My iPhone 3.0 preview summary & speculation

by Justin Horn on Mar 16th, 2009 @ 8:44 pm

Wasn’t sure what else to write about today so thought I might as well take a stab at some iPhone 3.0 guesses. I think the best rumors about this upcoming release have come from John Gruber of Daring Fireball and Kevin Rose of Diggnation and will be referencing their predictions below.

Gruber
There has been some talk of Gruber having inside information and just saying it’s his own guesses. Although this might have some truth to it, I think he’s been doing this so long he just makes very educated guesses. Here are Gruber’s guesses:

From my Macworld Expo announcement predictions back in January:
As for what might appear in iPhone OS 3.0, here’s my wish list. First, a new home screen app (a.k.a. SpringBoard), designed from the ground up for a system where users have a few dozen or more extra apps installed. Managing dozens of apps on the iPhone today is simply a pain in the ass. Second, maybe an answer to the question of where the background notification API is — you know, the one we were told at WWDC to expect a few months ago, but which we haven’t heard a word about since. And maybe — pretty please, Mr. Forstall, with sugar on top — copy and paste.

Home Screen Management
Yes! Before iPhone 2.0 was released the app store did not exist and people (that didn’t jailbreak) only had a single page of default applications. Now post 2.0 people are pushing the 9 page app limit on the home screens. This feature has gone from nice to necessary. Hopefully we will get folders/categories for better organization on the phone as well as an updated  iTunes to organize the apps through iTunes instead of on the phone directly, which is quite painful now.

Background Apps and/or Push API
Gruber doesn’t say much here, but he expects them to discuss what happened to the push notifications that are way overdue. I have a feeling that the true background apps will work as previous rumors have suggested where there will be a limited number of user selectable background apps. Background apps will probably be limited to the 2nd and upcoming 3rd generation iPhone with the 3rd gen iPhone being able to run more simultaneous apps due to more app ram and faster CPU. It’s also possible that they will limit background apps to just the new 3rd gen iPhone. The push API will still serve a good purpose even with true background apps available giving users the best of both worlds. For example twitter and instant messaging apps don’t really need anything more than a push service to work well, but a radio app would get a nice boost in usability if it were able to work more like the iPod app does now.

Copy & Paste
Not important to me, but long overdue none the less. More details in the Rose section below.

Rose

UPDATE 3.17.09 12.43am est
Rose posted a Facebook video repeating the same stuff about copy and paste, but also mentioned that MMS is coming to iPhone. So it looks like I was wrong, but that great for a lot of people that wanted it. (via The iPhone blog)

People like to talk about Rose’s spotty track record, but his recent inside info, especially in regards to the iPhone has been pretty accurate. He also claims that his source is the same as last time. Here is a clip of his guesses from Diggnation at SxSW. He seemed a bit unsure on what he was saying, except for copy and paste. At first he says no on background apps, but then later hesitates when going to discuss background apps, and then final goes on to say that all he heard was “copy and paste, and brings it up to speed with all the Palm Pre stuff”. He then says no video.

Copy & Paste
He seems very confident that copy and paste will be coming to 3.0. He also goes into depth about how it will work. First you double tap a word which brings up the magnifying glass, but unlike the tap and hold we use today this pop up will have two quotes around the selected word. You can then drag the left quote to the left/up and the right quote to the right/down and then it gives you the option to cut, copy or paste the selection. This last part was a bit vague, but I assume that after you make your selection you would simple double tap anywhere on the highlighted text to bring up the cut, copy, or paste menu. This procedure does seem very Apple like and similar to ideas I tossed around in my head, so I won’t be surprised if this is exactly how it works. I created a quick sample of what I think the copy and paste will look like based on Rose’s comments.

UPDATE Just read a comment on a 9to5mac post which brought up a good point. How would double tap work in safari? Maybe they don’t allow it in safari, but that doesn’t make much sense.  Another commenter suggested double tap and hold to bring up the copy and paste interface which would work nicely.

Background Task
He does make me think twice about my crazy ideas for background apps, but his hesitation in explaining multitasking and saying that 3.0 will bring it up to speed with the Pre (which does do multitasking) are keeping my hopes alive. It seems as if he does say we will not get background apps in 3.0, but I would hope we at least get push at a minimum in 3.0 and maybe true background in a 3.1 update a few months later.

Video
Yeah, I don’t think we will see video either.

MMS
He doesn’t really say either way, but I’m going to say no. BGR did report that they got info that MMS was coming, but I just don’t see it happening.

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