Couple More WWDC Tidbits
Posted 06/13/2009 at 10:13pm
| by J Keirn-Swanson
First and foremost, there's the 3G S. Apple's released the Technical
Specs to give you a sense of what kind of hardware upgrades the new
phones pack. Along with the long-awaited MMS capabilities, the upgraded
camera that now captures video, and the increased selection of
languages, the familiar touch screen's getting a makeover as well.
This
small, new development is a fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating,
that keeps your screen smudge free. We suspect that also includes the
inevitable ear-print smudging that accompanies any actual phone use. Of
course, with the prevalence of protective screen overlays this seems
the kind of feature we'd not really notice all that much.
Perhaps
one of the coolest new features in OS 3 is Find My iPhone. Doing just
what its name says, Find My iPhone helps you track down a lost or
stolen phone. A number of apps claim to be able to pinpoint your
phone's location when you can't find it, though they require the person
who stole or found your iPhone to actually turn on the app in the first
place. Others like Zhiing can be used to send your location to another
Zhiing subscriber but can't be used to ping the missing phone to get a
bead on it.

With Find My iPhone, you can access your me.com
account from any computer to locate your phone's approximate location
on a map, send a message to anyone who finds your phone, or wipe the
phone's memory and restore factory settings. This last feature comes in
handy if you have no chance of retrieving your iPhone and wish to keep
your address book and pictures out of the hands of strangers. It also
adds a level security that will make the iPhone a lot more attractive
to business users.
The biggest drawback to Apple's Find My
iPhone, though, is that it's only available through the MobileMe
service, itself $99 per year. Of course, if you're the kind of person
who regularly misplaces things that's a small price to pay when
replacement iPhones aren't subsidized by AT&T.