iPhone 3: A Big Thing Not Being Talked About
About six weeks ago Apple kicked out a little preview party for the iPhone’s upcoming 3rd anniversary, complete with a big slice of Beta Cake for app developers. Most commentary so far seems split between speculation on somewhat vanilla, incremental hardware improvements and the overdue-ness, the zomg-ness of the decades-old desktop computing staple: Cut+Copy and Paste.
Copy and Paste is good to have. Its absence hasn’t bothered me much, but that’s me and I recognize it’s a pain for many, especially around URLS (though the explosion of shorteners, midwifed into necessity by Twitter, alleviates that). And the way Apple is implementing the feature in a touch-screen looks good in the video.
Engadget offers a tidy marquee feature list:
Besides adding oft-requested (and much needed) copy and paste functionality, the company also tacked on MMS, A2DP (stereo Bluetooth) support, peer-to-peer connectivity, unlocked Bluetooth support for the touch, and a brand new global search called Spotlight.
What I think reviewers are missing can only be seen when the iPhone is viewed part and parcel with the iTunes App Store and the changes coming with 3.0. Those changes, I believe, will have 3 big outcomes:
- Halt the ghettoization of the App Store as one ruled by the $0.99 price point, and radically tidy up the inventory to make app discovery and browsing much easier.
- Expand App Store revenues with a massive opportunity for developers to generate new and ongoing sales.
- Neutralize the threat posed by Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader by turning it into an Apple product.
The short version of why: iPhone 3 makes every app a potential store. Here’s how.
