Wednesday, Jun 17, 2009    Text size: 

For the uninitiated, Apple has had two major releases for the iPhone over the last few weeks: The iPhone 3GS, the latest physical version of the device, and the third version of the iPhone’s operating system.

Users will have to buy a whole new iPhone if they want the video-recording and voice-recognition technology offered in the iPhone 3GS, but all iPhone users can download the new operating system.

Probably the biggest feature to be added is a unified notification system for apps. This new feature will let developers send alerts to the user at virtually any time, either with a small icon that appears next to the larger app icon, a text alert or an audio alert. Tech pundits have long called for background processing for iPhone apps, where the device would continue to perform low-level tasks even when larger programs were running, but the new iPhone OS won't include this feature.

Other long-awaited features will be copy and paste, a universal landscape keyboard, as well as the addition of Apple's Spotlight search.

Apple will give app developers more ways to make money from their work with the addition of support for subscription-based apps, as well as upsells within apps. That means that an app can prompt a user to pay more money to unlock a hidden part of the app. Developers will get 70 percent of revenue from apps, to be paid monthly.

Apple also has unlocked the Maps app so developers can add its functionality into their own apps.

The iPhone OS 3.0 also will include support for instant peer-to-peer networking. That means two iPhone users can instantly link up over Bluetooth to interact with each other's devices. Unfortunately, this support will not allow users to be able to send files between iPhones with Bluetooth, a long-requested feature.

Despite a host of new features that should appeal to webmasters and tech developers, Apple has not budged from its position against allowing adult-themed apps into the iPhone and iPod Touch App Store.