When Apple revealed the upcoming iPhone Software 3.0 on Tuesday, they said that they only had time to discuss some of the over 100 new features. Since then, even more new features in 3.0 have come to light. Here are a few of them being discussed on other sites that look particularly interesting: [UPDATE 4/1/09: Added Nos. 8 through 10.]
- Find my iPhone. There is a new option in the Settings for MobileMe called "Find my iPhone" that you can turn on or off. AppleInsider describes this feature, as does Engadget, and MobileCrunch has a picture of that screen on their website. The best guess is that this is a feature for those who subscribe to Apple's $100 a year MobileMe service whereby if you ever lose your iPhone, you can log into your MobileMe account from a computer and MobileMe will tell you where your iPhone is located (using the GPS or Wi-Fi triangulation on your iPhone) and then show you the location on a map. It would be great if Apple could also add this feature to my keys.
Voice Memos app runs in the background. I mentioned the new Voice Memo app yesterday and wondered what it would offer that is different from the numerous voice recorder apps currently sold by third parties. Now we know the answer. Unlike third party apps, which are not allowed to run in the background, the Apple Voice Memo app can. Thus, you can exit the app and check your e-mail, calendar, etc. and the app will continue to record. A red bar appears at the top of the screen when you are recording. MobileCrunch has a picture of that, as does iLounge. iLounge reports that this new app cannot be used to record phone calls.
- Text messages send in the background. MacRumors reports that when you hit send, you can start typing your next new message while previous message is being sent. This is not much of a feature for text messages, which send quickly, but is more important when you use the Messages app to send photos via the newly enabled MMS.
- Encryption of backups. Your iPhone is backed up on your computer whenever you sync in iTunes. iLounge discloses a new feature that allows you to encrypt that backup file, presumably so that someone else using your computer cannot access any confidential information backed up from your iPhone -- something that, frankly, never even occurred to me as being possible.
- More home button shortcuts. Currently, you can double-click the home button to either go to the Home screen, your Phone Favorites, or the iPod. In 3.0, you can also make a double-click bring up Search or the Camera.
Shake to undo. When Apple revealed cut, copy and paste on Tuesday, they pointed out that if you make a mistake, you can shake the iPhone to bring up a dialog box that lets you undo the cut, copy or paste. But apparently the shake to undo feature can be used elsewhere. For example, if you type a few words in an e-mail, Notes, etc., apparently you can shake the iPhone to undo the last thing you typed -- similar to using the undo command in a word processor. Engadget shows this in a video posted here (at around the 9 minute mark).
- Media scrubber. On a slide quickly displayed during Apple's presentation on Tuesday, one of the phrases that appears as a new feature is "Media scrubber." Apple didn't reveal what this means, but MobileCrunch reveals that there are new high-speed and low-speed scrubbing modes to make it easy to quickly find a specific point in a podcast. There is also a new button that appears when you are listening to a podcast that you can tap to quickly rewind 30 seconds, which would be useful any time you find yourself thinking "wait, what did he just say?"
- These go to 11. Spinal tap would be proud; 3.0 adds two more screens to the home screen, so instead of 9 screens you get 11. That's space for another 32 apps.
- New Safari link options. Currently if you hold your finger down on a link in Safari, the URL appears below your fingertip. In 3.0, you get options to open the link, open in a new window and copy the link (so you can paste it into something like an e-mail).
- Load remote image. Like many desktop e-mail programs, Mail on the iPhone adds a "load remote image " option to help you guard against spam.
Here's one more link: Andy Ihnatko published this article on the Chicago Sun Times site describing 3.0. It is both informative and, as is the norm for Ihnatko, humorous.
Finally, here are the two slides Apple displayed during its Tuesday presentation listing new features for users and for app developers, some of which were discussed on Tuesday, some of which were not:
