the virtual keyboard away and give you full screen results. Or almost full screen. Since Spotlight is integrated into the Home Screen, the Dock is revealed along with the results so you can quickly launch any of your four docked apps (Phone, Mail, Safari, and iPod if you’ve kept the defaults).

Voice Control

With iPhone 3.0 when used in conjunction with iPhone 3GS, holding down the Home button (or the center button on earphones) sounds a tone and launches Voice Control, which takes the VoiceOver feature introduced in the iPod shuffle to the next level by allowing you to talk to the iPhone.

Voice Control’s interface is simply a wave form with the various commands floating by, and a cancel button. Currently, supported commands include: call/dial [contact name], call [contact telephone number], play [playlist name, album name, artist name, song name], what [song, group] is this, play more songs like this (creates Genius playlist), shuffle.

A second tone is followed by VoiceOver (which is computer generated) repeating back your command and then your corresponding call or music starts.

(It’s not hard to see this eventually expanded to include things like: email Bob at work, launch app Peggle, take voice memo, etc. now is it?)

One of the most impressive aspects is how many languages will be supported by Voice Control at launch:

Chinese (Mainland), Chinese (Taiwan), Czech, Danish, Dutch (Belgian), Dutch (Netherlands), English (Australian), English (UK), English (U.S.), Finnish, French (Canada), French (France), German, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish (Mexico), Spanish (Spain), Swedish, Thai, Turkish

Force Quit

Under iPhone OS 1.x and 2.x, holding the Home button down allowed you to force a frozen application to quit, clear the RAM, and return to the Home Screen. Since, as mentioned above, holding down the Home button now launches Voice Control on the iPhone 3GS — and does nothing on the iPhone 2G or iPhone 3G, Force Quit has be reassigned.

Now, to Force Quit an app you hold down the sleep button until the the red “slide to power off” control appears. Then hold the Home button down (it can take a while so keep holding!) and — presto! — the current process will be terminated, memory cleared, and you’ll be taken back to the Home Screen.

Messages

Messages is the new SMS, and is renamed to signify the addition of MMS (multi-media messaging service). It allows, in the case of the new iPhone OS 3.0 software, for you to receive, vCards (contacts), audio, location, and — for iPhone 3GS only — video to be sent using the Messages interface to any other smartphone or feature-phone that supports MMS and those file types.

Once you receive an MMS, you can tap the icon in the message bubble to get a better look at it. In the case of a contact, you’ll see a page similar to what you get when you call up a contact in Phone, except at the very bottom you’ll have extra, saving and sharing related options that we’ll cover later in the Phone app section.

Location opens in Google Maps as you’d expect, audio and video in iPod, and images pop up full screen where you can tap the share icon to Save Image — but strangely not re-share it…

Note: The details of MMS vary carrier to carrier. While many international carriers do have MMS enabled with the iPhone 3.0 launch, AT&T is the largest and most notable exception.

When it comes to sending MMS, only picture sending can be initiated from within the Messages app itself. Everything else starts a “share” function from another app (i.e. Share Contact is in Contacts, Share Location is in Google Maps, Share Audio is in Voice Recorder, etc.)

There are two ways to insert a picture into MMS. The first is to tap the camera icon, bottom right. A requester will ask if you want to Take Photo or Choose Existing. Take Photo will call up an embedded version of the Camera app. Frame your picture, tap the camera icon, look at the preview and either hit Retake to try again or Use to insert the picture into your MMS window. (If you want to erase it later, just backspace over it like you would a text character you want to delete)

Choose Existing will call up an image picker (like the Photo App). Pick an Album, pick a picture, and tap Choose to confirm.

The second way to insert a picture into MMS is to paste it…

The new, system-wide Cut, Copy, and Paste service has also been introduced into Messages. It works in a similar way to the implementation in the Notes app, and we’ll cover it more fully there. One difference is that double tapping a previous SMS will give you the Copy popup allowing you to duplicate the entire contents of the SMS to the clipboard. Tapping on an empty entry box will launch the Paste popup, so you can stick the contents back down in an message of your own. If the entry box already contains text, double tapping will select the closest word, and double tapping an holding will select the closet word and popup the loupe.

Again, we’ll cover this more fully in the section for the Notes app.

Messages also now includes line-item deletion and forwarding. Tap the Edit button at the top right, select the messages you want — as many of them as you want — and then hit the red Delete button at the bottom, or the blue Forward button beside it. Edit still isn’t the most elegant name for the combination of deletion and forwarding, mind you, but the functionality is consistent with the Mass Edit feature introduced for Mail in iPhone 2.0.

Lastly, Apple has also answered the call for pervasive landscape-style keyboards, and Messages is one of the text-entry apps that received it. For those who want a Cadillac-wide typing experience, enjoy!

(Note to Apple: a way to “lock” the iPhone in portrait or landscape mode would be appreciated, especially when typing while reclining and every little angle change sends the UI spinning.)

Calendar

Calendar appears largely unchanged from the perspective of the app itself. No landscape rotation for week view — still no week view of any kind.

There are, however, two very welcome new features for Exchange users. You can now add Invitees and set Availability when adding a new event.

Tap Invitees to open the Add Invitees pane, then start typing to search for contacts or hit the blue + icon to pull up the embedded Contacts picker. You can add more than one invitee.

Tap Availability to choose between Busy, Free, Tentative, and Out of office.

The other changes occur in the plumbing and are — somewhat counter-intuitively for us at least — hidden almost entirely away inside the Preferences app (see that section for more details). That’s a shame because they’re rather significant: support for CalDAV and Subscribed Calendars (i.e. holidays, sports schedules, etc.).

Once added via Preferences, however, here’s an example of how Subscribed Calendars look:

Photos

The Photo app receives an update in the form of integration into the Copy (no Cut or Paste here!), MMS, and — for the iPhone 3GS — video camera systems.

For iPhone 3GS users, the Camera Roll now also includes any videos you’ve shot with the device. Similar to how iPhoto on the Mac handles video thumbnails, they’re shown intermingled with still pictures, a transparent black bar along the bottom showing the video icon and the run time of the video. Tabs along the top let you switch from the All view to Photos only or Videos only as well.

When in the Gallery view mode (where pictures are tiled in four columns of thumbnails), tapping on the Action button at the bottom left corner will no longer slide up a menu, but will place two or three buttons along the bottom. For Camera Roll, these are Share, Copy, and Delete. For any other galleries, you’ll still get Copy and Share, but not Delete (yes, you still can’t delete synced photos, only ones you’ve taken with the camera itself).

Tapping on a thumbnail will select it (or de-select it if it has already been selected). Selected photos are labeled with a red check mark icon in the lower right corner, and number of photos selected is reported in parenthesis and continuously updated beside each of the buttons. However, if you select more than 5 images, Share will no longer be enabled (you can still copy them and paste them into Mail, however.)

Tapping on Share button will let you send the photos via Email or MMS, Copy will place them on the clipboard, and Delete (Camera Roll only) will trash them.

In single photo viewing mode, you can Copy an image to the clipboard by touching and holding. A Copy button will pop up just above you finger. Tap it and the image is copied.

Also in single photo viewing mode, the Action button now brings up a longer list of options: Email Photo, MMS, Send to MobileMe, Assign to Contact, Use as Wallpaper.

iPhone 3.0 also now presents the Action button in Landscape mode, though the list view isn’t as attractive for some reason. When in Landscape mode, f you choose to share via Email or MMS, for example, the Email or Messages app pops up in Landscape mode as well. Expected, but we don’t always get what we expect so it’s still nice to see.

Sharing to MobileMe now does double duty, publishing photos and video alike. For photos, you can choose any existing MobileMe gallery, but can’t create a new one. Video is similar, though adds YouTube to the list of supported targets. We’ll cover that at the end of this section.

For iPhone 3GS users, you can view and share videos in much the same way as photos. Tapping on a video in the gallery bring it up full screen, portrait or landscape, along with a big Play button in the center. Hitting the play button, of course, plays the video.

If the controls are up (tap the screen to reveal or hide the controls), you’ll see similar options to photos, though the play button here will play the video, not start a slide show. The biggest difference is the Trimming control along the top. Similar to how Voice Memo works (we’ll cover that later), you can drag to select a point you want to see in the video, or you can drag either end — at which point the outline turns yellow — to cut off part of the beginning or end of the video. Tapping the yellow Trim button will re-save just the selected part of the video.

Note: trimming video is current destructive — you save over the full clip with the trimmed clip, and can’t go back. iPhone 3.1 Beta, however, looks to provide a Save As function for non-destructive video editing.

Options for sharing video include Email Video, MMS, Send to MobileMe, and Send to YouTube, though video will be highly compressed for sharing, and file size limits may not let all videos be shared via all options.

Camera

For iPhone 2G and iPhone 3G, the Camera app gets a minor tweak. Now, after you take a picture, instead of the Camera Roll icon at the bottom right, you see a tiny thumbnail of the last photo taken. (Even if there are additional items in the Camera Roll, like screen-captures, only the last actual camera photo taken is shown).

iPhone 3GS gets the above tweak, and a major upgrade thanks to the new auto-focus lens. Now, Camera will try to focus on what it thinks is the most important element of your photo — even macro! If, however, you want to focus on something else instead, just tap the iPhone screen to re-focus. A handy square overlays the sweet spot, so you can make sure the lens is set exactly where you want it to be.

Perhaps the biggest addition for iPhone 3GS is the ability to shoot not only still pictures… but video as well. To switch from still picture to video capture mode, simply toggle the slider at the bottom right of the screen. When you do, the camera icon, used to take a still picture, is replaced with a red recording icon that stays dark when in standby mode but blinks when video is being taken (keeping the common vidcam metaphor alive and well). Like with still pictures, video can be taken in portrait or landscape mode.

YouTube

The big news for the YouTube app in iPhone 3.0 is account integration. You can now enter your YouTube login information for access to your Subscriptions and Playlists.

Stocks

The Stocks widget is still powered by Yahoo, and still lists your favorite stocks on top and a handy graph at the bottom. You can now swipe across that handy, however, to change it into a news feed or a more detailed set of information including opening price, high, low, volume, P/E, market cap, 52 week high, 52 week low, average volume, and yield.

Rotating Stocks to landscape mode now expands the graph to full, wide screen mode. But there’s more: youch a point on the graph and you get the exact price for that day, touch a second finger somewhere else on the graph and you get the difference in value between those two days (delta).

Maps

For iPhone 2G and iPhone 3G owners, Maps is the same as 2.1. Sure, under iPhone 3.0 developers can now embed the maps in their App Store apps, but from the built-in point of view — nothing. (Google Latitude will, apparently get support via the browser, go figure?)

For iPhone 3GS owners, however, Maps will now leverage the new digital Compass hardware. Tap the Get Location button to find your coordinates via GPS, then tap it again to get your directional heading via the Compass (shown as an expanding white spotlight effect extending out ahead of you).

Voice Memos

Following iTunes and App Store, Apple’s third new built in app since launching the iPhone is also it’s first new, non-Storefront app. Voice Memos is also the first new app to shove its way into the middle of the existing apps (iTunes and App Store were added to the end).

(Note to sticklers: Remote and Keynote, though from Apple, aren’t built in to the software and require download or purchase separately from the App Store.)

Voice Memos, from icon to main screen, pays homage to an old-style microphone (though, unlike Calculator, we don’t believe it’s one ever manufactured by Braun…). The bottom has buttons for Record and (a rather non-intuitive-looking stack of three horizontal lines) to access Voice Memos that have previously been recorded. In the middle is a sound level meter.

Tap Record to begin and the Record button becomes Pause, the More button becomes Stop, and the top of the screen flashes red to show you you’re recording and the duration of the recording.

When you’re finished recording, the More page shows Voice Memos in a similar fashion to Visual Voice Mail in the Phone app. Tap a Voice Memo to play or pause it, toggle Speaker on or off, or use the buttons along the bottom to Share (via email or MMS) or Delete.

You can also tap the blue circles at the far right of each recording to slide into an Info screen where you can further tap to slide across to a Label screen pre-populated with tags including None, Podcast, Interview, Lecture, Idea, Meeting, Memo, and Custom. Choosing Custom slides another screen over where you can input your own Label names.

Back on the Info screen, tapping on Trim Memo slides up a bare-bones editing interface for taking off any unwanted content from the beginning and/or end of your recording. Interestingly, Apple chose yellow for trim slider and Trim Voice Memo action button.

Share on the Info screen does the same thing as the Share button on the Voice Memos screen. Convenience through repetition?

Notes

First up, you can now “swipe to delete” notes from the main contents screen, just as you could “swipe to delete” email all the way back to the original iPhone OS. Consistency points!

Next, like messages, Notes benefits from the several system-wide — or at least multi-app-wide — improvements in iPhone 3.0. The first is the pervasive landscape keyboard. Just rotate and the accelerometer does the rest.

The big thing, of course, is Cut, Copy and Paste. It works similarly for text — though not identically — across all supported applications, so we’ll do the heavy lifting here.

To start, double tap on some text. That will highlight the word and pop-up buttons for Cut, Copy, and Paste (the last of which only appears if there’s already text in the clipboard). You can also tap on an empty area to pop-up buttons for Select, Select All, and Paste. (Select highlight the closest word to the current cursor position, and again you need text already in the clipboard for Paste to appear).

If you want to change the length of your selection, grab one of the blue dot’s that form the handles on the top left or bottom right of your current selection and drag them in or out to add or subtract text. As you move the handles, a magnifying loupe will appear, similar in function to the round curser placement loupe that dates back to iPhone 1.0. This loupe, however, is a wide, horizontal, rounded rectangle and lets you more precisely adjust your text selection.

Selected text can then be Cut or Copied to the clipboard, or replaced by Pasting over it with text from the clipboard.

Text can also be pasted at the current cursor location by double tapping to bring up the Select, Select All, and Paste pop up.

If at any time you either type or paste something in by mistake, Apple has added a gimmicky yet semi-cool undo feature — just shake your iPhone to call up an Undo, Redo, and Cancel dialog.

(Note: While the Mail app, discussed below, gets similar Cut, Copy and Paste functionality, so do most 3rd part App Store application that use standard text input controls. Awesome).

Finally implementing functionality that Steve Jobs listed off during his iPhone 1.0 introduction at Macworld 2007, Notes now sync via iTunes back to your Windows PC or Mac.

Lastly, predictive text in general seems to have been improved as of Beta 3. Or rather, the dictionary that tries to guess and replace words as you type seems to have been updated.

Clock

The Clock app gets a minor tweak — you get a lap display in the upper right hand corner of the Stop Watch. While the main stopwatch shows total time as always, the lap counter shows only the time passed since you last hit the lap button.

Settings

Apple typically tucks numerous changes, large and small, neatly away inside the Settings app, and iPhone 3.0 is no exception. Due to the volume of changes, we’ll break them down by category.

Wi-Fi

Auto-login increases the ease of logging into commercial-style Wi-Fi services (the kind that typically present a web-based password form for authentication, like at hotels or coffee shops). In Settings, you now have the option to toggle on Auto-Join, which saves passwords and then automatically uses it next time to return to the same network.

Also, when you login, you get a special slide-up window with some new controls and an embeded web-view — no more inconvenient app-jump to Safari.

An added benefit for fans fans of super-strong, pseudo-random passwords — the kind almost impossible to type by hand — paste works in the password field. This means you can copy it from an email or text file of any kind and paste it right in. Very welcome!

Notifications

Push Notifications gets its own top level button in Beta 3 and as of Beta 5 and Apple beginning Push Notification testing, not only can users globally or individually enable or disable Sounds, Alerts (text boxes), and/or Badges, but each app gets its own sub-screen to do likewise. (i.e. if you want Twitter to badge but not alert, IM to sound but not badge, etc. you can have it your way).

As with GPS on iPhone 3G under OS 2.0, Push Notification-enabled apps will ask permission on launch, and give you a chance to choose “Don’t Allow” or “Okay” on a per-app basis as well.

General Settings: Network

New to Network Settings is Internet Tethering. On supported carriers (and no, AT&T isn’t supporting it yet and there’s no word on when they will) Internet Tethering will display current status, Off or On.

Tap the button to go to the Internet Tethering Settings, then toggle the switch to On. If Bluetooth isn’t currently enabled, an alert will pop up asking you if you want to enable it, or to leave it off and tether via USB.

When tethering is on, a blue bar appears at the top of the screen, similar to the green bar that appears when a phone call is in progress. Unfortunately, unlike the green phone bar, it tapping the blue tethering bar doesn’t seem to send you back to the tethering Settings to quickly toggle it off.

General Settings: Restrictions

iPhone 3.0 now provide more in the way of Parental Controls. First off, iPod has been removed from the top menu and Location has been added. A secondary menu has now been added below to provide more granular control over iPod content, allowing you to select which country/region ratings you use, and then set Music & Podcasts, Movies, and TV Shows. Control for Apps is at the very bottom.

App Restrictions can be based on age-ratings. Currently supported options are:

• Don’t Allow Apps
• 4+
• 9+
• 12+
• 17+
• Allow All Apps

General Settings: Home

Additional options are now available for you to assign to a double-click of the Home button. They’ve grown from Home (i.e. same as single click), Phone Favorites, and iPod to now include Search (epic win for mobile accomplishers) and Camera.

A sub-menu for Search Results allows you to check on or off the exact types of information you want called up in a Spotlight Search. Options include Contacts, Applications, Music, Podcasts, Video, Audiobooks, Notes, Mail, and Calendar.

You can also tap and hold down the line icons on the right side of any category and drag them to change the order of how search results are presented (i.e. you could move Applications on top of Contacts, and Spotlight will then list Apps first).

General: International

Courtesy of BGR, it looks like Voice Control’s languages settings will be found here when iPhone 3.0 is running on iPhone 3GS hardware.

General: Keyboard: International Keyboards and General: International, Keyboards

Even more international language keyboards are now available in iPhone 3.0: Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Indonesian, Malay, and Thai. Good news for people in those regions eager to get their iPhone on. (And let’s see a hardware keyboard do that!)

Settings: Mail, Contacts, Calendar

You can add a MobileMe account, just like before, but now if you already have bookmarks, contacts, or other data on your iPhone (for example, if you synced it over via iTunes) and you enable MobileMe, a menu will slide up asking if you want to Merge the data, Not merge (i.e. replace), or Cancel.

Once you’ve added a MobileMe account, there’s now a new option called Find My iPhone. Turn it on, then go to www.me.com, login to your Account tab, and choose Find My iPhone from the sidebar. A map will show you the current, approximate GPS coordinates for your iPhone. There are also options to send a text and/or sound alert to your iPhone (e.g. a number where you can be reached if someone finds it), and to remote wipe your device if you think it’s been stolen or permanently lost and you want to protect your data.

As mentioned previously, also hidden here are the new LDAP (contacts directory), CalDAV, and Calendar Subscription, features under Add Account, Other.

Settings: Safari

Options can be found here for the new AutoFill feature, and a submenu for choosing who’s Contact Info you want to use for the fill, as well as an option to allow Names & Passwords to be stored and AutoFilled, and a button for Clear All to wipe the AutoFill database clean. This, at least, gives us some control as to whether we want the security of not storing and filling our passwords on a device that could be lost or accessed without our approval, or the convenience of saving us a lot of typing.

Likewise, the new anti-Phishing Fraud Warning can be toggled on and off. Keeping it on, of course, provides some level of safety when encountering malicious websites made to look like ones we trust, intent on stealing our login info and/or credit card data. Of course, no list of Phishing sites is ever complete or completely up to date, so keep surfing safely.

Settings: Messages

With the addition of MMS in iPhone 3.0, now, of course, Settings follow to includes an MMS Messaging On/Off toggle.

Settings: iPod

New to the iPod Setting is a toggle to enable the Shake to Shuffle option that Apple debuted with the latest generation iPod shuffle.

Settings: Store

Not as elegant as it looks in iTunes or App Store apps, but Settings give you a third, convenient point for on-device switching between iTunes store accounts. You can sign in, view account details, and sign out. Then you can sign in under a different account (i.e. spouse’s account, different country’s store, etc.)

Note: There was some confusion about whether or not Apple would let you re-download paid apps if you enabled multiple accounts (so you couldn’t log in as your buddy, for example, and get all his or her apps for free) but the restrictions that were in place during the beta period seem to be gone (for now?)

ITunes Store

As mentioned above, iTunes Store now allows management of multiple iTunes accounts. Scroll down to the bottom of a main page (i.e. before you’ve selected a specific piece of content to look at) and you’ll find a button containing your account username.

Tap on the button and you’ll be given options to View Account, Sign Out, or Cancel. Much more convenient than having to exit, launch Settings, navigate, switch accounts, go back, etc.

iTunes also adds to the previous music and podcast on-device download capability with support for Movie, TV Show, Music Video, Audio Book, and iTunes U content.

To make room, the tabs at the bottom lose Top Tens and Downloads and now include Videos (movies, TV, music video) and a standard More icon, which gives access to a screen offering Audio Books and iTunes U, as well as the displaced Downloads and relocated Redeem (for gift certificate codes).

Like with the iPod App, an Edit button lets you drag around tab icons to lay things out just the way you want them.

When you find a video you want to learn more about, tap on it and you get a detailed description. Like with music, you can sample before you buy. Tap the Preview button to see a short clip or trailer. Instead of just playing like music, however, iTunes opens an embedded iPod video player.

Also, like with video podcasts, music, and App Store apps, 3G isn’t an option for anything over 10MB — which for video we imagine will be almost everything — so have your Wi-Fi standing by.

App Store

App Store gets the same iTunes account management functionality as the iTunes store, above.

Also, Apple has also and again changed the way screen shots appear in the App Store. Now, you get full screen shots, side by side, with the ability to swipe through them. You can see additional screenshots on each side when more are available backward or forwards. (Similar to how you swipe through multiple Safari tab pages).

In-App Purchases and Subscriptions

Two other changes coming to the app store, in-app purchases and subscriptions, are more difficult to document right now because no apps that make use of them have currently been released in the App Store. So, we’ll base this for now on what Apple has presented and update it as soon as real-world examples go wide.

By way of example, if you previously wanted commercial E-Books, a developer had to wrap a reader app around each E-Book, and then sell each E-Book as a separate app on the App Store. This led to dozens upon dozens of apps that were just more books, or otherwise variations on the same functionality with different content.

With iPhone 3.0, a developer can now sell you an E-Book Reader app, and inside that app, they can sell you the individual E-Books. If you choose to buy another E-Book, the same type of iTunes confirmation and password requester will pop up as when you buy a stand-alone app, and the same iTunes-side billing and processing happen.

This can also work to buy additional levels or extra content in games, and theoretically map packs for navigation apps, etc.

Yes, Apple just invented the $0.99 “scaleware” model. Buy the low-price, entry-level version of an App, and if you like it, buy more. It’s not a demo, it’s not shareware, but it does let developers a way to create a cheap evaluation model for users to try before they buy… more of it.

Why $0.99? To avoid user confusion, Apple won’t let developers sell additional content to apps they gave away for free. If you want to charge more later, you have to charge at least something up front. Otherwise, “free apps stay free.”

Subscriptions, for their part, seem to work just like In-App Purchases, with the pop-up advising you are purchasing X issues of Y content for Z dollars. (e.g. 6 months of iPhone Monthly for $1.99).

Push Notification

Perhaps the highest profile addition to third party apps, if not the App Store proper, is the release of the-anticipated Push Notification service (PNS).

This service is supposed to replace some forms of background multi-tasking support, which Apple allows for their own apps like Mail, Phone, and iPod, but sites battery life, stability, and complexity of management as reasons not to grant third party (App Store) apps the same privilege.

So, under iPhone 2.0, if you exit an Instant Messenger (IM) app, you no longer have anyway of knowing when a new IM comes in unless and until you deliberately relaunch the app. (Sure, there are work around over SMS and Email, but the app itself is dead).

Under iPhone 3.0, if you exit an IM that supports PNS, the developer’s servers will alert Apple’s PNS which then “push” an alert to your iPhone. (Similar to how MobileMe already pushes alerts for email).

If you have IM, Twitter, a news app, etc. Apple’s servers will handle all of them, so theoretically your iPhone only has to listen to PNS instead of each one separately. One instead of many is supposed to save battery life.

PNS currently supports 3 kinds of alerts: badges (like Mail uses to show you unread messages), custom sounds (like a beep or bell or anything already built into the app by the developer), or modal text alerts (like the kind that pop up to tell you about a new SMS).

With the text alerts, if an alert comes in, it will stay up until you dismiss it or act upon it (e.g view an IM). If a second (or third, or more) text alert comes in, however, it replaces the previous one, and that previous alert is gone forever. In other words, if nine alerts come in, you’ll only ever see the ninth one and dealing with it gives you a blank screen, not the eighth — or previous — alert. (Badges, if used and enabled, would still show you 9 messages had come in).

If your iPhone is in sleep mode, alerts will still pop up, but the “swipe to unlock” will dismiss them, but not send you to the alerting app. Less than ideal, but perhaps the best solution given the limited notification handling the iPhone currently employs.

Dock and Bluetooth Accessory Connection

Potentially the biggest and most exciting development for iPhone 3.0, if not the iPhone in general, is the ability of developers to make apps that directly communicate with accessories/peripherals via the USB dock connector or Bluetooth radio.

This means, in short, the iPhone will be able to connect with, display data for, and/or control medical equipment like glucose readers, production equipment like cameras, barcode readers, game controllers, keyboards — almost anything developers care to create protocols for.

Peer-to-Peer Connectivity

Peer-to-Peer connectivity leverages Bonjour networking and the Bluetooth radio to create an easy way for apps to join together and exchange data. It’s clearly directed at multi-player gaming, but Apple points out that any app can take advantage of it to share business cards, photos, or almost anything. Yes, it’s the return of “beaming”.

iPod Access

Finally, Apple grants developers access to your iPod library. Now, third party apps can let you play, switch, and otherwise listen and control your music right from inside the app, without having to exit, launch the iPod app, exit, and re-launch the original app.

Compass

The Compass app is exclusive to the iPhone 3GS hardware, because that hardware is the only current device with a built-in magnetometer. The app shows a stylized compass that will spin to show either true north or magnetic north, depending on which one you’ve chose from the Info screen. Via the GPS, coordinates are also shown along the bottom.

If magnetic fields or something else prevent clear readings, an interface comes up asking you to rotate the iphone in an figure-8 patter to reacquire compass headings.

Phone

With iPhone 3.0, the Phone app’s Recents tab, when you tap the arrow to get more information, now shows you incoming calls from that contact, the time, and the duration. If you spoke to that contact repeatedly without any other contacts in between, multiple entries will show you the information for each one of those calls.

Also, the Contacts tab (and the stand alone Contacts app) now integrate the “swipe to delete” functionality we all know and love from Email and other, previous apps going all the way back to iPhone 1.x. Simply pick a name, and then swipe to call up the red “Delete” button.

Email

Email still hasn’t gotten a unified inbox or threaded messaging or unified messaging, but iPhone 3.0 does give the Email app a few improvements by way of the new system-wide changes.

Landscape keyboard lovers rejoice, Email now gives you the wide treatment when to rotate to that orientation. Like with other apps, if you’re already in landscape when you share, link to, or otherwise launch Email, it comes up the very same way.

You also get the same Cut, Copy and Paste functionality as Notes with a couple notable exceptions. First, you get support to copy rich text formatting (bold, italic, html). Second you can also paste pictures you may have copied from the Photo or Safari apps. We’re not sure if there’s a limit to the amount of pictures you can send via 3G from the iPhone in a single mail yet, but we’ve received 9 in one shot so far. If anyone has reached a hard limit, let us know.

Spotlight lives inside Mail to, just like it did inside Contacts with OS 2.0. Scroll up slightly inside a mail box and you get the search input and buttons letting you choose between From/To/Subject/All. As an added bonus, you can also go beyond the local store and “Continue Search on Server…” on Exchange 2007 or later, MobileMe, or IMAP installations that support it.

Much like Mac OS 10.5 Leopard, Apple has expanded “data detectors” in iPhone 3.0 as well. While previous iPhone version would identify phone numbers and link them to the Phone App (just as web and email addresses link to Safari and Mail respectively), now 3.0 will try to identify address location to link to Google Maps as well.

Safari

As mentioned in the section on Settings, if you choose to enable it, Safari will AutoFill form fields based on your Contact info, or the Contact info of your choosing. As a separate option, passwords you’ve previously entered as well.

Also mentioned in Settings, Safari will try to protect you from Phishing sites if you enable it, presumably consulting an continuously updated blacklist of sites, presumably the same as recently implemented on the desktop Safari 4 Beta.

In addition, when you go to a site with an enhanced security certificate, the text on top of the browser turns green (like the green bar, we get it!), with little green lock icon beside it, and the name of the certificate’s trusted organization. For example, the below screenshots show how Apple’s order status page looks on iPhone 2.2.1 (top right) and iPhone 3.0.

What does this mean for users? In an age of increased phishing attacks, where bad sites try to trick you into thinking they’re your bank or shop and steak your login or credit card info, this is one more visual cue in your assessment process for determining if you can trust that the website is what it says it is.

Updates to Safari don’t end there, however, as Apple has also (yes!) given us the option now to open links in new pages (the iPhone equivalent of tabs). Tap and hold on a link, and a menu pops up with the link path listed on top, and the option to Open the link (in the current page), Open in a New Page, or Copy to the clip board. As this is the same gesture used to allow Image Save in iPhone 2.0, if the link happens to be a picture, Image Save is rolled right into the same menu as a an additional option.

(This is also a handy way to check which URL exactly is behind a link before you click on it)

Rendering speeds have also been improved, from 3x to 16x faster according to benchmarks. Apple is using the new Nitro (formerly SquirelFish Extreme) engine to throw HTML and especially JavaScript up much faster than iPhone 2.2.1 could. On mobile devices, this will likely make a far more noticeable difference to users.

The big news, however, is that Mobile Safari gets the Cut, Copy, and Paste love from Apple as well, although it works a little differently here than it does in Mail or Notes.

Perhaps because double-tap is already used for zooming, in Safari you hold your finger down on some text (as you would in other apps to trigger the magnifying loupe) and the entire paragraph of text is selected (everything within the P, and perhaps DIV and other similar containers).

Sites that don’t properly format (i.e., use several BR, or line-break tags to simulate paragraphs) are now exposed for their shenanigans by confusing the Copy mechanic, resulting in entire reams, or even pages of text being selected. (For shame!)

The blue dot handles at the top/beginning and bottom/end of the selection are used in Safari, but if you drag them enough, the whole block will become selected and you’ll get blue dots centered on all sides, and they can be pulled up or down to select previous or following blocks respectively. Again, lack of proper HTML formatting can reduce the reliability (so coders, fix your stuff!)

Both text and/or images can be selected.

Paste works in form fields the same way it does in Notes and other apps.

iPod

New in iPhone 3.0, the formerly useless Repeat and Shuffle Option for when listening to a podcast has been replaced with an email icon on the left hand side, and a speed counter on the right hand side.

The email icon allows you to send an iTunes Link for the podcast (similar to how you could previously email YouTube video links).

The speed indicator on the other side shows x1 during regular playback, and we presume it might show x2 etc. as Apple has previously allowed you to “speed up” talk-heavy content like Audio Books.

Where the Genius button would be on music tracks, we now have a circular backwards arrow with a 30 in the middle, which allows you to jump back in 30 second intervals.

Variable media scrubbing now lets you put your finger on the position indicator at the top, and the buttons change to a text message reading “Slide your finger down to adjust the scrubbing rate.” Do so and the speed that you scrub though the file changes. Displayed in place of the track info, options so far include half speed, quarter speed, and a fine grain speed.

While these controls would also be much appreciated in video, right now implementation is not there. Movies and TV shows have the same Done and Full/Fit to Screen controls as previous OS, as do video podcasts in landscape view. In portrait view, video podcasts gain the mail link and media scrubber, but retain the shuffle control.

Spotlight search comes to the iPod app. Just like Mail, scroll up in any list-view (like Podcasts, Playlists, Songs, etc. and the search bar appears. Results populate as you type, and if you hit the blue Search button, the keyboard slides down and you can see all results organized by category.

As mentioned in the Settings section, Shake to Shuffle is also now available in the iPod app. Just remember, if you enable it and then start to dance with your iPhone, your music might jump around with you…

Another major check-box finally checked is support for Stereo Bluetooth. Paired to an A2DP device (similar to current blue tooth phone headset pairing), a Bluetooth icon appears to the right of the volume slider, and an Audio Source selector will let you choose from available devices.

(Note: this seems to work in apps like Pandora as well, bonus screen shot included below!)

Conclusion

This is not a review — our full rundown of the pros and cons will come soon — so our conclusion only goes so far as to say that, after going through everything above, anyone who claims iPhone 3.0 is really more fittingly iPhone 2.3 deserves a swift kick in the apps. This is a hefty release and we’re again impressed not only by Apple’s continuing ability to evolve the iPhone platform and provide software updates (again, free of charge to iPhone users, $9.95 to non-subscription accounted iPod touch users), but for the easy and consistent way in which they’re doing it.

Kudos to the iPhone team at Apple. Can’t wait for 4.0!

[Thanks to everyone who contributed screenshots and descriptions for this walkthrough. If you noticed we missed anything, drop us a note in the comments and we'll update as needed.]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone 3.0 Software Walkthrough

Our updated iPhone 3.0 Walkthrough (release version) is now online. Please re-direct yourselves there.

(We’ll keep this up for historical interest, however)

Just like January 2007 when Steve Jobs held up the first iPhone at Macworld and showed the world full screen multi-touch, and March 2008 when Jobs, along with Phil Schiller and Scott Forstall stood up at the Apple Town Hall and unveiled iPhone 2.0 and the App Store, this week Forstall and Greg Joswiack dropped iPhone 3.0 and… what exactly?

Let’s take a walk through the first beta release of the software and find out together. Of course, this being a beta, come this “summer” when the final release version is made available to consumers (free for iPhone users, US$9.95 for iPod touch users), things could be a tad different. This is the way things are now, with the first beautiful, buggy beta into for developers to test Last year there were 8 betas between the first and the final release. Who knows how many there will be this time, and what may change between now and then. So don’t take this as full feature review, just a preview.

What Hasn’t Changed

We have a very full plate here with 3.0, so we’ll start by clearing off what we can — and it isn’t much. Best as we can tell, this is what hasn’t changed from iPhone 2.2.1:

• Maps: While the SDK got a shot of Google Maps goodness in the form of imbed-able tiles and controls, it appears the app itself hasn’t gotten any additions this time around.
• Weather: Still unchanged from iPhone 1.0. Still no HTC TouchFlo 3D style animations, no landscape mode with more/different information. Nada.
• Calculator: Upgraded back in 2.0 for landscape scientific mode, calculator doesn’t sport any additions this time around.

Home Screen

At first glance the SpringBoard app behind the iPhone 3.0 Home Screen seems identical to earlier versions. Sure, the Stocks icon has had a make-over and, for some unfathomable reason, it appears a rogue designer snuck in and added diagonal pin stripes to the backgrounds of several icons, including Messages, Phone, and iPod.

With Beta 2, the previous 9 pages, allowing 148 apps total, have been expanded to 11 pages, allowing 180 apps total.

Not much else looks different. There are still tiny dots that signify your additional app screen. However, there’s now an equally tiny magnifying glass icon to the left of them…

Spotlight

On the Mac, Spotlight is the system-wide indexing and search feature that allows you to find files by scouring through metadata and text strings. Apple re-purposes the name and icon here for a new, system-wide iPhone search feature that serves up Contact names, App names, iPod media file names, Email headers (from, to, and subject), and Calendar event names.

You can access Spotlight from the main/primary Home Screen by swiping from left to right, or by clicking the Home Button. When on the Spotlight Screen, you can return the main/primary Home Screen by swiping back from right to left, or clicking the Home Button again. (Yes, clicking Home will toggle you back and forth between those two screens).

Spotlight starts with a blacked-out screen with a search box on top and the portrait keyboard on the bottom (no landscape mode for Spotlight thus far). As you type, results begin to popular, narrowing as you refine your search term. At any point, you can tap on a Spotlight search result to launch the app and/or take you to the resulting content within an app.

Hitting the Search button on the keyboard will slide it away and give you full screen results. Or almost full screen. Since Spotlight is integrated into SpringBoard, the Dock is revealed along with the results so you can quickly launch any of your four docked apps (Phone, Mail, Safari, and iPod still being the defaults) as well.

Messages

Messages replaces SMS as the top left-most app on the Home Screen, and is renamed to signify the addition of MMS (multi-media messaging service). It allows, in the case of the new iPhone OS 3.0 software, for pictures, vCards (contacts), audio, and location to be sent using the Messages interface to any other smartphone or feature-phone that supports MMS and those file types.

The details of MMS vary carrier to carrier. Not all carriers seem to have MMS enabled on their end yet, some do, and some error out. Not all 3.0 iPhones on all carriers seem to surface MMS functionality yet either. For example, some installs show a camera icon to the left of the text entry field for selecting a picture, while on others it’s completely absent. Whether this will eventually become uniform or not on release, or whether it will still vary from carrier to carrier depending on which choose to support it, we have no idea (though we obviously hope for the former).

When the camera icon is there, tapping on it will bring up a requester asking you to select between Take Photo, Use Existing, or Cancel. Take Photo brings up the Camera app while Use Existing launches the Photo picker. If you take a photo, a Preview screen will appear asking if you want to Retake the photo or Use it. If you use it, the picture is then shown, thumbnail-sized, inside a typical bubble.

Perhaps due to carrier issues, we’re also unable to determine at this time whether you can initiate an audio, vCard, or location message from within the Messages app, or whether those have to begin with Share buttons in Voice Memos, Contacts, Maps, etc. (If you have the answer, drop us a comment).

The new, system-wide Cut, Copy, and Paste service has also been introduced into Messages. It works in a similar way to the implementation in the Notes app, and we’ll cover it more fully there. One difference is that double tapping a previous SMS will give you the Copy popup allowing you to duplicate the entire contents of the SMS to the clip board. Tapping on an empty text entry box will launch the Paste popup, so you can stick the text back down in an message of your own. If the entry box already contains text, double tapping will select the closest word, and double tapping an holding will select the closet word and popup the loupe. See Notes for more on how all this works.

Messages also now includes line-item deletion and forwarding. Tap the Edit button at the top right, select the messages you want, as many of them as you want, and then hit the red Delete button at the bottom, or the blue Forward button beside it. Edit still isn’t the most elegant name for deletion or forwarding, mind you, but the functionality is consistent with the Mass Edit feature introduced in Mail in 2.0.

Lastly, Apple has also answered the call for pervasive landscape-style keyboards, and Messages is one of the text-entry apps that received it. For those who want a Cadillac-wide typing experience, enjoy!

Calendar

Calendar appears largely unchanged within the app itself. No landscape rotation for week view, no week view of any kind. What changes there are occur in the plumbing and are — somewhat counter-intuitively at least for us — hidden entirely away inside the Preferences app. That’s a shame because they’re rather significant: support for CalDAV and Subscribed Calendars.

Once added via Preferences, however, here’s an example of how Subscribed Calendars look:

Photos

The Photo app receives an update in the form of integration into the copy and MMS systems. Now, when in the Gallery view mode (where pictures are tiled in four columns of thumbnails), tapping on the Action button at the bottom left corner will no longer slide up a menu, but will place three buttons along the bottom: Share, Copy, and Delete.

Tapping on a thumbnail will select it (or de-select it if it has previously been selected). Selected photos are labeled with a red check mark icon in the lower right corner, and number of photos selected is reported in parenthesis and continuously updated beside each of the three buttons.

Tapping on Share button will let you send the photos via Email or MMS, Copy will place them on the clipboard, and Delete will trash them.

New in Beta 4, you also get the same controls and ability to share photos when in landscape mode.

In Beta 2, some well-buried screenshots were found by BGR which shows iPhone-shot video playback functionality. Whether this will be enabled for current iPhone 3G owners or require next generation hardware is unknown.

Camera

Camera gets a minor tweak, replacing the Camera Roll icon with a tiny thumbnail of the last photo taken.

A far more major tweak, currently not surfaced but discovered by MacRumors, shows off video recording and the control to toggle between still camera and video camera modes. As mentioned above, however, it’s unknown if this functionality will be enabled for iPhone 3G owners or will require next generation hardware.

Sharing to MobileMe has also been updated in Beta 3, with a new “Publishing to MobileMe” progress bar, and new options to view published items on MobileMe, or “tell a friend” (via MMS?).

YouTube

The big news for the YouTube app in OS 3.0 is account integration. You can now enter your YouTube login information for access to your Subscriptions and Playlists.

Stocks

The Stocks widget is still powered by Yahoo, and still lists your favorite stocks on top and a handy graph at the bottom. You can now swipe across that handy, however, to change it into a news feed or a more detailed set of information including opening price, high, low, volume, P/E, market cap, 52 week high, 52 week low, average volume, and yield.

Rotating Stocks to landscape mode now expands the graph to full, wide screen mode. But there’s more: youch a point on the graph and you get the exact price for that day, touch a second finger somewhere else on the graph and you get the difference in value between those two days (delta).

Voice Memos

Following iTunes and App Store, Apple’s third new built in app since launching the iPhone is also it’s first non-Store-front. Voice Memos was relegated by default to the second Home Screen page, alongside the separate Contacts app, but as of Beta 3 it’s now front and first page left-of center, shoving other apps aside a notch to claim its place.

(Note: Remote and Keynote, though from Apple, aren’t built in to a firmware update and require download or purchase separately from the App Store.)

Voice Memos, from icon to main screen, pays homage to an old-style microphone (though, unlike Calculator, we don’t believe it’s one ever manufactured by Braun…). The bottom has buttons for Record and (a rather non-intuitive-looking stack of three horizontal lines for) Voice Memos that have previously been recorded. In the middle is a sound level meter.

Tap Record to begin and the Record button becomes Pause, the More button becomes Stop, and the top of the screen flashes red to show you you’re recording and the duration of the recording.

When you’re finished recording, the More page shows Voice Memos in a similar fashion to Visual Voice Mail in the Phone app. Tap a Voice Memo to play or pause it, toggle Speaker on or off, or use the buttons along the bottom to Share (via email or MMS) or Delete.

You can also tap the blue circles at the far right of each recording to slide into an Info screen where you can further tap to slide across to a Label screen pre-populated with tags including None, Podcast, Interview, Lecture, Idea, Meeting, Memo, and Custom. Choosing Custom slides another screen over where you can input your own Label names.

Back on the Info screen, tapping on Trim Memo slides up a bare-bones editing interface for taking off any unwanted content from the beginning and/or end of your recording. Interestingly, Apple chose yellow for trim slider and Trim Voice Memo action button.

Share on the Info screen does the same thing as the Share button on the Voice Memos screen. Convenience through repetition?

Notes

First up, you can now “swipe to delete” notes from the contests listing screen, just as you could “swipe to delete” email all the way back to the original iPhone OS. Consistency points!

Next, like messages, Notes benefits from the several system-wide, or at least multi-app wide improvements in iPhone 3.0. The first is the pervasive landscape keyboard:

The big thing, of course, is Cut/Copy and Paste. It works similarly — though not identically — across all applications, so we’ll do the heavy lifting here. To start, double tap on some text. That will highlight the word and pop-up buttons for Cut, Copy, and Paste (the last of which only appears if there’s text in the clipboard). You can also tap on an empty area to pop-up buttons for Select, Select All, and Paste. (Select highlight the closest word to the current cursor position).

If you want to change the length of your selection, grab one of the blue dot handles on the top left or bottom right of your current selection and drag them in or out to add or subtract text. As you move the handles, a magnifying loupe will appear, similar to the round curser placement loupe that dates back to iPhone 1.0. This one, however, is a wide, rounded rectangle and lets you more precisely adjust your text selection.

Selected text can then be cut out or copied to the clipboard, or replaced by pasting over text from the clipboard. Text can also be pasted at the current cursor location by double tapping to bring up the Select, Select All, and Paste pop up.

If at any time you either type or paste something in by mistake, Apple has added a gimmicky but semi-cool undo feature — just shake your iPhone to call up an Undo, Redo, and Cancel dialog.

(Note: While the Mail app, discussed below, gets similar Cut/Copy and Paste functionality, so do most 3rd part App Store application that use standard text input controls. Awesome).

Lastly, predictive text in general seems to have been improved as of Beta 3. Or rather, the dictionary that tries to guess and replace words as you type seems to have been updated.

Clock

Minor tweak only in Clock so far; you get a lap display in the upper right hand corner of the Stop Watch.

Settings

As always, many of the small, yet more numerous changes Apple delivers in new firmware versions are tucked neatly away in the Settings app.

Wi-Fi increases the ease of logging into commercial-style Wi-Fi services, the kind that typically present a web-based password form for authentication. In Settings, you now have the option to toggle on Auto-Join, which we’re assuming saves passwords for commercial, web-fronted WiFi services like you’d find at a hotel or coffee shop.

Also, when you login, you get a special slide-up window with some new controls and an embeded web-view — no more app-jump to Safari.

Along with the previously discussed copy and paste features — and while it’s not yet working — it also looks like we’ll be able to paste in Wi-Fi passwords. If this works by the final release, fans of super-strong, pseudo-random passwords — the kind almost impossible to type by hand — will be well pleased.

Notifications gets its own top level button in Beta 3 and as of Beta 5 and Apple beginning Push Notification testing, not only can users globally or individually enable or disable Sounds, Alerts (text boxes), and/or Badges, but each app gets its own sub-screen to do likewise. (i.e. if you want Twitter to badge but not alert, IM to sound but not badge, etc. you can have it your way).

As with GPS on iPhone 3G under OS 2.0, Push Notification-enabled apps will ask permission on launch, and give you a chance to choose “Don’t Allow” or “Okay” on a per-app basis as well.

General Settings, Usage, found buried in Beta 2 and shown by BGR, show off a toggle for Battery Percentage, which should allow for a more precise, numeric reading of battery level.

General Settings, Network will apparently allow for Tethering to be enabled for those with carrier who choose to support it. Not surfaced in the current 3.0 Beta 1, MacRumors reported that some enterprising developers had found it and got it working none the less.

Their screen captures show options to enable Tethering for USB and/or Bluetooth, and when tethered, the Home Screen with a blue Internet Tethering band across the top, similar to the green band that currently denotes an active phone call.

General Settings, Location, when viewed with debug menus enabled under Beta 5, reveals settings for a digital compass, which would require new iPhone hardware (via BGR)

General Settings, Restrictions now provide more in the way of Parental Controls. First off, iPod has been removed from the top menu and Location has been added. A secondary menu has now been added below to provide more granular control over iPod content, allowing you to select which country/region ratings you use, and then set Music & Podcasts, Movies, and TV Shows. Control for Apps is at the very bottom.

iPhone 3.0 Beta 3 adds yet another new Restriction button, this one for In-App Purchases.

iPhone 3.0 Beta 5 further elaborates on the app restrictions, this time with options including:

• Don’t Allow Apps
• 4+
• 9+
• 12+
• 17+
• Allow All Apps

General Settings, Home increases the options you can assign to a double-click of the Home button from Home, Phone Favorites, and iPod to include Search (epic win for mobile accomplishers) and Camera.

A sub-menu for Search Results allows you to check on or off what types of information are called up in a Spotlight Search, including Contacts, Applications, Music, Podcasts, Video, Audiobooks, Notes, Mail, and Calendar.

General, International courtesy of some Beta 2 hacking, as reported by BGR, show off a tab for Voice Control. No information yet on what exactly that functionality covers.

General, Keyboard, International Keyboards (or General, International, Keyboards) now includes Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Indonesian, Malay, and Thai. Good news for people in those regions eager to get their iPhone on.

Settings, Mail, Contacts, Calendar, allows you to add a MobileMe account, just like before. In Beta 3, however, if you already have bookmarks, contacts, or other data on your iPhone (for example, if you synced it over via iTunes) and you enable MobileMe, a menu will slide up asking if you want to merge the data, not merge (i.e. replace), or cancel.

Once you’ve added a MobileMe account, there’s now a new option called Find My iPhone. There’s no definitive information about what functionality will be included in this still-unannounced feature, but the text description makes reference to a new MobileMe WebApp that will enable it. Guesses include everything from pushing a ring sound to your phone if you’ve misplaced it in your house, to using the GPS to recover a lost or stolen iPhone.

As mentioned previously, also hidden here are the new LDAP (contacts directory), CalDAV, and Calendar Subscription, features under Add Account, Other.

Settings, Safari includes options for the new AutoFill feature, and a submenu for choosing who’s Contact Info you want to use for the fill, as well as an option to allow Names & Passwords to be stored and AutoFilled, and a button for Clear All to wipe the AutoFill database clean. This, at least, gives us some control as to whether we want the security of not storing and filling our passwords on a device that could be lost or accessed without our approval, or the convenience of saving us a lot of typing.

Likewise, the new anti-Phishing Fraud Warning can be toggled on and off. Keeping it on, of course, provides some level of safety when encountering malicious websites made to look like ones we trust, intent on stealing our login info and/or credit card data. Of course, no list of Phishing sites is ever complete or completely up to date, so keep surfing safely.

Settings, Messages now, of course, includes an MMS Messaging On/Off toggle.

Settings, iPod gains a toggle to enable the Shake to Shuffle option that Apple debuted with the latest generation iPod shuffle.

Settings, Store was enabled in Beta 4, and allows on-device switching between iTunes store accounts. You can sign in, view account details, and sign out. Then sign in under a different account (i.e. spouse’s account, different country’s store, etc.)

App Store

As of Beta 4, App Store now allows management of multiple iTunes accounts, just like the Settings discussed previously. Scroll down to the bottom of a main page (i.e. before you’ve selected a specific app to look at) and you’ll find a button containing your account user ID. Tap on the button and you’ll be given options to View Account, Sign Out, or Cancel. Much more convenient than having to exit, launch Settings, navigate, switch accounts, go back… Highly convenient.

In the minor but good tweaks department, Apple has again changed the way screen shots appear in the App Store. Now, you get full screen shots, side by side, with the ability to swipe through them. You can see additional screenshots on each side when more are available backward or forwards. (Similar to how you swipe through multiple Safari tab pages).

The other changes to the App Store, as they pertain to users, aren’t currently visible in the beta as they depend on two new functions rolled out to developers: In-App Purchase and Subscription Purchase. By way of example, if you previously wanted commercial E-Books, a developer had to wrap a reader app around each E-Book, and then sell each E-Book as a separate app on the App Store. This led to dozens upon dozens of apps that were just more books, or otherwise variations on the same functionality with different content.

With 3.0, a developer can now sell you an E-Book Reader app, and inside that app, they can sell you the individual E-Books. If you choose to buy another E-Book, the same type of iTunes confirmation and password requester will pop up as when you buy a stand-alone app, and the same iTunes-side billing and processing happen.

This can also work to buy additional levels or extra content in games, and theoretically map packs for navigation apps, etc.

Yes, Apple just invented the $0.99 scaleware model. Buy the low-price of entry into version, and if you like it, buy more. It’s not a demo, it’s not shareware, but it does let developers do low cost of entry content for users to try before the buy… more of it.

Why $0.99? To avoid user confusion, Apple won’t let developers sell additional content to apps they gave away for free. If you want to charge more later, you have to charge at least something up front. Otherwise, “free apps stay free.”

Subscriptions, for their part, seem to work just like In-App Purchases, with the pop-up advising you are purchasing X issues of Y content for Z dollars. (e.g. 6 months of iPhone Monthly for $1.99).

(Note, the following are screen captures from the iPhone 3.0 Sneak Peek event, not screen shots from live beta apps).

Although not strictly an App Store update, Apple also announced (again) their Push Notification Service. What does this do? Let’s say you’re running a 3rd party IM (instant message) client on iPhone 2.0. When you exit the app, you no longer know if you’re receiving more messages. (Sure, there are work around over SMS and Email, but the app itself is dead to you).

With Apple’s Push Notification Service, if you close that same app in iPhone 3.0, anytime someone sends you a new IM, an alert will be sent from the developer’s servers (yes, they’ll have to keep a session open for you on their end), to Apple’s Push Notification Service (PNS) servers.

Apple’s PNS server will have a constant TCP/IP connection to your iPhone (yes, they’ll be keeping connected to you, like they already do for MobileMe push if you use that service). Once they get the alert from the developer, they will “push” it out to your iPhone 3.0.

PNS currently supports 3 kinds of alerts: badges (like Mail uses to show you unread messages), custom sounds (like a beep or bell or anything already built into the app by the developer), or modal message boxes (like the kind that pop up to tell you your battery is at 20%).

Apple isn’t making any promises on up-time for the service, and any new service will have delays and downtime — and Apple was quick to point out even SMS isn’t 100% reliable when asked about it. What PNS doesn’t solve, however, is the lack of good notifications on the iPhone, and applications that require multitasking for something other than notification (i.e. streaming internet radio apps).

Imagine if 10 apps try to push out 10 alerts at the same time, how will Apple manage those on your device? Will you have to “cancel” or “accept” 50 modal message dialogs, or be hit by a cacophony of 30 random sounds? We don’t know yet, but hopefully Apple will address this.

Streaming internet radio apps, however, seem to still be out of luck with this solution…

Among the 1000 new APIs Apple announced which will make the next generation of apps so exciting, including zero-hassle peer-to-peer networking, embed-able Google maps, and iPod library access, what really stands out is Accessory Integration.

With this new functionality, future apps can directly interact with accessories via the 30-pin dock port or Bluetooth. Apple showed off an equalizer app for a stereo, an app for an FM tuner, a diabetes interface for a medical test device, and a blood-pressure interface app. This has the potential to do for mobile accessories what the App Store did for mobile applications. Big.

Phone

Minor tweaks only so far for the Phone app, including a section under the Recent tab, when you tap the arrow to get more information, that shows you incoming calls from that contact, the time, and the duration.

The Contacts tab (and the stand alone Contacts app) now integrate the “swipe to delete” functionality we all know and love from Email and other, previous apps going all the way back to iPhone 1.x. Simply pick a name, and then swipe to call up the red “Delete” button.

Email

The changes to Email are very similar to the changes to notes. You get the wide keyboard when you rotate to landscape orientation.

You also get the same Cut/Copy and Paste functionality with a couple notable exceptions. First, you get support to copy rich text formatting (bold, italic, html). Second you can also paste pictures you may have copied from the photo app. We’re not sure if there’s a limit to the amount of pictures you can send via 3G from the iPhone in a single mail yet, but we’ve received 9 in one shot so far. If anyone has reached a hard limit, let us know.

Spotlight lives inside Mail to, just like it did inside Contacts with OS 2.0. Scroll up slightly inside a mail box and you get the search input and buttons letting you choose between From/To/Subject/All. As an added bonus, you can also go beyond the local store and “Continue Search on Server…” for Exchange 2007 or later, or for IMAP installations that support it.

Much like Mac OS 10.5 Leopard, Apple has expanded “data detectors” in iPhone 3.0 Beta 2. While previous firmware would identify phone numbers and link them to the Phone App (just as web and email addresses link to Safari and Mail respectively), now 3.0 will try to identify address location to link to Google Maps as well.

While we haven’t seen them yet, presumably this will work in all text-centric apps.

Safari

Mobile Safari gets the Cut/Copy and Paste love from Apple as well, although it works a little differently here than it does in Mail or Notes. Perhaps because double-tap is already used for zooming, and maybe due to restrictions in text selection already established by the zooming method (which reads HTML tags to determine the block size for zoom), Safari can’t select specific words or strings of words for Copy. Instead, you hold your finger down on some text (as you would in other apps to trigger the magnifying loupe) and the entire paragraph of text is selected (everything within the P, and perhaps DIV and other similar containers).

Sites that don’t properly format (i.e., use several BR, or line-break tags to simulate paragraphs) are now exposed for their shenanigans by confusing the Copy mechanic, resulting in entire reams, or even pages of text being selected. (For shame!)

Instead of blue dot handles at the top/beginning and bottom/end of the selection, Safari initially gives us blue dots center on all sides, and they can be pulled up or down to select previous or following text blocks respectively. Again, lack of proper HTML formatting can reduce the reliability (so coders, fix your stuff!)

If you move the handles around inside some paragraphs, you’ll get the same top/left, right/bottom text string selectors, and magnification loupe, that you find in Notes, and that will let you pick specific words within the paragraph. This doesn’t seem to work on all paragraph blocks yet (Apple.com didn’t seem to work, Google search results did), so this may also vary depending on the specific HTML tags wrapped around the content, or it simply may not be a finished implementations yet.

Why are we only discussing Copy and not Cut or Paste? Those last two aren’t implemented for read-only text like a web page, nor does Cut/Copy Paste seem to work yet in text boxes, but that could still be forthcoming.

Updates to Safari don’t end there, however, as Apple has also (yes!) given us the option now to open links in new pages (the iPhone equivalent of tabs). Tap and hold on a link, and a menu pops up with the link path listed on top, and the option to Open the link (in the current page), Open in a New Page, or Copy to the clip board. As this is the same gesture used to allow Image Save in iPhone 2.0, if the link happens to be a picture, Image Save is rolled right into the same menu as a an additional option.

As mentioned above in Settings, if you choose to enable it, Safari will also AutoFill form fields based on your Contact info, or the Contact info of your choosing (set up in Settings), and as a separate option, passwords you’ve previously entered as well.

Also mentioned in Settings, Safari will try to protect you from Phishing sites if you enable it, presumably consulting an continuously updated blacklist of sites, presumably the same as recently implemented on the desktop Safari 4 Beta.

In addition, when you go to a site with an enhanced security certificate, the text on top of the browser turns green (like the green bar, we get it!), with little green lock icon beside it, and the name of the certificate’s trusted organization. For example, the below screenshots show how Apple’s order status page looks on iPhone 2.2.1 (top right) and iPhone 3.0.

What does this mean for users? In an age of increased phishing attacks, where bad sites try to trick you into thinking they’re your bank or shop and steak your login or credit card info, this is one more visual cue in your assessment process for determining if you can trust that the website is what it says it is.

Lastly, rendering speeds have also been improved, from 3x to 16x faster according to benchmarks. Apple appears to be using the new Nitro (formerly SquirelFish Extreme) engine to throw HTML and especially JavaScript up much faster than iPhone 2.x could. On mobile devices, this will likely make a far more noticeable difference to users.

iPod

Stereo Bluetooth is in the house! Once paired to an A2DP device (similar to current blue tooth phone headset pairing), a Bluetooth icon appears to the right of the volume slider, and an Audio Source selector will let you choose from available devices.

(Note: this seems to work in apps like Pandora as well, bonus screen shot included below!)

For audio podcasts, the seemingly useless repeat and shuffle buttons have been replaced with an email icon on the left hand side, and a speed counter on the right hand side.

Semi-implemented in Beta 4, and consistently in Beta 5, the new, tiny email icon allows you to send an iTunes Link for the podcast (similar to how you could previously email YouTube video links).

The speed indicator on the other side shows x1 during regular playback, and we presume it might show x2 etc. as Apple has previously allowed you to “speed up” talk-heavy content like Audio Books.

Where the Genius button would be on music tracks, we now have a circular backwards arrow with a 30 in the middle, which allows you to jump back in 30 second intervals.

Variable media scrubbing now lets you put your finger on the position indicator at the top, and the buttons change to a text message reading “Slide your finger down to adjust the scrubbing rate.” Do so and the speed that you scrub though the file changes. Displayed in place of the track info, options so far include half speed, quarter speed, and a fine grain speed.

While these controls would also be much appreciated in video, right now implementation is not there, or is incomplete. Movies and TV shows have the same Done and Full/Fit to Screen controls as previous OS, as do video podcasts in landscape view. In portrait view, video podcasts gain the mail link and media scrubber, but retain the shuffle control.

As mentioned in the Settings section, Shake to Shuffle is also now available in the iPod app.

Conclusion-ish

There’s really no place for a conclusion here, as Apple hasn’t yet concluded the iPhone 3.0 software and released it to the public. That will come this summer. Until then, we’re again impressed not only by Apple’s continuing ability to evolve the iPhone platform and provide those updates (again, free of charge to iPhone users, $9.95 to non-subscription accounted iPod touch users), but for the easy and consistent way in which they’re doing it. Likewise, providing the beta to developers early on helps ensure consumers will eventually get a more solid, more compatible release (if not with 3.0, then with 3.0.1 shortly thereafter). The features are excellent improvements, and the Dock and Bluetooth Access could be transformative, if not on to the level of 2.0’s App Store, than at least beyond what we’ve seen in that space to date. We’re really looking forward to the final release of 3.0, and will update our walkthrough as it continues it’s path to general availability.

Note on Using Beta Software

Unlike iPhone 2.0 Betas, where access seemed much more limited and leaks were few and far between, 3.0 seems to be on every iPhone users want-now list. Also, unlike 2.0 when many devs were seasoned pros, now Apple is touting thousands upon thousands in the program, some seemingly happy enough to enable 3.0 access for the general user base.

However, betas are intended for developers to test and report back on. They’re not as stable, not as snappy, not as feature-complete and anyone trying to use them as a production OS on their main (or worse, only) device is likely to have something less than an ideal experience. People trying to use it as such may wish they could go back to 2.2.1 almost as much as they wished for 3.0. Think thrice before taking the plunge.

[Thanks to everyone who contributed screenshots and descriptions for this walkthrough]

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Preview: iPhone OS 3.0 Software Walkthrough (Updated to Beta 5)