S o the beta is out, and it is good stuff. Developers have much to have fun with in here. Several things jumped out at me beyond what yesterday's presentation went over. I'm still updating the doc sets, but already taking the new sample code out for a spin.

(Everything mentioned here does not go beyond what Apple has already made public here)

General Bluetooth connectivity. This is really big. I wish I still did hardware. This is of course the next big market for iPhone/iTouch accessories, and then a tertiary app market could in turn grow around those devices.

Peer to Peer functionality will really be nice for users and developers. It uses bluetooth (and doesn't use pairing), and I'm not sure what constitutes the nearby network. Should be interesting to experiment with.

The Maps API is now available within all apps. Very useful. Like how WebKit views are available to all apps. Just a good API addition.

While Push Notification Service could be really useful, and should be sparingly and judiciously used, expect it to be used on everything over the next year, even in applications that have absolutely no need for it. Hopefully it will be an opt-in feature for users in programs. Too many things want my attention already, I don't want to look at my phone when I wake up to see 50 icons with little red badges that say they have x new items for me to look at. It also makes me wonder if the persistent open connection that the Apple Push Notification Center has with the phone means more speaker interference more often. (Also, the sound notifications could become a scourge at a local cafe if people aren't good about putting their phones on vibrate.)

The StoreKit Framework will be friend to developers and worry to customers, at least until a happy equilibrium is found. I'm very excited about this because it makes possible certain classes of programs which had no viable business plan. I promise to use this feature only for good, but I'm sure it'll be a fine line at times. Expect customer complaints, even from developers, over how it's used.

CoreData on the phone! I'm very happy about this. While I was happy to roll my own or use one of the many SQLite libraries that have become available on the phone, I'm even happier to be using CoreData itself. Drawing up database diagrams and using NSManagedObjects is certainly a powerful friend for new apps moving forward.

Other items mentioned that have me more than curious: Cut/Copy/Paste, OpenURL, Proximity Sensor, Streaming audio and video, Data Detectors, GPS Lingo, iAP, Shake API, In-game voice, audio recorder and more. And they clearly have made big updates to other areas, like the table views, alert views, action sheets, scroll views, etc. Lots and lots to digest! ("Over 100 new features.") Looks like a lot of fun.

BTW, since you can't submit apps to the store using the 3.0 SDK, I'd suggest installing a parallel developer directory instead of overwriting the current one.

When can we ship apps using this stuff? One presumes it'll get released on or around the WWDC. But when's that? No announcement yet.