That is in fact the case. It’s not Apple that was saying no, it was the company providing Google with it’s maps.

One could imagine that there was some back and forth over the last year, concluding that it wasn’t in either Google or Apple’s interest to upgrade the license.

This is great though, because as I recall Tom-Tom showed their technology running as an App a year ago, now when 3.0 comes, so will that App!

Thankfully they are finally making it so that 3rd party devices can talk a lot easier and better with third party docking items. I’m hoping that Dice Electronics can take advantage of this with their product for connecting iPods/iPhones to cars and play music.

The only problem I see with using push instead of background processes is that it’s not a solution for every app. It works fine for an IM client, but what about something like Pandora? There’s no way to have music playing without the process actually running, and push doesn’t change that.

All that said, I think Apple will allow background processes in the future when they’re able to release an iPhone with a long enough battery life – just like how they didn’t add 3G until they could get the battery life high enough. Right now they’re not happy with how it would work, and I don’t think users would be either.

It is much easier to start out with a closed device and gradually open it up than it is to release something completely open and then try to reign it in when you encounter problems. Apple knows that – just look at the path they’ve been following:

- iPhone 1.0: completely closed, then added limited web apps
- iPhone 2.0: opened to developers with “real” native apps
- iPhone 3.0: download new content in-app, 1000 new APIs

With each step, they made sure the foundation was stable before building on top of it. Because of that approach, they can release new firmware that doesn’t break any existing apps, since developers are only allowed to use public (stable) APIs. As a result, a large majority of the user base upgrades to the latest software, which in turn allows developers to immediately build apps that take advantage of those new features. The cycle repeats, and that’s what keeps the iPhone ahead.

V1.0) People bagged on about no applications, EDGE and US only. But when considering the situation it was wise. Apple had just pumped huge energy into getting an OS and a Phone operating. I call the V1 EDGE the public beta test. Limited and managed. As for no 3G, what exactly would have been the point in a US release, there is barely a 3G network there now, let alone 2007.

V2.0) Still no Cut/Paste, and all the nice trimmings. While I have endured the jokes of not being able to forward an SMS with the rest of the non-jailbreak set, I could see the reasoning. The Beta test was successful, but now Apple had to deal with multiple carriers and markets, rapidly, they had to move before AT&T was really ready, no where else would accept EDGE, it was 3G or broke and now there was Apps. So Apple spent year two dealing with the unknown again, massive scaling issues, thrashing out contracts, ensuring the App process has any chance of working. There was no time for sweet icing.

V3.0) Okay, now they have some breathing space, as an organisation they have just managed to keep head above the massive wave. Time to start getting the features and cool shit rolling. It was obvious to me from the get go that copy and paste was a bigger issue, mostly with security, but also transparency, both for devs and users. The list of features and how they will be used in 3.0 is astounding.

MMS to me is the most interesting. I’d say that one took Apple by surprise. Who needs MMS, you have email and in the USA it was never popular, because of the networks. The rest of the world had 3G but even then MMS hasn’t been the cash cow carriers had hoped for. Yet everyone, everywhere whined about it. I see it in the vein of the translucent menu bar of 10.5, not a hard one, just not one Apple thought anyone would care about.

Reality was, that while you could use email, most iPhone users were not sending to other iPhones, but to other mobiles that had rubbish email viewing and MMS; and even though its been out for years it is only just gaining traction (my own experience demonstrates that) and people now want it.

Another note I wanted to make was that the presentation focused on the boring and basic, it addressed the nay-sayers. All the really huge features barely got a mention, some just floated around as bits of text against the sphere graphics. I liked this. It was Apple marketing at its best.

The accessories connectivity is going to be very interesting indeed. That also makes sense for 3.0. 1 = Beta, 2 = Open software, 3 = Open hardware. A wise and measured evolution to keep it from falling apart by doing too much too quick. Hardware keyboard anyone? Not that I care, but the howling still coming from resistant learners will dry up in the next six months.

As for Turn by Turn. Well, even though the “news” sphere has moaned about this one for ever, it was never Apple, rather Google and who it licenses from. Tom-Tom demonstrated turn by turn with their own maps early in 2.0 (though never released). I suspect this app will now be coming day one of 3.0. I can imagine that there was a lot of back room talking about Google and its maps, negotiations which in the end got nowhere so “waiting on a deal” deal with Google left the table.

As a final, here’s hoping that the in app purchasing of content cleans up the reams of crap that have populated the AppStore. I am so sick of swiping through guides for 50 cities, or the bloody freeway cams from each place. Even the “lite” version crap, now its either free, or you pay 99c for the “lite” app that internally can upgrade without wasting more shelf space.

I look forward to downloading 3.0, I’ll wait till it rolls out even though I could get the beta. I’d prefer for it all to work nice. I actually need the thing to work.