Rose described the upcoming feature, which he claims is definitely in iPhone 3.0, in his Diggnation podcast this past Sunday. The implementation sounds similar to the copy and paste we’ve already seen from MagicPad, which, you may recall, was the first individual, official app to bring copy and paste to the iPhone, though it was not platform-wide. Cutting, copying, and pasting will occur when you double-tap an insertion or selection point in text, which will bring up a magnified area. From there, you can drag to select an area to copy or cut, and choose from three buttons (Cut, Copy, Paste) to perform each action.

While Rose doesn’t go into detail about what other features will be included, a quick glance at the Pre’s specs can give us some clues. Looking at Gizmodo’s comparison, I find it hard to see what else Rose could be referring to with regards to other features Apple can introduce to bring the two devices more in line. Maybe tethering and stereo Bluetooth support, both of which would also be long overdue, and built-in multi-network instant messaging support?

What I’m more concerned with are the features he claims will be left out this time around. Aside from copy and paste, the three things he mentions as not being made available in iPhone 3.0 are arguably three of the most desired functions on anyone’s list. First, no background apps, which obviously doesn’t fit with the overall goal of beefing up the iPhone’s software to match the Pre, since this is one of the Pre’s biggest advantages. Also getting a miss this time around, according to Rose, are video recording and MMS. The latter is supported by the Palm Pre, though whether or not the forthcoming device will be able to handle video is not yet known.

I was very much looking forward to tomorrow, and I’m still interested, but Rose’s claims have taken the edge off of my excitement. If Apple shows up tomorrow with little else in hand besides copy and paste, which it should have included at the iPhone’s launch, then Palm’s upcoming device is going to look that much more fetching.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Transient Apps: The Consumer Influence on Enterprise Mobility, Part 2
• Mobile Overview, Q2 2010
• Report: How Mobile Cloud Computing Will Change Tech

I’ve seen a few articles lately on the file incompatibility between iWork ’08 and files saved in iWork ’09.

Macnn and other sites have discussed it. As usual, there are the silly comments regarding Apple not having tested this, it’s worthy of Microsoft, blah, blah, blah. Many comments tended to be more rational, though, pointing out that new versions of software frequently “convert” older files and then are not compatible with the older version. This isn’t really that unusual. 

I think Apple could have made this easier if they had explained in the tech note a primary reason for the incompatibility. It’s the old standard support line: It’s a feature, not a bug. Really.

The iWork ’08 saved files are packages. For those unfamiliar with this, a package is essentially a specialized directory (yes, I’m simplifying it). Most Mac applications are packages, as is the iPhoto library. If you right-click a package file and select “Show Package Contents,” it’ll open like a folder to reveal other files and folders below. Here you see the package contents of a Numbers ’08 document. 

The problem with this approach comes when you want to transfer these files. Some email systems or file shares don’t know what to do with a package file. For example, when I look at iWork ’08 documents in Windows they appear as folders. In short, the package format was hindering transfer and sharing of iWork files. Not good if you want your product to become more popular. 

Enter iWork ’09, which saves documents as a more traditional “flat” file. Apple’s implementation of this is that the file is still a package, but compressed into zip format, which makes it flat. In fact, you can see this for yourself by changing the file name’s extension to .zip, then decompressing it by double-clicking. The uncompressed file will be a folder containing some files/folders like you saw in the iWork ’08 file. (As you can see, it’s not an exact match, so some data appears to be stored in the file itself.)

As a flat file, you should be able to email it and share with other iWork users without problems. iWork ’09 opens it easily, knowing it’s compressed and handling it accordingly. iWork ’08, however, is expecting a package file; it doesn’t know what to do with the flat file iWork ’09 uses. This is why it cannot open those files.

I think Apple really needed to address the package issue for transporting iWork files, and I’m glad they did so in iWork ’09. It neatly addresses a problem that was only going to get worse as the package became more popular. I don’t think having a new version not opening in an old version of the program is that egregious, especially given the problem the new version is addressing.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

Qik, featured over at sister-site NewTeeVee.com back in June, is one of several video apps that owners of jailbroken iPhone’s have had access to for some time now. The interesting thing about QiK is that it streams live to the web — it means whatever you’re doing, where ever you may be, you can now broadcast live to the masses direct from your iPhone.

Fountain of Apple rumors, Kevin Rose, claims that QiK is very close to arriving at the App Store. “This is not a hacked or jailbroken version, this is the real deal. It’s not out in the App Store yet, but I hear it’s coming very soon.” Bringing serious substance to his rumor mongering, Rose actually broadcast the news live using the official QiK app itself.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Mobile Q4: All Eyes Were on Android, 4G and the Rising Tablet Tide
• Report: A Mobile Video Market Overview
• Report: The Live-Stream Video Market

Diggnation London 2007, photo by SlipstreamJC

This year’s Future of Web Apps Expo found game geek Alex Albrecht and über-fanboy Kevin Rose arrive in London, England, for a live Diggnation show. The show, intended to be a roundup of the week’s most interesting Digg.com stories, descended in to the usual drunken fun.

Several weeks back, Rose published a video on his blog featuring several rumors relating to the new iPod Nano, most of which came good. This puts Rose in the somewhat unique position of being a fountain of unsubstantiated yet spookily reliable insider knowledge.

Over at the live filming in London, a suitably inebriated Rose dropped a couple of short-yet-sweet golden nuggets in the form of Apple-related rumors.

Rumor Number One: The new notebooks will feature Blu-Ray Drives

Rumor Number Two: Apple have updated the solid-state drives to be much more reliable (we’re assuming this relates specifically to the Macbook Air)

Rose did caveat these rumors in stating that they were from, “a bad source,” whereas his Nano rumors were from a separate, more reliable source.  With the Apple Notebook event due in but a few days — Tuesday, October 14 — we’ll know soon enough if Rose’s rumors come good.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Report: 3-D Computing From Digital Cinema to GPUs
• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era