Well, a week or so ago Apple had their special event (sans-steve) to announce iPhone 3.0 OS. The good news is that this software release bring the iPhone up to speed, where it should have been on launch day!

Yes, some of these features like copy/paste, MMS, and push notifications have been asked for by the community, but others like GPS, peer-to-peer connectivity landscape keyboard and voice-memos seem like a "d'uh" to me.

So the good news is that we are now where we should have been to begin with (with the exception of full bluetooth, but anyway). Some people may bemoan that fact that as a platform the iPhone is behind other platforms. I personally don't think so - and that's the other set of good news.

Windows Mobile is aging. It's going to be a while before Windows Mobile 7 comes out to blow us all away.

WebOS and the Palm Pre are still being developed, nothing is on the market yet.

Blackberry is trying to figure out where it's going on the consumer front. Applications aren't completely there, and the Storm is a bit of a flop

The Symbian foundation has yet to launch their OS, and Nokia is trying to figure out S60 Touch.

Microsoft with Sidekick...well, I am not sure where that's going (I am wishing for some interesting developments though).

So that leaves us with a level playing field. Right now it's a mad dash to the next big thing with integrated mobile chat and unified messengers, and integration with the could (see the iphone blog link).

Keep your eyes peeled, this should be an interesting race to watch.




For more commentary, if you haven't seen it yet:

TUAW: http://www.tuaw.com/2009/03/17/iphone-3-0-feature-roundup/
The iPhone Blog: http://www.theiphoneblog.com/2009/03/17/iphone-os-30/