“Apple Inc unveiled new software for the iPhone that will support some long-anticipated features, such as copy-and-paste of text and picture messaging, as the company pushes to stay competitive in the phone market,” Gabriel Madway reports for Reuters.
“Apple also gave its vast network of software developers a slew of new options for upcoming applications, such as support for subscription models and automatic alerts, a move applauded by analysts,” Madway reports.
“‘They’ve taken a few more steps ahead of the pack in the race,’ said CCS Insight analyst John Jackson… ‘Two years on they still have the cool phone and business model that everybody’s talking about and trying to emulate,'” Madway reports.
“The updated software kit for developers will have more than 1,000 new programing functions, including peer-to-peer capability, an interface allowing applications to communicate with iPhone accessories such as docking stations, as well as access to the phone’s music library,” Madway reports. “Analysts said that while most the of software updates were long expected, improvements to the developers kit could help increase revenue made from applications.”
“The next-generation iPhone operating system will enable so-called push notification, allowing developers to build applications that can provide automatic alerts of items such as sports results or the arrival of an instant message. The alerts would show up automatically even if the user is in another application,” Madway reports. “It will also allow developers to offer subscriptions and sell content within their applications.”
Madway reports, “In addition, a peer-to-peer capability will enable iPhone users near each other to interact for features such as gaming… On top of that, the company unveiled a widely anticipated universal search feature called ‘spotlight,’ which can scour key applications on the phone such as e-mail and iPod.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Spotlight is a system-wide desktop search feature of Apple’s Mac OS X operating system that introduced in Mac OS X 104. Tiger on April 29, 2005. It has now been brought over to OS X for iPhone, iPod touch, and future devices.