About iPHONE - Other Features

iPOD

The layout of the music library differs from previous iPods, with the sections divided more clearly alphabetically, and with a larger font. The Cover Flow, like that on iTunes, shows the different album covers in a scroll-through photo library. Scrolling is achieved by swiping a finger across the screen.

Like the fifth generation iPods introduced in 2005, the iPhone can play video, allowing users to watch TV shows and films. Unlike other image-related content, video on the iPhone plays only in the landscape orientation, when the phone is turned sideways. A two-fingered tap is used to switch between wide-screen and full-screen aspect ratios.

Internet


The iPhone has built-in WiFi, with which it will be able to access the Internet (through a wireless network) via the Safari browser. The iPhone will also be able to connect to the Internet through Cingular's EDGE network but will not be able to utilize Cingular's 3G/HSDPA network at launch. The web browser displays full web pages as opposed to simplified pages as on most other phones. Web pages may be viewed in portrait or landscape mode and support automatic zooming by "pinching" or double-tapping images or text. The iPhone also has Bluetooth built in and works with wireless earpieces that use Bluetooth 2.0 technology and for file transfer.

An agreement between Apple and Google provides for access to a specially modified version of Google Maps — in map, local list, or satellite form, optimized for the iPhone. During the launch of the product, Jobs demonstrated this feature by searching for nearby coffee shops and then placing a call to one with a single tap.

E-mail

The iPhone also features an HTML e-mail program, which enables the user to embed photos in an e-mail message. Yahoo! will be providing a free Push-IMAP e-mail service similar to that on a BlackBerry; IMAP and POP3 mail standards are also supported, including Microsoft Exchange. The e-mail program Outlook for Windows cannot be synchronized with the iPhone for the time being. There is no enterprise email connectivity other than IMAP and POP3.

OS X

Apple has confirmed an optimized, full version of the Mac OS X operating system (without unnecessary components) will run on the iPhone, although differences between the operating system (OS X) running on Macs and the iPhone have not been officially explained.

It is expected to take up considerably less than 500 mb It will be capable of supporting as-yet undetermined bundled and future 1st and 3rd-party applications, which are currently limited to a "controlled environment".

Apple intends to offer a smooth method for updating the iPhone's operating system, in a similar fashion to the way that Mac OS X and iPods are updated, and touts this as an advantage compared to other cell phones.

Widgets, similar to the ones available in Mac OS X v10.4's Dashboard, are included on the iPhone. The examples given in the Macworld 2007 keynote were Stocks and Weather widgets.

The iPhone's version of OS X includes the software component "Core Animation" which is responsible for the smooth animations used in its user interface. Core Animation has not yet been released for Macs, but will be part of Mac OS X v10.5.