Today, Apple unveiled a preview of OS 3.0 for iPhone and iPod touch. There were some very welcome updates featured, including cut, copy and paste functionality. Along side this, was MMS, push notifications, turn by turn GPS, and a version of Spotlight.

If you swipe left on the home screen, you’ll be presented with Spotlight – designed to help you search your entire iPhone. This includes contacts, calendars, music, email, applications – everything. If it can’t find what you’re looking for, it’ll go to the servers. Whether that be your email’s IMAP server, applications push servers, or MobileMe.

Turn-by-Turn GPS is another thing I wasn’t expecting to see this morning. Apple are now allowing developers to write programs offering true GPS functionalities, but have only one rule – bring your own maps. The iPhone uses Google Maps, but due to copyright and other such rulings, third-party developers will not be able to use Google Maps for their own GPS applications. This shouldn’t cause too big a problem for most, however.

Apple have released a Beta of iPhone 3.0 to developers who are part of Apple’s development program today. The full and complete version of the OS will be available to users at some point over the summer. Likely to be a random Tuesday either in May or June. Maybe they’ll release it along side new iPhone’s at this years World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June.

So is iPhone 3.0 all you thought it would be? I expected copy and paste to be there, as well as MMS. I was pleasantly surprised with push notifications – even though we’ve been waiting months to see them. The Spotlight feature will be interesting to use, and to see how effective it will be.

Apple also mentioned tethering. If you’re unsure of this term, it means hooking your iPhone up to your computer, and using it as a modem. So if you’re out of reach for a WiFi signal, but need to get online, you could use your iPhone as a modem card. Using your 3G/EDGE signal, you’d be able to get online. Apple stated that they’ve inbuilt the possibilities to do this, but are still waiting for information from carriers. So it’s in AT&T, and O2’s court for now. The technologies there if they’re willing to let it happen.

There were quite a few application demo’s during this mornings keynote. Reading live-blogs and viewing images doesn’t do demo’s justice. And so I’m waiting to watch the recording of the session via Apple’s website. It should be available to watch and download later tonight.

I’m certainly looking forward to iPhone OS 3.0. Over 100 new features for the customer, and 1000 API’s now available to the iPhone developer.

Read the latest information on MMS, Push Notifications, and Copy & Paste.