iPhone 3.0 arrives and impresses

I’ve been silent for the last week and enjoying my newest toy – the iPhone 3.0 upgrade which dropped last week.  I’m very impressed with the release and with the incremental steps that Apple has delivered to all of us customers.  In the meantime, I’ve been one-up’d at work by many co-workers who have upgraded to the iPhone 3Gs handsets with video, improved cameras, and more speed (yes, just a wee bit jealous).

I am really enjoying many of the improvements in 3.0, including landscape mode for several applications – including mail and messages.  A blogger I follow tweeted this article from CNet which details how to enable tethering on the iPhone…  Draw your own conclusions as to its legality, but its one of the features I want most on the iPhone and AT&T is not allowing it at this time.

I’m also enjoying push notifications as of today for Beejive IM – an excellent pay-for IM client for all your different accounts.    I installed that app this morning and I’ve had it running at work.  Noteworthy features include Facebook chat, a really smooth chat switching method when you’re having mutliple conversations, and push notifications, of course.  The service/software keeps you signed into your accounts even after disconnecting and will forward any received messages or statuses to your phone via a push notification which displays on your home screen.  This is Apple’s work-around to background processes on the phone, which, they say, kills battery life.

iPhone 3.0 also grants the ability to subscribe to CalDAV calendars and integrate those.  I have a friend who needs this setup, so I should be trying that soon.  I use MobileMe, personally, for my family and our calendars and it works great – but to give enterprise customers who have invested in OS X Server the ability to leverage iCal Server is a great feature, in my opinion.

And speaking of my MobileMe subscription, a new feature has been added there – Find my iPhone – a locator service and the ability to display a message on-screen and have the phone play a tone.  For those of us who lose things, its a nice feature when you’re looking for your phone while its stuck in the couch.  At least one person has already used the service to successfully reclaim a stolen iPhone…  That story is a very good read.