Pro-Camera's features include that anti-shake, which uses the accelerometer to detect where the iPhone is moving in space, as well as self-timer and digital zoom. It's $3, which is not that much if the app really does improve your images dramatically. Though, they should really have some kind of demo that lets you take 10 photos to see if you like it. [iTunes via Wired]

I'm relieved to see he called the cops and didn't take chances like the guys that personally tracked down a swiped iPhone back in June. That was an amazing tale, though.

The weekend robbery happened in (the apparently appropriately named) Shadyside. North Versailles police have three suspects in custody, and recovered a pellet gun amongst various stolen items.

So for $99 a year, Apple's MobileMe gets you Find My iPhone, email/calendar sync, photo gallery space, and iDisk online backup. But with so many free online services these days, it's really only the tracking/remote wipe feature that interests me (even though someone can just pop up out the SIM card or switch it off if they get into the phone itself). What about you? [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via Boy Genius Report]

With the iDisk app, you can view supported files like documents, PDFs, even stream music and movies (provided they're in the right formats, natch) and remotely delete stuff from your iDisk. An annoying quirk, though, is that you have to dive into every folder individually to get it to refresh and show any new files. Document and PDF viewing work perfectly. With music and movies, the better the connection, the better the streaming experience, though don't expect to stream your whole iTunes library over it—it's a one song at a time kind of deal. And the movie file support is finicky, to say the least. But when it works, it's pretty nice.

The strong point of the iPhone app as a manager is that it makes it incredibly easy to share files—go to the file you want to share, click the little wireless icon, and you can email a link to it with an expiration date you set. It also has a bookmark list of your friends' public folders, you can quickly get back to them.

Bottom line, Air Sharing has nothing to worry about. Besides requiring a MobileMe account, you can't upload files to your iDisk from the iPhone, or store any of them locally, which is what really gimps the app. I'd hope that Apple would expand its capabilities, but my suspicion is that they don't actually want you to store files on your iPhone or browse through them like you would on a regular computer—it's a conceptual line they don't want to cross, so we've got a viewer with great interface here, nothing more.

Until this past week, Google's been the most privileged developer for the iPhone outside of Apple itself. I mean, Google Maps and YouTube come baked into the phone. Hell, Google even gave the iPhone voice search—a more powerful version, no less—before it delivered the feature to its own OS, very obviously using private APIs that would've likely resulted in a swift kick in the ass for any other developer.

Yet here we are, Apple has rejected not one, but two Google apps that would deliver major new features to the iPhone, for reasons that are so obviously tripe it's insulting to even our non-exceptional intelligence. A Google Latitude app would confuse us? Really? Because it would "use Google to serve maps tiles"? Wait. Isn't one of iPhone 3.0's major new features that it can use Google Maps inside of other applications? So like every app can use Google to serve maps tiles. I admit, though, Latitude is a really big word. What does it even mean? That is pretty confusing. Maybe they should call it, like, Google Stalker.

What happened with Google Voice is worse. Google didn't elaborate on the reason Apple gave for rejecting its official Google Voice app six weeks ago—and presumably, Google had more success wringing it out of Apple than most developers. Hours before Google broke the news, the developer of GV Mobile—a solid third-party app for Google Voice—said that it was being pulled from the App Store for "duplicating iPhone features." Then every other Google Voice application was silently killed too. Even though, reportedly, Apple's Phil Schiller personally apologized when GV Mobile initially ran into problems getting approved months ago, and it'd been sitting pretty in the store since then. Oh, and there are tons of other apps that duplicate the functions of dialing and sending text messages.

John Gruber at Daring Fireball says Google Voice was nuked by AT&T, "it's that simple." It's not the first time AT&T's put a hit on apps: NetShare, the tethering app was yanked (though it clearly never should've been approved in the first place), and Skype and SlingPlayer streaming were crippled so that they only worked over Wi-Fi. The difference between those situations and this one is that in those cases, there was, at least nominally, a greater good for users: Limiting those apps protected people from the possibility of AT&T's fragile, already busted-ass network completely collapsing under the weight of millions of phones streaming tons of data. And, you can still actually use Skype and Sling apps, albeit in a slightly constrained manner.

Google Voice, on the other hand, poses no such mortal danger to the network. It only uses a tiny bit of data at the very beginning of a call to set it up, and text messages sent through the service would be infinitesimally small scraps of data (not to mention, there are other immensely popular apps that already send text messages as data). You still use your AT&T voice minutes when you're on a call using Google Voice. And, for whatever reason, AT&T's fear is about Google Voice on the iPhone, since the app is available for BlackBerry on their network.

The situation crystallizes our worst fears about Apple's dictatorial App Store. Users aren't being protected from bad things or from themselves here. Even though it seemed ridiculous to us, when apps with objectionable content were blocked or booted before the ratings system was in place, it was in the interest of some paradoxically lazy but over-protective parent somewhere out there. But the only thing being guarded is some ephemeral long-term interest of AT&T against the devaluation of phone numbers and the ability to easily use any phone at will. (FWIW, AT&T says "AT&T is not involved in the approval process, so we can't speak to this issue.") Not only is Apple hurting users in the service of AT&T by denying them innovative new features, they won't even bother to come up with a good excuse. If they're going to lie about it, they could at least make the rationale believable.

To truly get a sense of the chickenshittniess on Apple's part, Just read this account of the conversation VoiceCentral's developer had with Apple when they were told their app was going to be pulled from the store. It'd be hilarious if it didn't mean a developer got screwed.

It's obvious Google's not happy about it either—and not just because Google exec Marissa Mayer's deleted tweet pointing to a satire piece about Google deleting Apple from its search results, since it "duplicates a lot of the functionality of other sites." If everything was copacetic Google wouldn't tell the world Apple shut down their applications. (And if the alternative web apps were all that great, Google wouldn't make native apps to begin with.) Whatever the causes, there is now definitely a rift between Apple and Google.

It's a sobering reminder of what Apple's total control over the iPhone platform really means. For the first time, it's denying people exciting new features and possibilities, without even a semblance of benefit or concern for users. Maybe it's a catfight with Google. Maybe AT&T finally found a clause in its contract that didn't make them Apple's bitch. Either way, it's just depressing.

A year after we said we still need the iPhone app black market, nothing's changed. To wit, GV Mobile's available on Cydia right now. We know the App Store is Apple's exclusive domain, and playing in their space has its tradeoffs, but the implicit trust is that whatever Apple does that might seem ridiculous or weird, it's ultimately trying to create a better experience for users. That's just not the case here, taking the App Store approval process beyond cryptic and infuriating into something that's actually toxic for users. Since it's crossed that line, our App Disapproval Watch starts now—it ends when Apple finally cuts this crap out.

It's dead simple—you enter your Gmail account information and that's it. On the backend, it's actually using Gmail's standard IMAP idle function (but on the developer Tiverias' servers), so there's a slight delay between the mail hitting your inbox and the notification getting pushed from them to your phone. But the 10-30 seconds lag MG Seigler reports is totally acceptable, especially since you get a pop-up preview of the email.

Two things: Seigler doesn't make it clear if it supports more than one Gmail account, and all those pop-ups could get annoying, if you get a ton of email, anyway.

Oh, and it's possible Apple won't let it into the App Store. They say none of their code violates Apple or Google's ToS, but as Seigler points out, we all know how "reasonable" the App Store review process is. But even if it is blocked, all hope isn't lost—you can pull a similar workaround using the $2.99 Prowl app, which pushes Growl notifications from your Mac (and soon, Windows PC) to your phone, so you can be pinged whenever you have new messages that way.

I have to say, I'm loving seeing push notifications used for more excellent purposes than just IM apps. [TechCrunch]

The possibilities really are endless: You can be pinged with a push notification when a torrent finishes downloading, you get a new IM or email, you're mentioned on Twitter, or anything else Growl can notify you about.

You can customize which notifications are pushed to your phone and when they're sent (like only if you're not at your Mac), and Prowl stores up to 30 days of them. Way awesome, since it effectively makes iPhone push notifications infinitely extensible. Update: Ooo, support for Growl for Windows is coming soon too (thanks Samsita!). [iTunes, Prowl via Daring Fireball]

http://help.benm.at/help.php

Then scroll down to the Tethering & Internet Settings, then choosing your country and provider. This works for both AT&T and T-Mobile, and will let you install the appropriate configuration.

Now go to your settings and enable tethering. Check the video walkthrough above to help you configure tethering.

We've been testing this for about a day and it's been working quite well. Just be careful though, that AT&T doesn't officially sponsor this and might charge you extra for using tethering while you're not supposed to. So, keep an eye out so you're not shafted at the end of the month.

And if this disables visual voicemail on your phone, just go and reset your network settings, and it should be fixed. If that doesn't work, try updating your phone with an older version of the AT&T carrier settings.

The method is an update of what we showed before, but with a method to get MMS and Visual Voicemail working.

The app does what was touted this year at the iPhone 3.0 event: display notifications when the app is closed, show you how many outstanding messages you have and basically keep you "connected" to the AIM service even when you're not actively using the app. The free version is here and the pay version is here.

We personally would go with the free version until the pay version of the better IM apps (Beejive, for example) go live. Boy Genius says it's live now, but we're still seeing the old version in the store. [TechCrunch]

Myself and two compadres, Ryan and Mark, are in Chicago (each of us for the first time) to attend Brickworld, the world's largest Lego convention. Yes we're a bunch of dorks. Yes you totally wish you were here too.

Last night, after seeing Second City improv, we ate at a pleasantly sketchy dive bar in uptown Chicago, where the food was mediocre and the characters were questionable. I definitely had my iPhone while at our table, and I definitely did NOT have it (whoops!) when we were 100 feet down the street.

I raced back into the bar, not even particularly concerned, but it was gone like baby. In less than five minutes, with very few people in the small place, my beloved JesusPhone had managed to vanish into a black hole. Our waitress was sympathetic, and I left a number, but I was immediately glum about my prospects of seeing it again.

So I felt like about zero cents, but then we giddily realized that I had *just* activated the brand-new Find My iPhone service. Even better, Mark had a Sprint (yes, Sprint) USB dongle giving him Internet access over 3G on his MacBook Pro. Excited to try it out, we hopped onto me.com and clicked the Find My iPhone link.

"Your iPhone is not connected to a data network or does not have Find My iPhone enabled."

Well, crap. I guess all bets are off if the thieving person has the bright idea to turn the iPhone off. Oddly the phone still rang when we called it, suggesting it wasn't off; but, one way or the other, it was unable to broadcast itself to Apple so I could track it down. We sent a message to the phone - "CALL 512-796-xxxx" - but no luck. The MobileMe website said it would send me an email when the message had been displayed, but no email arrived.

Dejected, we prowled the bar one more time, but it wasn't that big a place and there weren't any places for the phone to be hiding. Game over. We went back to the hotel and I was disconsolate. This morning we checked again with no additional luck, and when Mark tried dialing the phone around noon, it *did* go straight to voicemail. The odds of ever seeing the phone again were slim to say the least.

After lunch, while at the Lego convention, I checked my email...

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Holy crap! I jumped back to me.com and clicked Find My iPhone again, and to my absolute shock and amazement, it displayed Google Maps and drew a circle around Medill St.:

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The block was about four or five miles west of the bar. It was too perfect to be a random glitch.

I sent a second message to the phone, slightly more to the point: "This phone is missing. Please call 512-796-xxxx to return it. $50 reward." Almost immediately I received a second confirmation email that it had been displayed on the phone. And yet, the minutes ticked by and no call was coming. I kept refreshing the location, and though the circle varied in size, it kept floating around that same block, five miles west of the bar.

The Lego convention was drawing to a close and it was time for the closing ceremony. But I wasn't about to spend an hour sitting through awards and Lego-themed thank-you speeches while my poor lost iPhone sat in some random Chicago neighborhood. So we packed my Lego creations, tossed them in the rental car, and drove from Wheeling back into town. Mark reestablished his trusty Sprint connection and as we drove, every five minutes, he refreshed the location. The phone wasn't moving. It appeared to be in a row of buildings on the north side of Medill St.

We parked along Medill and hopped out. It was a Puerto Rican neighborhood. On the south side of the street, an outdoor birthday fiesta was convening, and some of the participants eyed us three honkeys questioningly. Now at this point I had no fricking clue how we would find the phone; did I think I'd find it under a bush? I certainly didn't plan to go door-to-door, nor did I expect the cops to regard a blue circle around the entire block as sufficient cause for a search warrant. I sent a third message to the phone that I'd been formulating in my head: "We have tracked the phone to Medill St. and are locating it. Please call 512-796-xxxx to help us and claim a reward." Short version: WE KNOW WHERE YOU ARE.

In a burst of inspiration, I took Mark's computer with me as we walked down the block, figuring the recipient of the message might see us prowling the area with an open laptop and realize we meant business. I kept refreshing; the circle kept hovering; but it still stretched across the entire block, and worse, this included a big apartment building.

Suddenly Mark called my number - the umpteenth time he'd tried - and to our shock, somebody answered! He immediately passed the phone to me, but by the time I could say hello, the person on the other side had hung up. DAMMIT! I knew we were on the trail, but as we walked up and down that block of Medill for the third time, I had no idea how we'd get any closer. I pictured the possibility of driving away from the neighborhood knowing my iPhone was around. It was more frustrating than having had no idea where it was. I pulled up Google Translate, and sent a 4th message to the phone: "Por favor, devuelva el teléfono o nos pondremos en contacto con la policía." The email confirmations were arriving immediately in my Inbox, meaning our threats were showing on the phone's screen in real time.

Then an amazingly lucky thing happened. I refreshed the iPhone location and the circle moved, to the corner of the block, and shrunk in size to maybe 100 feet across. I waited a minute and refreshed again. The small circle had shifted southward down Washtenaw.

"THAT WAY!"

Us three skinny white guys walked at a rapid pace in the direction of the circle. We moved past the birthday party, curious if one of the participants might be culpable, but the circle again shifted farther south. I was ready to break for our car if the phone started moving away faster than we could catch it, but it hovered at the very end of the street, at the corner of Washtenaw and Milwaukee:

Ryan and Mark raced ahead, literally making a flanking maneuver to the left and right, as I approached the intersection.

I clicked Refresh. The circle moved again. It was directly over the bus stop on the south side of Milwaukee Avenue.

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I yelled and pointed.

Now, put yourself in the shoes of the iPhone thiever who will momentarily be entering the story. You might have told yourself, "Hey, free iPhone!" the night before. You might have seen the gently-threatening messages and ignored them, maybe even scoffed. Then the phone told you it was on Medill St. It talked to you in Spanish. And you saw three skinny white guys prowling in the street with a laptop computer open.

So you take off down the road, and to your shock and horror, the honkeys follow you. You stand at your local bus stop, expecting to lose them. And they converge on your location from across the intersection, the bald one with the laptop yelling and pointing at you. You probably think the angels of death have found you.

He sheepishly waved me over.

"Have you got it?" I asked as I marched up to the guy, acting far more intimidating than I felt. Our iPhone-pilfering friend apparently works at the sketchy bar, and as he fished around in his bag, he gave a questionable alibi about having found the phone, intending to return it, but being intimidated by "all these scary-looking messages" that kept popping up on the display. "Um, yeah, those were from me," I replied curtly. He pulled my phone out, totally unharmed, and handed it over. I resisted the urge to giggle.

I shook his hand - Lord knows why I did that - and the three of us walked off. We laughed triumphantly, adrenaline racing, feeling like the Jack Bauer trio. (Disregard the fact that we'd just left a Lego convention.)

I'd been amazed that the phone had enough battery life to make it through the night and still beam its location; the moment its battery was dead, then it would be game over for our little scavenger hunt. I unlocked my phone and saw almost 20 missed calls. And then, at that very moment, the iPhone shut down and displayed the "Connect to power" icon. My phone's battery literally hung on until the second it was in my hand. I wuv you, iPhone.

All said and done, it was almost worth losing the phone just for the thrill of finding it like this. We want to pitch a reality show to the Discovery Channel: "Phone Hunters." It certainly felt like we were in one there for a second.

And that, my friends, is why the MobileMe service is worth the damn money. It's been around for just over seven years and it FINALLY got a killer feature.

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A few thoughts on our successful effort:
- If the man hadn't made a break for it down the street, we probably never would have been able to find him. Oh well, his loss.
- Yes, we sent a real number, not actually 512-796-xxxx.

A few bugs we found with the Find My iPhone process:
- Even though iPhone's alert notification plays whether it's on vibrate or not, it still obeys the ringer volume - so you can still, regrettably, keep it from playing. Also it's a lighter daintier sound effect than we'd prefer for locating something by sound. Hell, I'd prefer it if I could take pictures, play my iTunes library, and tase whoever was holding it.
- There's no real reason MobileMe shouldn't push the location to us; needing to refresh the location repeatedly on the webpage was silly.
- None of this would have been possible without Mark's 3G USB dongle for his MacBook. The biggest single problem is that you can't use me.com from the iPhone, meaning you can't find one iPhone using another. Hopefully Apple realizes this.

Responses to some of the comments made:
- The references to race are for two purposes:
First, to be self-deprecating about how little we actually looked like a bad-ass iPhone tracking team;
Second, to establish how much we stood out in this particular neighborhood.
Besides a bit of self-mockery, I don't think I said or implied a single negative thing about anyone's race.
- Yeah, we could have called the cops, and they probably would have yawned. Granted, in retrospect, chasing after a thief isn't the MOST prudent thing to do, but in the moment we had our adrenaline going and sure as hell weren't just going to watch the little circle recede into the distance.

Reprinted from Happy Waffle with permission by Kevin Miller

The MacRumors forums have a couple of ongoing, constantly updated lists, though of course we can't verify their massive efforts. Here's part one and everything since part one of their informal list, and a slightly more structured list can be found here.

If you want something a little easier to read, iPhone User Guide has posted a nice and simple list of (at the moment) 113 new updates they've found, from font changes to new customization options to iPhone 3.0's ability to display album information when the device is locked.

And, as always, check out our features:

• 10 Things to Check Out in iPhone 3.0
• Our iPhone 3.0 Review
• The Complete Guide to iPhone 3.0

iPhone site appadvice has both rationalized and confirmed that even though you can't see more than 180 apps in the iPhone's menus, the iPhone can support as many apps as it can store. How? Spotlight. It's common sense when you think about it. You can search basically everything on the phone with Spotlight, even content not on the menu. So of course you can search additional apps.

Though let us be the first to say it: If you have more than 180 apps on your iPhone, it's time to do some housecleaning. [appadvice Thanks Brian!][Image]

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The Upgrade Rush Seems to Be Over
Before we begin with our tips, a note: Yesterday, we received countless emails about trouble downloading the 3.0 update. Today, we haven't received a single one. It seems like it's as safe as it will ever be to plug into iTunes and update the firmware—or just to call your mom and tell her the coast is clear now.
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Tethering and MMS Aren't Supported Yet, But Both Are Technically Possible
Proceed at your own risk, but tethering and MMS are both possible on your AT&T-based iPhone right now, even though neither is formally available to consumers. The good news is that jailbreaking your iPhone isn't a requirement. That bad news is that you may screw up Visual Voicemail (probably a fair trade-off). More on these hacks here.
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You Can Turn Off Shake to Shuffle
If you are a jogger, jump roper or even nervous twitcher, you'll find that the iPhone's new Shake to Shuffle feature may inadvertently change your track. This feature can be deactivated in the settings menu. But unfortunately, the similar Shake to Undo cannot be deactivated at this time.
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Autofill Is Turned Off By Default
It's a minor point, but Autofill (which allows you to paste in name, address and phone number on webpages quickly) is by no means auto. Go into Settings -> Safari -> Autofill to activate the handy function. And if you aren't stored as a contact on your phone already, you'll need to create a personal entry from which Autofill can pull your personal information.
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Download Movies, But Over Wi-Fi Only
On one hand, it's pretty neat to be able to download video through iTunes. On the other, this option isn't available over 3G (as it is with music). So it's still best to grab the last season of 30 Rock before leaving for the airport.
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IMAP Mail Search Doesn't Look Beyond Subject Line
It's very convenient to search your Gmail without going to the actual website through Safari. And while that search works for To, From and Subject lines, the search "All" tab is still doesn't seem to search beyond the subject line—instead, it's probably meant to signify searching "To, From AND Subject." Maybe you were wise enough to figure that one out on your own. It took us a minute.
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Push Notifications Are Supported; Push Apps Are Still Rare
While the iPhone can't multitask, Push Notifications get us halfway there. Apps like the new AIM will allow for IMs to pop up without actually being inside the AIM app. Games will allow player to player invites. But as of now, there's virtually nothing in the App Store that takes advantage of Push Notifications. So hang in there. The feature is officially here, but content hasn't arrived yet.
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CalDAV May Sound Weird, But It's Useful
Maybe you don't even know/care what that the CalDAV protocol is. No problem. Basically, it's a way you can sync calendars like GCal with your iPhone calendar. And it's super easy. Go to Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendar -> Add Account... -> Other -> Add CalDAV Account. You'll need to enter the proper information (Google lists theirs here), but it's just a URL and your login info. Then open the Calendar app, which will sync in near real time with your cloud calendar.
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It's Possible to Search Music In Spotlight, Or iTunes Itself
It's hard to miss the iPhone's new Spotlight Search that allows you to dig through a lot of your phone's content (Contacts, Emails, Apps and Media) instantly. But what if you're in iTunes? don't go back to the mainscreen because there's a new search bar that's a bit hidden within the music player. Just scroll up in any iTunes list (portrait mode) and the bar will be revealed.
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You Need an iPhone 3GS to Get Every New Feature
Here's how you enable, Video recording, Tap to Focus photography, Compass, Nike+, Voice Control: buy an iPhone 3GS. Older handsets will not be able to check out these nifty tricks. Sorry, we didn't make the rules. Or the iPhone.

But first! Some words from our lawyers my conscience: These are, no matter how you cut it, not sanctioned. That means they could screw with your phone's brains, and more likely, with your delicate relationship with AT&T. If you're not particularly intrepid when it comes to technology, your warranty and, uhh, contract law, you should probably just wait it out.

Our first method comes from Giz reader Aaron Krill, who has posted a comprehensive guide—a sort of super-powered update to our old 3.0 tethering hack—to enabling both tethering and MMS specifically on AT&T. It's not the simplest procedure, but it's approachable, and doesn't require jailbreaking like before. The gist:

• Enable IPCC updates on iTunes 8.2
• Update IPCC files
• Spoof AT&T's website into thinking you have an other phone

If MMS doesn't really matter to you (be honest!) you can try this simpler, tethering-only method that allegedly works on all carriers (though it was tested on the UK's O2 network—written by Richard Lai and spotlighted by Engadget. The shorter gist:

• Visit a website on your iPhone and download a new carrier profile
• TETHER!

Let us know how it works in the comments. UPDATE: Some people are reporting that these hacks can screw with your visual voicemail. Careful!

The free 3.0 upgrade ($10 for iPod touch users) is available today. Indeed, some of you have probably already downloaded it (and some of you have been downloading beta versions for months). Update: You may want to hold off a few days, as readers are already reporting problems due to the fact that everyone is trying to upgrade at the same time. iPhone OS 3.0 finishes many unpolished edges of the iPhone: Copy/Paste, obviously, but Spotlight Search, A2DP stereo Bluetooth, push notifications, and a long-requested landscape keyboard for text messages and email—a series of improvements that are less revolutionary than necessary to be part of the modern smartphone market.

It's sort of like the iPhone was always a pretty good looking guy, but then all these other good looking guys came around so the iPhone had to beef up a bit to keep his thousands of rich girlfriends paying too much at AT&T every month.

We're just going to walk through the new OS's features point by point rather than boring you with technological soliloquies. Here are the benefits—and liabilities—of iPhone 3.0:

Spotlight Search
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.From the mainscreen, a simple swipe to the left brings you to the new Spotlight Search. You see a searchbar on top and the keyboard automatically pops up so there's no waiting. Its speed? Fast. A few letters gets you a slew of results instantly that pair down as you type. It digs through emails, apps, contacts and music/movies, then click any option and you're linked right to it. (For instance, click a song and you start playing that song). Limitations? It won't look through the contents of third party apps, like your individual Tweets, nor will it search Maps, Weather or SMS. (Note: You can disable anything that you don't want to search in settings.) But even with a few limitations, Spotlight has far more breadth than the searches available on the Pre or Android. It's impressive.

Camera
There's no updating the low megapixel count of old iPhone camera hardware, but the new firmware has undoubtedly improved the experience of taking photos. While you still won't be taking shots in the dark, general lowlight performance feels greatly improved. Also notable: attaching multiple shots from your photo library to a single email is a wonderful, fluid experience.

Video
Good news for photos, but what about video? Sadly, Apple has chosen to save video functionality for the iPhone 3GS...even though jailbreaking the iPhone can provide existing users with video.

Stereo Bluetooth
The new A2DP stereo Bluetooth profile syncs easily and works without issues. We paired it with this iHome dock, and cranked it up. It sounded fine. And even if someone calls during streaming, no problem. It's just as smooth as when someone interrupts any iPod function.

Mail
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Finally, users can not just download but search their email over IMAP. In practical terms, that means you can search for a keyword in your Gmail without opening Gmail in Safari—the old workaround if you couldn't find an email. On paper, that sounds perfect. In practice, it can lag a bit (mostly when over 3G), but it's functionally adequate. Also, if you search a keyword on the server, search something else and then search that first word again, your results will still be cached. But speaking of Gmail, where is our push Gmail? It debuted on Android and has since made its way to the Pre.

Calendar
Calendar's big upgrade is CalDAV support, a protocol that allows you to view/edit schedules in the cloud, like Google and Yahoo calendars. In my testing, it took about 20 seconds for Google calendar to update from my phone. It's about as fast as it can be without push.

Landscape Keyboard
SMS and Mail both get access to the long-desired landscape keyboard. And I must say, after trying them out, I never used them (intentionally) again. The real issue is that you just lose too much screen space. But hey, if it's your thing, I'm really happy for you.

Safari Autofill
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.The new Safari gets a small but convenient upgrade with Autofill, the ability to enter address/contact info into fields automatically. (Note: Autofill doesn't appear to turn on automatically, at least not if you don't have yourself saved in your address book.) When facing one of those dreaded pages full of contact info, you click the first field, click the "autofill" button on the keyboard and presto, the fields fill in like magic. However, if you're using it to pay for something online, you'll be on your own for credit card information.

Find My iPhone
If you're willing to pay $100 a year for MobileMe, one of the big perks is being able to stick it to the guy who steals your iPhone. Find My iPhone takes about 2 minutes to locate your phone on Google Maps (through MobileMe's web interface). At that point you can send an alert beep or an "Important Message," and can even and can deactivate it, or remotely wipe its contents. Of course, as Matt Buchanan explained in his earlier testing, there's a major flaw that will keep you from busting the criminal underground with the iPhone. Still, it seems pretty handy if you just dropped your phone in your friend's couch, or left it in a locale full of very honest patrons.

Voice Memos/Notes
Apple must have noticed the seemingly endless list and recording apps in their store, so they've appeased those of us who want to jot down a quick note with their Voice Memo and Notes apps. Voice Memo is a simple voice recorder that is really no better than any third party solution we've used (it's adequate for an interview in a pinch, but worse than most standalone mics). And Notes, while present in older versions of iPhone software, can now be synced to your computer (via USB).

Shake to Shuffle/Undo
It's either me or just that Apple hates me. But I find it very hard to change an iTunes song with a shake-induced shuffle. It's like I'm trying to break the neck of a kitten. But every time I drop the iPhone to my side after texting? The iPhone attempts to "undo" the message, which it can't since the message is already sent. Luckily, the iPod controls can be disabled. The "undo" command cannot.

Stocks
It's so great watching my devastated portfolio in the new landscape mode!

Copy/Paste
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Many have already discussed Copy/Paste, but it would be impossible to review 3.0 without making a mention of Apple's response to the greatest gripe of their platform. Copy/Paste works. It's not as elegant as I'd hoped, given how long we've waited, but like I said, it works. Click a word/sentence, the magnifier comes up, unclick and you'll have the option to "copy." A bar on each side of the word can be stretched to include more text; copy, and you are set.

Stretching the boundaries of text can be a bit more difficult than the iPhone usually makes its touch inputs, but my bigger issue is that "copy" pops up almost all the time I'm working with text. Because of its implementation, every time you want to place a cursor anywhere other than the end of a sentence, you get the option to cut/copy/paste. Isn't that a bit overkill?

Speed/Stability
iPhone 3.0 software is adequately responsive. Apps open and close without too much of a fuss. Some people feel that it's a bit springier than the last 2.0 revision, but in our side-by-side testing, we found that it probably wasn't, and in many cases—like boot-up time—it's slower. Certain UI tweaks are added to make you feel like less time is being wasted, such as the implementation of a red exclamation mark next to outgoing, but as yet unsent, text messages. But some new features actually slow things down too: The animation tends to glitch when you pan from the Home screen over to Spotlight, and most of the time you click on a text field you'll be met with a similar brief delay.

Though these setbacks are minor, if you want that slick 1.0 feeling back, your target phone should be the iPhone 3GS because only accelerated hardware can really fix the performance deficit caused by the in-flow of all these third-party apps.

Stability? That's tough to judge, with most applications having just released their first updates for 3.0. But in terms of Apple's own apps, we've encountered occasional performance hiccups when emailing a photo or pulling up QWERTY in a text field. Nothing actually crashes, and it's certainly not noticeably less stable than earlier firmware versions, but you might sit there looking at a stuck screen once in a while.

Push Notifications
Maybe the biggest new feature in iPhone 3.0 is that apps can utilize push notifications. In other words, an app like AIM could pop up an instant message even if you weren't in that application. As you can imagine, there isn't a lot of third-party push content to test at the moment—possibly because Apple isn't approving background-notification-equipped apps until after 3.0 rolls out. So while we couldn't stack push apps to the sky to see how the iPhone could handle them, we did try Tap Tap Revenge 2.

But Tapulous, makers of the game, clearly has some profile syncing issues—as we found in testing and documented within forums online. That leaves us with developer clips that have leaked of the AIM beta, which can give you a look at how Push notifications should work. We'll update this post with more push notification impressions as they are available, and will be discussing it further in our iPhone 3.0 apps roundup.
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

What Didn't We Test?
Turn-by-turn directions, MMS, and tethering—these are all big features that we simply can't access at this time due to lack of app or carrier (cough, AT&T) support, but we'll be looking forward to trying out each of the features later. AT&T has confirmed MMS for late summer, but has not named a date for tethering availability at this time. (When it does come, it will undoubtedly come at additional monthly cost, and most of our readers are still pretty wishy-washy on whether or not they'd use it.)

With the new firmware, the iPhone's biceps have never been bigger. Spotlight Search is a powerful, industry-leading tool. And functions like Find My iPhone—for paying MobileMe subscribers only—will surely become standard practice in the mobile-connected world of the future. It's just a shame that most other improvements feel like defensive maneuvers rather than a true watershed software revolution—most of this stuff should have been here already. Now that the phone's critics should be mostly silenced, we're interested to see where Apple goes from here. Let me guess: Multitasking?

iPhone Firmware 3.0

Spotlight works wonderfully

It's free, so maybe we can't complain

Lots of little improvements

Really, lots of little improvements!

The OS is rarely snappy

Let's give those shake to do stuff gimmicks a rest

Additional reporting from Matt Buchanan and Jason Chen. Check out our guide, Everything You Need To Know About iPhone 3.0, for even more info and screenshots.

The message above is the one iTunes spits out if you're one of the unlucky ones—like our own Andi—that can't complete the upgrade. The phone itself is locked and can only make emergency calls, which is what happens when you can't authenticate your phone with iTunes.

It seems like it's just the activation server is acting up, which means you should just hold on until it comes back online. [Thanks tipsters! (You poor bastards.)]

Update: Reader Phil has a tip that fixed the update for him:

In any event, I found a fix online and I thought you'd like to know that there's an issue with iTunes and IE (go figure, huh?). Not much on Google right now, but the error I received after the upgrade was completed was -9808 when contacting the iTunes store. The fix is to go into Internet Explorer, go to advanced options, scroll down to security and UNCHECK "Check for server certificate revocation". Restart iTunes and close IE and you should be fine. My iPhone was stuck on the connect to iTunes screen for forever. After changing that option, I was able to finish the installation and the iPhone rebooted itself and displayed the activation pop-up or whatever you want to call it.

Give that a shot if yours doesn't work. [Thanks Phil!]

Update 2: Looks like Andi's phone is back in business. All she had to do was to connect her phone a couple more times and eventually her device got authenticated. So keep trying that if you're still having trouble.

Set to be updated immediately after the firmware 3.0 release, the app will stream out-of-market games (no locals, sadly) at a rate of one or two a day. The thing that'll set At Bat apart from existing video apps by CBS (and others) will be its ability to stream over 3G, without apparent limitations.

This is bigger news than it sounds, and not just for people who like baseball. For MLB to ship—and more importantly for AT&T and Apple to allow—an over-the-air streaming app paves the way for more general TV apps for the iPhone. It's weirdly shocking to actually see, even if we were told to expect it.

If you do care about baseball, here's your opening schedule for tomorrow, in manly-man military time: Chicago Cubs/White Sox at 14:20 EST, and the Detroit Tigers/St Louis Cardinals game at 20:15. [BusinessWeek]

The confusion can be traced to Apple's Singapore site, which clearly sets the release for tomorrow. Thing is, Singapore is 13 hours ahead EST, and a full 16 hours ahead of PST. In other words, if firmware 3.0 shows up at noon in NY, it'll be showing up tomorrow in Singapore, Japan, Australia, etc.

So, since Apple's American site still shows the expected June 17th release date, that means we probably won't see firmware propagate through iTunes until noon or after, EST. There is a 3.0 image hosted on Apple's servers, but it's apparently for the 3GS exclusively, which isn't much help to anyone: it won't work on your iPhone 3G, and if you somehow already have your 3GS, then, well, you've also got 3.0.

More on iPhone OS 3.0 here.

UPDATE: Reader Chris has coded together a clever little script that monitors Apple's download servers. If you feel the need to refresh something all day, make it this. [TechCrunch, Register—Thanks, Kirk and Julie!]