Today's iPhone OS 3.0 announcement carries forward the tradition set by iPhone 3G -- Apple is targeting criticisms and limitations of the iPhone OS 2.0, and just knocking them down. New features like copy/paste, MMS, landscape typing, stereo bluetooth, and spotlight search have all been added at the request of customers and potential customers. Apple is really pushing to get the greatest number of customers that it can, before the rest of the industry catches up.

On the developer side, it seems like the general themes of iPhone OS 3.0 API are to supply functionality that Apple's applications already have (i.e. in-app Mail, maps, light sensor), and again to add in missing features. To sum up what I saw today, the iPhone OS 3.0 is all about adding polish.

But there weren't any revolutionary new features announced today. Nothing really, truly, innovative. So I think that Palm's Pré is still in a great position -- Palm has truly advanced the state of the art with the Pré -- the UI is more innovative, the way it integrates with web-based datasources (harvesting your friends phone numbers from Facebook, for example), and the developer API all seem to be well ahead of the iPhone. I had thought that Apple might try to leapfrog Palm with the iPhone OS 3.0, but instead they played it rather conservative, and just added polish to what is already a great mobile OS.

So, it's shaping up to be an interesting summer for me. I'm going to be out from under AT&T's thumb in July, by which time will hopefully be new iPhone hardware with the 3.0 OS and the Palm Pré to choose from. I'm looking forward to being able to kick the tires on each, and being able to choose between two great platforms.

-Andy.