So, apple is releasing iPhone OS3 to the masses in the days, June 3rd. Luckily for anyone who already has an iphone, the GM seed released at WWDC last monday didn’t require the user to verify they were a paid developer. This means anyone with an iPhone and a bittorent client was able to get ahold of it a little over a week early. I’ve been playing with it for almost a week now. Apple announced OS3 and most of it’s features at a keynote in March. There were not giant new features added at the WWDC announcement, so anyone following apple news isn’t in for any huge surprises. There are said to be about 100 new features and tweaks added to the phone, which all add up to make using the phone somewhat easier and make the entire experience that much more fluid. While these small changes help you to appreciate your phone that much more, until AT&T enables features like MMS and tethering, there have only been a couple of features which have really stood out for me.
First thing I did after installing the new OS was check out the all new “spotlight search”. Sometime in the run of OS2 apple realized the sheer number of apps people were downloading, and how many pages this took up on our phone. For any of us with the cash or care to download all the featured apps, you’d have to flick about 20 times from your last page of apps, so you could get back to your email, texts, or weather. This unforeseen problem hadn’t been accounted for in the initial design of the OS, so apple gave it a quick fix, tap the home button from any of your hundreds of pages of apps, and it’ll bring you all the way back to the first page. Well now, once you’ve made it to that front page, you can tap it again, and it’ll bring you to a page left of there, where you’ll find spotlight. As well you can flick left in order to reach it. Getting back to your app filled pages works pretty much the same. Either flick the spotlight search left, or press the home button and you’ll find yourself on the main page again.
So, what do i love about spotlight search? Well, it means you can now find anything on your phone, from a single place. This means no more flicking through hundreds of apps, simply type the app you want, and it’ll show up. Spotlight search will check your contacts, apps, emails, music, calender events, as well as notes. For your contacts, you simply type in the name you’d like, tap the name and it brings you to the contact page. For emails it checks both the sender, as well as the email title. Music can be searched by artist title, or album. Calender events by location or title. Notes will be scanned for all their included text, and obviously apps by their name.
I found spotlight to be highly usable. I was expecting some lag while it checked through my content, but in almost all cases it was instant. There are times when at first 5 songs pop up, then less then a second later it shows up with acontact under that, but normally by the time you are done typing what you want, it’s done finding and displaying all your results.
This feature is great for anyone who is carrying tons of content in their pocket. Personally, most of the emails, contacts, or apps i need to access are at the top of my inbox, on my favorites list, or on the second page of apps. But there have come times when i need to call some one obscure, and simply flicking left and typing a name has been much quicker then flicking through my phone book. Also, I’m sure once I’m back in school, being able to look up a event like when an essay is due, will be a huge time saver.
Apple also integrated this search feature directly into each of their respective apps. so mail, contacts, and the iPod all have search functions built in. Simply scroll all the way to the top of the app and a little search bar appears for your queries. It works the same way as the spotlight search, but will only show you content within that app, for any of you who have more then 10 people with the same name, that happens to the song title you’re looking for, and those contacts keep getting in the way on spotlight.
The next largest and most helpful feature i found was cut copy, and paste. This is something everyone was asking why it was missing 2 years ago when the first iphone was announced. Even after only a week i’ve found myself using this countless times, especially web browsing, or sending links to people in aim.
So how does it work? Well this is somewhat confusing. In some apps you just douple tap what you want, but in things like safari where the douple tap gesture is already in use, you press and hold over what you want to copy. Holding to copy works anywhere though, so it’s probably your best bet.
- Hold what you want to copy
- Move the blue dots to the left or right
- A magnifying glass appears showing you the text you’re selecting
- If you select a large area, a box appears highlighting the entire text area
- You can then expand and copy other areas as well
- Simply tap copy, and go where you want to paste it
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I have found copy a little finicky at times though. It doesn’t as far as i can tell, yet work in 3rd party apps (although once OS3 is officially out, and the
developers release updated apps for it, I’m sure they will), and sometimes it selects a box, rather then line of text or a word. Also in safari, like when you double tap a link, it doesn’t get all of it, same with copy. You will have to grab the blue dot and pull it over the entire URL you want. Also if it does for some reason decide you want to select a text box, i haven’t found a way to make that box into the in line copy. I am sure that all these bugs will slowly be worked out, and the entire experience made more fluid over time, and I’m sure eventually I’ll learn why Safari is selecting a box rather then inline text, but it is somewhat disheartening that i waited 2 years for copy and paste and it isn’t completely perfect.
While copy may have its bugs, paste seems to work pretty flawlessly. Third party app, texting, email, urls, google search, web pages, it doesn’t matter where you are on your phone, or where you have been, or how long it was since your last copy. No matter what text box you happen to find yourself in, just give it a double tap, or a tap and hold, and a little black bubble appear with the magic words paste, and you’re done.
You can also copy images with a press and hold. Although unlike copying text, a myriad of options pop-up. This solution is far less elegant then the text based copy, although in my demonstration image it also has a hyperlink, which also is why there are 4, rather then 2 options. Also, you can’t just past a picture into any old text box, once MMS is up you can put them there. I’m sure third party developers will also open up this ability on their apps, as well you can do it in emails. But honesty, copying images is something i have yet to have found a use for myself, but it is nice to know i can.
The last thing to talk about in the realm of copy and paste is copying texts. As you may know OS3 allows you to delete or foreword individual texts, and with copy and past you can also, well, copy and past texts. The problem here is that you have to copy the whole text. Double clicking, or the press and hold technique, turns the green or grey text bubble blue, and pops up the black “copy” bubble. There’s currently no way to copy just a snippet of the text, which means copying the whole thing, pasting it, and deleting what you don’t want, which is rather annoying when you get a long text and only want a part of it.
While cut and paste definitely still has quirks, and things which should be improved, as a whole it’s very usable and intuitive, and i welcome it to finally be arriving on the iphone.
One other feature that people have been asking for for a long time is the horizontal keyboard. Although this has been available in safari for some time now, they finally have put it into text heavy applications like notes, email, and texting. Personally I am in love with the iphones portrait keyboard and of coarse played with it in horizontal mode every now and then in safari. Before OS3 i never liked it, it’s more spaced out, but that just means i had to move my thumbs further to reach keys. After spending hours and thousands of characters each week texting on the portrait keyboard, landscape just felt large and awkward. I think the real problem wasn’t so much the keyboard, as it’s uses though. While texting or emailing, we sometimes send lengthy messages, the web browser often only required 2-3 letters before the address you wanted showed up. Since you open the app vertically, it just took longer to turn your phone, wait for it to orient, and type in a url, when you could type it, and let it orient while whatever you want loads. But now that it’s in texting, i’ve found myself using it more. I still find if I’m busy, or only have one spare hand for texting, or just need to throw a quick reply out, keeping it in portrait seems to be a lot easier. Also since the portrait keyboard is smaller, i find that i can still type quite a bit quicker on it, but not as accurately. If i want to have a important conversation with some one, possibly using words my keyboard won’t recognize, since i don’t use them as much, being able to type on a larger keyboard where i’ve found i almost never will make a mistake, is very useful. As well, the landscape keyboard takes up much more screen real-estate, and doesn’t allow you to view as much above the keyboard. I don’t think the landscape keyboard will ever completely replace the portrait keyboard, but that’s the great thing, it doesn’t have to. I find that both orientations offer different uses, and are just as nice in their own ways. Being able to have both a large keyboard for accuracy, or a small one i can use one handed, or more quickly without re-orienting my phone, is a huge plus, and i think an area where the iphone is one of the few phones that give you this option.
While there are definitely other features then what I’ve talked about, I’ve found these to be the most noticeable and exciting to the user. There are also tons of other small upgrades such as stereo bluetooth, tethering, MMS, hardware encryption, youtube accounts, and auto-fill, I either was unable to use them (stupid first gen iphone), they were unavailable yet on my carrier (stupid AT&T), or they just didn’t excite me as much as the features i did talk about. Also with the new 3GS coming out, things like video recording, voice activation, a compass, and many others are going to be add which will hopefully give OS3 a new feel, rather then just feeling like a slightly better version of OS3.
The last, and largest thing i do believe about OS3 is what the future is going to provide. Firstly, OS3 enables a brand new level of power, and tools for the developer to create amazing and great looking 3D apps. As well it should be a lot faster and smoother. The change that 3G users are going to notice though will be the 1000+ API’s developers have been given. With all these new API’s developers are going to be able to create better more useful apps for the user, one of which being a turn by turn navigation by tom tom. Another feature they will allow are going to be push notifications. Not being a developer myself, there were no apps around which had this built in for my to play with, but it sounds exciting. I think the last, and largest improvement which will change how we use our phones, is the ability to build apps which will talk directly with accessories over bluetooth or the 30 pin connector. This means that companies can build any device imaginable, and allow it to be controlled using your iphone. I think that these new API’s are what are going to create a brand new OS for the iPhone. It won’t be so much what your iphone can do, but rather what you can do with your iPhone.
