iPhone 3.0: Yes, there's Copy and Paste and then some

No new iPhone revealed today, but existing iPhone (or iPod touch) users can expect a lot from the new firmware to be released by Apple in the Summer months (of course, American summer months) and well, let's cover them chronologically according to the media event that was held.

Developers were the ones in mind when Apple decided to conduct this media event, but that doesn't mean that there are no goodies for end-users as well. Just keep in mind though that the firmware is in beta, and new features might be added. Knowing Apple though, they might even strip one or two in the last minute or otherwise add a buggy feature for that matter.

Anyway, here we go.

Statistics, and more boring stuff
First we have the director of iPod and iPhone Development Team giving out the statistics, iPhone SDK downloads, iPhone sales, motivation for the iPhone developers in the audience, OK, the rudimentary stuff. Additionally, Apple is defending its right for having extremely tight control over App Store submissions by saying that their approval process has become a bit more lax because 96% of App Store submissions have been approved and 98% of submissions have been approved within 7 days, and the man goes on for 5 more minutes afterwards.

Here it really is...
After that, Scott Forstall is called to the stage and we go to the real deal: the iPhone OS 3.0 Software.

Transactions in-App

Developers are pretty much happier because they're able to put purchases in-app, which can actually reduce the number of apps in the App Store, but they're also able to get more revenue and give the consumer more convenience. Catch is that free apps can't do that.

Renew magazine subscriptions inside the app itself.

Local connection to fellow iPhones and iPod touches
Then there's the "Peer to Peer" functionality which enables several iPhones or iPod touches to get inside a local match in a game quickly and through Bluetooth so users need not be in a WiFi zone, nor do any inconvenient pairing. Additionally, other apps can utilize it for other purposes... perhaps file transfer with other brands of phones?

Accessories talk to iPhone (and vice versa)
Plus, accessory makers can now make an app to control an accessory from the iPod touch or iPhone. For example, if your blood pressure thingy is compatible with an iPhone, you can connect it to one and you'll be able to see your blood pressure displayed and you can send that data over to your doctor. Or, maybe you can connect it through Bluetooth if you don't like wires.

Where do I really go to get to Point B?
Next, Google Maps can now be embedded into apps so the full app can be used within a third-party app. Additionally, a framework called CoreLocation can now support turn-by-turn directions for GPS or triangulation, but developers have to make their own maps due to licensing issues. This will make driving to several destinations easier, but unluckily for us, we don't have any Philippine maps that are up-to-date.

Developers can put Google Maps in their apps.

Specific turn-by-turn directions help you cut through traffic.

Broken Promises Made Up For
Now here's one thing people have been a waiting for over a year for: Push notifications. Apple hasn't delivered that with 2.0 last year, so now, well, Forstall acknowledges the error and promises Push notifications for the new firmware. Why not background processes, developers ask? Well, battery life wasn't good that way so push notifications became Apple's workaround for better battery life. Plus, performance will not be affected as much. Let's hope Apple's claims are true though, and that the Apple Push server won't get overloaded. This will be great for IM apps.

Miscellaneous Developer Features
Oh, and I have a good feeling about iPod library access. Rhythm games...... plus voice chat during games! Consumers obviously will say 'Meh', but this is a big deal for developers.

Now Forstall invites several developers from EA, Meebo, Johnsons and Johnsons, ngmoco:) etc. to demo the iPhone 3.0 features.

"Taking care of puppies in the morning, fragging n00bs at night" (Impressions of select demoed apps)
1) The Sims 3 iPhone looks great and it was just programmed in 2 weeks, but oh crap, you're gonna have to pay real money to buy new objects! Rip-off!

The former involves a Sim dancing around to the iPhone's music library, the latter shows off the in-game store.

2) ESPN's app looks great for sports fans who want to see results and the highlights of a game. They demo the iPhone's new video streaming standard.

The quality of the game's highlights are automatically adjusted depending on the bandwidth.

3) And how about that LifeScan glucose meter? It's an app made for diabetics who want to check their glucose and food intake through just the iPhone and an iPhone compatible LifeScan accessory. Pretty nice.

4) Oh, and ngmoco:)'s LiveFire FPS... how will the controls be implemented?

The iPhone OS 3.0 also helps game developers make the iPhone a more credible gaming platform.

5) Leaf Trombone... well, not a big fan of developer smule's Ocarina app but lolz, Phantom of the Opera is the song being demonstrated by the two men from smule, and they look... funny. Two people blowing into an iPhone and just shifting the pitch, it's just... lol.

To your left you'll see the Phantom, and to your right you'll see Christine.

USER FEATURES

1) Cut Copy and Paste - Finally. How to do it? Well, you can double tap some text (or if you want a block of text, just expand the end point/s) and a bubble will appear. Just double tap the part where you want to paste the text and click Paste. Done. More elegant than Clippy, I'm sure. And yes, SMS and Photos can also be copied and pasted. Third-party apps will have support for it as well.

Jailbroken iPhone? Hell no.

2) Undo/Redo - You can shake the device to summon a dialog box that lets you Undo or Redo some erratic typing. This is prolly gonna be a nice feature for those photo editing apps.

3) Landscape typing - Typing E-mails, Notes and SMS (or pretty much anywhere) is a bit less of a pain because people can now type in that format if they so choose.

4) Messages - SMS has been renamed into a more user-friendly "Messages", and they can now be individually deleted and forwarded, thank God. Plus, MMS support has FINALLY been added. Now photos, vCards (contacts), audio, videos and locations can be sent through MMS instead of E-mail. While I don't use MMS much, I'm still happy that Apple whiners and haters can take a break from making fun of the lack of these oh-so basic features.

Can't you help but point and laugh at the two photos above?

5) Voice Memos - An all new app that should've been built-in since the first iPhone, voice memos can now help people create memos using the microphone (or external mic's). The app looks gorgeous, too.

6) Calendar Syncing - Various Calendaring standards are now supported by the Calendar app and iTunes.

7) System-wide Search - Apple finally gives the users a search feature which is pretty much a mobile version of Mac OS X's Spotlight which searches all major apps for specific information by just flicking to the left of the home screen. This will be very much convenient, especially for people who download loads of apps.

8) Shake to shuffle - I knew it. The gimmicky feature first appeared in the iPod nano, and like that device, it'll probably take a vigorous shake before it gets activated- perfect for runners.

9) Stereo Bluetooth - Yup. A2DP right here. Score 1 for Apple's geek rep.

10) Anti-phishing - More mobile security for mobile Safari

11) YouTube accounts - Yes, I can now log-in to my account straight from the dedicated YouTube app!

12) Auto-fill - You can now worry less about dealing with the virtual keyboard as this Safari feature will enable users to fill out forms with the generic information in one click (or in the iPhone's case, touch).

More than a hundred new features, and a thousand new API's can now be downloaded if you're an iPhone developer. Yep, the iPhone 3.0 beta is available on the Apple site today for developers. The final version of iPhone 3.0 will be released in "summer" for free with all the iPhone's (although Stereo Bluetooth and MMS won't be supported due to hardware limitations) and iPhone 3G owners and 10 dollars for iPod touch owners- yes, both generations.

REVIEW: Safari 4 Beta

Safari 4 Beta

Developed and Released by Apple

For Windows XP, Vista, 7 Beta (unofficially) and Mac OS X Tiger, Leopard

Oh yes, I remember Apple releasing version 3 of this same browser a few years ago.

It sucked.

So this pretty much meant that I had low expectations performance-wise while downloading this new beta, but I was in for a shocker when I completed installation and restarted the system. It just works wonderfully.

Not only is the file size significantly smaller, the performance is snappier, features do as advertised, and Windows users may just have a new viable option for an alternate browser.

While the stable release- Safari 3.1.2- is pretty decent in its own right, this one adapts some killer features, even if they're not as "killer" in comparison to tabs or the awesome bar in Mozilla Firefox, or individual tab management (when one tab hangs, the others don't get affected even if they're in the same window) in Google Chrome.

Let's get to the part that matters first: speed and stability.

While I have yet to try Safari for Windows, Safari pretty much opens slightly faster than the old version. Of course, first open is gonna be slower than usual, but later opens will be purportedly as fast as Chrome.

Then there's the website rendering. At first, my experience was rather slow, but later it somehow accelerated. I'm not sure if I was downloading some torrents at the time, but when I randomly opened my computer and opened the browser one time, sites were loading like fire- as fast as Chrome, or maybe marginally faster- and it has been that way ever since.

Web site render speeds can be attributed to the new Nitro engine built for Apple's WebKit (WebKit is also the same engine running Chrome, since it is open source and standards-compliant), and not only does it pass the new Acid3 test without errors, it also introduces compliance with a new proposed standard called CSS Animation- a Flash substitute that requires no new plug-ins.

And for a beta, it's actually very stable. I have yet to encounter a crash, and it cruises on smoothly.

Now we're getting too technical, but does Safari go too technical on your ass? Let's see how user-friendly it is.

If you've been using Safari for a while, you'll notice quite a change in this beta. While the interface is deemed tentative, it's rather impressive.

So what's the most noticeable change? The "Top Sites" page, that's what. Yes, you can set Top Sites to be your home page, and while it is just a prettier version of the Speed Dial feature in Opera or the home page of Chrome, it has a twist.

For example, you press the thumbnail of a site you usually visit in Opera or Chrome, but then you find out that there's not even an update available. Whoops! Time wasted. Well, in Top Sites, you can find out whether a site has new content or new feeds. This is marked by a Blue star on the upper right of the website's thumbnail.

Additionally, you can press the small Edit button on the lower-left to adjust the positions of the each site, or pin a site permanently in its place so it won't get replaced, or add and reduce the number of displayed sites.

But there's a catch: Top Sites won't accept specific input from the user- meaning that you can't put your own website for display in the page. It only displays the pages you visit most- which is pretty much the purpose of this new feature. While I love using this feature because it's both beautiful and practical, I'd still like to be able to input my own sites.

But what's the Search bar in the lower-right portion of the Top Sites page? Well, when you click it, the last page you've visited is displayed in Cover Flow mode, and when you type, the search narrows down by letter.

The thumbnails in Cover Flow are thumbnails of the sites as you visited them, and you can also search a portion of a web site. For example, you only remember a shred of text from a website, or maybe I just want to look for pages that have the words 'touch screen phones' in them because I want to look at some phones (pictured above). Well, this comprehensive search can do that.

The search is not only limited to History, Bookmarks can be searched as well when you click the Bookmarks icon on the toolbar.

I think Cover Flow is most practically applied in Safari, because you get a huge thumbnail of a website you visited. It's so big that you don't even have to open it again just to check if it is indeed the correct page you were looking for. Of course, that is if you're not gonna read the whole article located inside the page.

Speaking of Search, it also finally supports search suggestions (that is, if you choose Google to be your search provider) thus making the need for the Inquisitor plug-in unnecessary.

A new feature taken for granted is the improved zoom feature. Typically, when you zoom in on a website, the pictures don't really get zoomed in together with the text. But like the iPhone, Safari can now magnify web pages as well as their pictures. Small screens will benefit from this greatly, you know like a netbook? (Pictured below is the magnified Apple Online Store.)

Overall, Safari 4's Beta version is very stable, solid, and most importantly fast. It also features some great features, but some of the interface changes, like the tabs placed on top, the lack of a Chrome-like system for managing tabs and the Refresh and Stop button placed on the address bar, may piss some people off.

Comprehensive Ratings:

Safari opens 4 beta

It's the proud granddaddy of the Private Browsing mode... it's Safari!

The public beta for the newest version of Apple's browser Safari is available for download for both Mac and Windows. There are some interesting new features that may somehow resemble other browsers such as:

Top Sites

Taking a cue from Chrome's home page and Opera's Speed Dial, Top Sites gives you an elegant view of the sites you visit the most.

This twist here, however is the fact that you can display up to 24 thumbnails, you can pin a site you like into a position so it will stay and place and you can see whether a site has new content when a star is clipped on the top-right of the website's thumbnail! That sounds really cool for people who usually go to sites like Twitter, Blogger, or any news site.

Cover Flow

While highly unnecessary, it's still pretty nice to be able to browse your history, bookmarks, etc. on this view. This way you are able to actually get a huge thumbnail of the website in question.

Full History Search

This feature lets you search your history as you saw it. If you remember a caption from a photo you viewed, or a shred of text in that site, you can type it and Safari finds it for you. Does it work well? Who knows, especially for Flash sites?

Tabs on top

Safari takes another page from Google Chrome- it puts its tabs on top to save precious screen real estate. Hell, it even adds the effing Plus button!

Spanking New Engine

Safari already renders sites pretty fast but the new Nitro Engine renders sites faster (theoretically, at least). Apple has some benchmarks, but why trust the benchmarks released by Apple itself? Let's wait for some third-party to do so.

Still, if you're interested in how much faster Safari is from the competition, it claims to be 30 times faster than Internet Explorer 7, 3 times faster than Firefox, and slightly, very slightly by just the thousandths digit, faster than Chrome. Don't know if this is true for real world conditions, but we'll see.

Native Windows Look and Feel

This is a big, big, big plus for Windows Safari users. Now Safari will adapt to Windows Aero or Windows XP's themes,a s well as their native fonts. Still, if you like the grey anti-aliased look of past Safari versions, you can choose that.

ABOVE: Windows Vista. BELOW: Windows XP.

Developer Tools

HTML coders can test web code on the spot with Safari's developer mode.

The Quintessential Awesome Bar

Firefox first offered the option for people to use the address bar to do almost anything. It can get you sites by name, by address, or by a snippet of the address.

Search Suggestions

Mac Safari offers the Inquisitor plug-in for this feature. Now, you probably wouldn't need it. Powered by Google, Safari automatically suggests search terms and search addresses.

Zoom ala iPhone

Multi-touch gestures on the new MacBooks are able to zoom text like the iPhone's version of Safari. You can also use this feature by clicking the Font increase button.

Better Standards Compliance- made even better

It passes the famous ACID test. A perfect 100.