The Apple iPhone OS 3.0 event has gone off, and while the event was a long one (darn close to 2 hours), the new features are fairly easy to sum up.

Accessories

Finally the iPhone will be able to work with input from other devices!  While they demoed it working with a speaker system, causing an equalizer to appear on screen, the most interesting concept was medical devices.  They showed a blood pressure cuff attached to the iPhone to record the reading, and this could open a whole interesting world of seeing the iPhone enhancing other devices.

Does this mean we could finally be seeing a physical keyboard attachment?  This would be a huge leap in moving the iPhone from just being a mobile phone to beind an actual mobile computing solution.

Cut, Copy and Paste

HUZZAH!  Finally you will be able to copy and paste things between applications… something you really should have been able to do since day one.  Simply double tap some text, drag your finger to cover as much as you want, and then choose cut, copy or paste from the pop-up selection bar.

In App Purchases

This is a new feature that could get potentially super annoying very quickly.  The best example they showed off was for a game app called “Touch Pets” where you have virtual pets.  Want to buy a new shirt for your dog?  Well, they’ll sell you one for $.99 and they will ask you via a pop-up window if you want to!

Landscape Mode

Finally you can do mail and SMS text messages in landscape mode.  This is another one of those features that you have to wonder why it took so darn long to come about.

Maps

Apparently developers of iPhone applications have been wanting the ability to wrap their tools around a map to bring you more tools, and 3.0 will allow them to do that with Google Maps from here on out.

Push Technology

People have been asking for applications to run in the background, meaning that when you close say an instant messaging application, it could still be receiving new IMs, but Apple says that after testing, they found it was just too much of a drain on the battery.  The battery was draining almost 80% faster with background apps running, but with push, which is where a server does the work and then “pushes” the information out to you, they saw the increased drain drop to 20%.

Now for an IM, you would receive a pop-up notification on your screen similar to the one you see for calendar events that you could then choose to reply to, or simply close.  This will not be limited to instant messaging, but could also include things like sports scores.

Spotlight

While Contacts has had search capability since last year, there was no way to search other applications such as Notes.  With the new Spotlight, you can now search every app all from one convenient screen.

Streaming Video & Audio

This boils down to you will now be able to play streaming games over the web along with the ability to talk to your opponents.

Conclusion

Some other things shown off included MMS messaging, recording voice memos, subscriptions to applications that will have new content, for an all told whopping new 100 features in the new OS.  Developers can start working with it today, and consumers will get it in June… you know, just in time for the suspected release of a new model of iPhone.

Current iPhone users will get the update for free while iPod Touch users will have to pay $9.95 for the update.