Scenes from the Apple iPhone OS 3 Roll Out

An Apple spokesman introduces the new features of the iPhone 3.0 software developers kit at the campus in Cupertino, Calif.

Scott Forstall, Apple’s senior vice president for iPhone software, points out a number of the new capabilities of the iPhone 3.0 operating system and its corresponding software developers kit, which is now available for beta use. The GA version of the SDK will be available in summer 2009.

Using new stereo Bluetooth capability, iPhone 3.0 users will be able to browse other iPhone users’ music collections and play their music on their own units.

iPhone 3.0 users will be able to cut, copy and paste text, photos and graphics across applications. For example, the user could go to an HTML site, such as a travel site, copy and paste text from the site and move it into an e-mail or IM message.

ESPN has been experimenting with sending streaming video highlight clips along with its news notifications service. ESPN, which sends more than 50 million news alerts per months to its registrants, developed a native iPhone app for this purpose.

The new iPhone 3.0 system will include useful new mapping capabilities—built in cooperation with Google Maps—that includes a new turn-by-turn GPS feature.

There’s lots of innovation going on at the Infinite Loop at the Apple campus in Cupertino, Calif. The new operating system and SDK will be released for general availability sometime next summer.