Apple announces copy and paste, MMS, Spotlight, more for iPhone

At today's iPhone OS 3.0 preview event, Apple announced a ton of new user and developer features for the popular mobile platform. Over 100 user features were added including:

• Copy and paste (finally!)
• Stereo Bluetooth (A2DP), even on the latest-gen iPod Touch
• MMS (multimedia SMS)
• Landscape mode and landscape keyboard to all key applications including Mail
• Pervasive search with Spotlight
• Control accessories through the dock connector
• Improved calendar synching (CalDAV and .ics)
• Tethering for laptops (but this requires carrier support which isn't there yet)

Developers will find plenty to like in the new release as well, with over 1,000 new APIs added. These include:

• A supported way to access the proximity sensor
• Embeddable Google maps (but you have to provide your own map tiles (Update: only if you do turn-by-turn directions))
• Peer to peer connectivity - for example two nearby iPhones can discover each other and play a game together
• Push notifications - 3rd party server talks to Apple server, which pushes notifications out to the phone. Notifications can be badges, sound, or text.
• Email sheet - send a quick email without leaving your application
• In-game voice

iPhone 3.0 will support new purchasing models including:

• In-app purchasing - purchase new levels, power-ups, etc. without leaving the application
• Subscriptions - charge a monthly fee for content

The new OS will NOT support:

• Flash - Apple says there are plenty of easy workarounds for presenting video such as HTML5 with video tags, H.264
• Background applications - Apple says push notifications are better, use less power

A beta version is available today to developers. It will ship this summer and be free to all iPhone 3G customers. iPod touch users will have to pay $10. Original iPhones can use it, presumably for a small charge, but won't get all the features because their hardware doesn't support everything (in particular MMS and A2DP).