Apple is planning taking the wraps off a new version of software for its iPhone today, iPhone OS 3.0. Gizmodo and Engadget have live feeds.

The new iPhone OS 3.0 adds 1,000 new APIs to extend its capabilities and offers an enhanced App Store, opening new possibilities for developers and consumers. New API will allow for two iPhones or iPods or iPhone/iPod and any other supported device to connect directly—peer-to-peer—via Wi-Fi, without needing any Wi-Fi network. They will be able to discover each other using Bluetooth, and then start a Wi-Fi connection transparently.

I’m here to tell you about iPhone OS 3.0, says Apple’s Scott Forstall on Engadget’s live feed.

“Now here’s a class that we think will be really interesting — medical devices. They talk over the dock, and wirelessly over Bluetooth. Things like playing and pausing music, getting artwork — or you can build your own custom protocols.”

We’ve worked with Google to build an incredible app for the iPhone. But devs have said they’d like to use Maps in their apps. They keep asking us to build something natural, that can wrap our maps into their applications. We’re making the heart of the Maps application an API which devs can embed into their applications.”

“We were asked, why don’t you do background processing? It’s bad for the customer. It drains battery. We’ve been testing this, and running some background processes on some phones. Here’s how Push notification works. To be perfectly clear, this means no background processing yet. Just push notifications.

iPhone OS 3.0 will be available this Summer. A free update to all of our iPhone 3G customers. And it works on the original iPhone. Now the hardware has changed between these two devices. For instance, A2DP and MMS won’t be available on the iPhone 1st gen. It’s also available for the iPod touch… for $9.95.

Additional live coverage is available on C/Net, SlashGear and others.

Posted by Sam Churchill on Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 at 9:41 am.