CUPERTINO, Calif. – If you think people can do a lot of things on their iPhones now, wait until the new version of the operating system becomes standard later this year.

It won't be too long before you're listening to a fellow iPhone user's iTunes music collection, computing your insulin dosage in seconds if you are diabetic, or following a turn-by-turn Google Maps geopositioning application to your destination.

At a full-house event on its campus here, Apple on March 17 previewed its much-anticipated iPhone OS 3.0 software and announced the immediate availability of a beta software release to registered developers.

The iPhone OS 3.0 beta release includes an updated software development kit featuring more than 1,000 new APIs (application programming interfaces), including In-App Purchases; new peer-to-peer connections; a new application interface for accessories; access to the iPod music library; a new maps API, and push notifications.

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