Apple announces new features in iPhone OS 3.1 update and iTunes 9

At a special event yesterday in San Francisco, California, Apple made available iPhone OS 3.1, an update to its smartphone operating system and it released iTunes 9, an update to the popular media player which includes several new features to improve the iPhone experience.

The OS update includes Genius for applications, a recommendation engine for already downloaded and installed apps. The company announced it is offering more than 30,000 ringtones at $1.29 per tone, available through iTunes. Voice control over Bluetooth has been added to the OS and users can now paste numbers into the phone dialer. When editing video on the iPhone 3Gs, an original copy of the video can now be easily kept.

A new version of iTunes, iTunes 9, has also been released. It allows iPhone and iPod touch users to change their homescreens directly in the media software. The software also now lets users sort applications in the App Store by which apps are earning the most money in addition to sorting them by which are the most downloaded.

In related news, the iTunes 9 software breaks compatibility with Palm Pre media syncing, so Pre users won't be able to sync their devices with the popular media software unless Palm issues a fix.

Steve Jobs, who gave his first keynote at the event since he left the company on medical leave in January, said that to date, the company has sold 30 million iPhones and that users have downloaded 1.8 billion apps.