Apple Thoughts: My Two Cents on iPhone 3.0

For me, it has always been the software that keeps me coming back to the iPhone. I'd been flip phone owner for years prior to the iPhone introduction, but having the functionality that the iPhone promised was enough to get me to at least give it a try. And for me, it has become an integral part of my daily life. I'm beyond the hardware aspect of it now that some seem to focus on, such as the shortcomings of the camera. I think you can agree that over the last couple years, there have been many variations in hardware, some very cool, for cell phones/smartphones yet the iPhone keeps outselling them. I'm thinking if it isn't the hardware must be the software.

I look at the iPhone as my portable computer that happens to let me make phone calls. Granted, that is not how others view it, but for me it is about the software. The functionality that the iPhone provides is like having a mini-laptop in your pocket. From the sales figures I don't think I'm alone. Apple went well beyond their goal of 10 million units sold, and the App Store has been a resounding success with 800 million downloads of the over 25,000 available apps and counting.

So I have to admit, I was pretty excited to when I heard there was an upcoming iPhone update. Not the normal periodic update but a major one that was going to bring a whole new world of functionality. At least that is what the predictions were, and I think for the most part those predictions were pretty close. Here are a few of my favorites.

MMS? Huge! The biggest annoyance of all things for me is the way photos are received via messaging. Have to go to a website to view it when someone sends me a pic from their phone? I never do it because it is too much trouble. With this update being able to send and receive photos, vcards, audio files and locations via message is long overdue. Add to this the cut copy and paste functionality and the iPhone really is going to become my go-to device, even more so than it is now.

Calendar syncing subscriptions is long overdue and another big plus for me since there are three of us that use the family pack MobileMe and I'd like to be able to see their calendar without having to look at my desktop/laptop iCal. Once this is out, I will be able to see it on my iPhone (adding once again to its functionality). The added functionality of CalDev support for Outlook, Google and Yahoo is a bonus.

The last two major things for me are the cut copy and paste, as well as the functionality being added within the applications. I think it is obvious why cut/copy/paste is such a nice feature, but being able to do things within the application is going to be bigger than some realize. It takes care of another minor annoyance I've always had with the iPhone besides the way photos via messages were handled. Being bounced out of your current application to get to another function like mapping, for example..

There were other items such as landscape mode, accessory functionality, subscriptions and search but these were the major updates that I'm looking forward to adding to my iPhone this Summer. I'm also hoping that tethering will be one of the 100 updates that they didn't talk about. So, what are you excited about with this update?