Apple on Wednesday seeded a third beta of iPhone OS 3.0 to developers with numerous unannounced/under-the-hood changes (which we will be detailing in coming days) as well as a handful of specific improvements developers have been asked to test.
Among the officially disclosed changes are:
*Overall performance improvements (removal of debug code, re-writing of several key system routines which have been identified as sluggish since firmware 2.0, some even going back to 1.x….also, a lot of attention has been paid to app launch times and fine-grained optimization of the graphics system which is most noticeable in visually intensive games or apps with very active visual interface behavior).
*MMS multimedia messaging now works properly on a range of foreign (mostly European and Middle Eastern) networks and is fully compatible with the alternative “carrier bundles” used by some service providers overseas. Read more
Apple announces $1.33/share Q2 profit, shatters Wall Street estimates
As nearly everyone notes right from the start when they begin to dig into the numbers that Infinite Loop has disclosed, the company’s profits — up 15% overall — have been driven primarily by strong sales & margins in the iPhone sector of its business.
That is to be expected, and will continue to be the case; however, in about seven weeks’ time (WWDC, June 8-12th) we are increasingly confident that more than just new iPhones & iPods will be announced. Whether the new iDevice(s) will be Apple’s answer to the netbook, the “iTablet,” or both in one device…whether they will be marketed as a Mac, given an i-Name, or one of each….these are the questions that we’ll be digging into over the coming days. Read more