iPhone lockbox app on the way
iPhone is becoming a serious contender as an alternative to Blackberry with new apps for realtors and homebuyers. This recent post by Chris Johnston points out one of the potential uses for Realtors.
For those of you that are iPhone users, I'm sure that you know that yesterday Apple released some info about the upcoming iPhone OS version 3.0.
There are many new features and you can watch the video over on the Apple site and get great reviews all over the web. My favorite is Ryan Block's at GDGT.com. The two things that I think are important for Realtors are:
1. Apple will now allow developers to access bluetooth to communicate with external devices
2. Turn by Turn directions
The first one has been what has kept Supra from being able to develop an application similar to the one on the Blackberry. I have spoken to (name withheld) at Supra and they have assured me that the app was being developed and wold be released pending Apple allowing this functionality. The iPhone 3.0 release will not be out until summer (hopefully June and not August) so I expect this app to follow shortly.
The second option is great for those of us who do not have navigation installed in our vehicles. Since the economy is not getting better quickly I'm not buying a car anytime soon. Garmin and TomTom have been developing proof of concept applications for the iPhone so I can assume they will be releasing apps this summer also. The one caveat here is, because of licensing issues these applications will have to provide their own maps. An entire map of the US stored locally could take up 750MB - 1GB of space. I have an 8GB version so this takes up as much as 12.5% of my storage.
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