So June 17 finally rolled round and I was able to update my iPhone from 2.X to 3.0, yay! Of course it wasn’t that straight forward, when is it ever, right? I mean the download went smoothly enough, but then I had to wait for the Apple Activation Server, and wait, and wait, and wait… Finally, everyone else stopped getting their activation and I managed to get mine through. So having done that, what’s new…?
Well for a kick off, they’ve finally fixed my two bug bears with the iPhone:
Finally, we have MMS, yes that’s right iPhone users, welcome to the ‘90s we, at last can send and receive picture messages! I mean we always could before, sort of, but it was a real pain. Firstly, if someone sent you a picture then you got a text from your provider telling that you had a picture and giving you a url to go to. Then you had to open Safari and head over there and then type in your phone number plus a passcode and then you could finally see the picture. Phew, what a lot of needless effort!
Now it’s much better, now the pictures appear, inline, in your text conversations (as shown) and you can double tap to open them to full size if you wish, all seamlessly. Yay, about time Apple!
Talking of text messages, that brings me nicely on to the second bug bear of mine that Apple have fixed with this release and that’s the fact that you couldn’t delete single messages in a text conversation. You had to delete the whole conversation or nothing. How dumb was that? Happily that is fixed now and you can delete individual messages.
Speaking of ‘90s usability, Apple have also giving us iPhone users the ability to forward messages too. So the next time somebody sends you a joke by text, you’ll be able to pass it on, instead of just having to remember it for the next time you are with your mates in the pub, by which time of course, they’ve all already heard it as they got the original text forwarded to them! :-)
Rounding off our trip back to the ‘90s with the iPhone we now have, the long awaited (at least by me), copy cut and paste functionality. Why that wasn’t there from the get go, I’ll never know.
But this release is not all about playing catch up with functionality, there are several new features. There’s what I call Etch-a-Sketch functionality. If you are typing away in an email or something and you make a mistake, then just shake the iPhone and it’ll pop up a dialog box asking you if you want to undo the typing.
Also Apple have beefed up the iPhone’s search features in two way. Firstly it is enhanced in applications like mail etc, but also there is a new “Spotlight” feature which can be accessed by swiping left from the home screen or by pressing the home button when on that screen.
More Etch-a-Sketch functionality can be found in the iPhone’s iPod player. Simply shake the iPhone to enter shuffle mode; though Apple may have this set a little to sensitively as there are reports on the Net of iPhones shuffling during particularly bumpy flights, or when running to cross the road. If this happens to you, never fear, you can turn this functionality off under Settings –> iPod. Staying with the iPod functionality for a moment longer, there is now the ability to playback video in either landscape or portrait modes you can also jump back exactly 30 seconds and play at either half or double speed.
The 3.0 release also come with parental controls, but we don’t really care about that do we? I mean, let’s face it, our kids are not going to get their grubby little hands on our lovely shiny iPhone now are they?
Well this has been a short tour around some of my favourite functionality in 3.0, it’s by no means complete, but I hope you’ve enjoyed it. For a more complete run down you might want to check out the Apple site for more details.