What does Apple have up its sleeve for iPhone 3.0?

Apple is planning to show off "an advance preview of what we're building" for the iPhone 3.0 software release, at an event at its headquarters on Tuesday.

The event will come just a little more than a year after the iPhone 2.0 software event laid out Apple's policies for getting third-party applications onto the iPhone, as well as business-friendly features.

This year Apple plans to discuss a new software development kit at the event, in addition to demonstrating the new software.

This could explain why the company has been slow to offer renewals for current SDK licenses, as it might be requiring developers to sign a new agreement. While the software will be the main attraction, developers will be closely watching for details about how the new SDK will affect their businesses.

When it comes to the software a lot of iPhone users are looking for Apple to finally bring cut-and-paste capability to the device.

Secondly, there's a chance Apple plans to introduce true background processing with iPhone 3.0, given the seeming disappearance of the quasi-background processing capability discussed at last year's Worldwide Developer Conference. This might only work, however, on an upgraded iPhone that probably won't be on display Tuesday.

Apple may therefore have developed a way to let users of older iPhones run more than one application at the same time - perhaps allowing applications to save their states in memory - while enabling true background processing on iPhones that have the capability to handle those demands.

Analyst Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster thinks Apple may demonstrate a "universal search capability" as part of the new software. Currently, there's no real way to search an iPhone on the device's home screen.

Original article: Apple ready for third generation of iPhone from CNET News.com