Today Apple listed many of the new features coming to the iPhone.  Chief amongst them are copy, cut, paste, and MMS messaging.  Yes, you can argue that other phones have had these features for years, but now that the iPhone has them, why would you want to use those phones?  They are also opening up the API so that developers can create turn-by-turn direction applications, so expect to see some cool GPS navigation software to pop up soon.  I also like the fact that they are introducing the landscape keyboard to other applications, mainly the Mail application that needed it badly.  SMS gets it, too.

There is only one glaring omission to the iPhone feature set and that is that it still won’t be able to play Flash media. I don’t understand their reasoning for it because every iPhone user in the world would love to have that ability.

There’s too many new features to mention here, so head over to Apple’s preview site and see for yourself.

The iPhone 3G was not ready for release when it went on sale.  Many promised features were not available or pushed back to a later date.  The iPhone OS was very buggy and slow.  Apple usually does not make mistakes this large, but they had to have a product ready by convention time, so they released it as-is.  I also believe that the App Store was meant to launch at the same time as the iPhone 3G but it was not in a shippable state at that time.  Also, the release of OS X 10.5 had many problems at release and needed to be corrected with several updates.  Again, it had to be released at a keynote convention.

Apple has done a fantastic job at creating good products and growing the company like never before.  They have more products in more categories than they have had in the past.  All of them require major R&D, programming, testing, and production time.  I believe that Apple no longer has the ability to release products and services in time for all of these conventions.  To appease Apple fans who seem to demand greatness from Apple at each convention, they have had to rush products to market to meet these hard deadlines.  Because of this, more bugs, errors, and problems are introduced into released products, causing bad press from the media and complaints from loyal customers.

Now that Apple has removed itself from most major conventions, they can now release products on their own timetable.  They don’t have to rush production and release things before they are ready.  They will no longer be expected to have an amazing new product available each time a convention rolls around.  This will benefit customers in the long run because the item they buy at release will be more polished and refined.  All the parts and pieces can be ready at the same time so that the whole user experience can be had right away.

Apple has grown, and maybe they have grown too fast and expectations are higher than ever.  This will make it much easier on them going forward to get things right, and in the end, will please their customers greatly.