While many view Apple's iPhone operating system to be one of the most-intuitive, there is apparently room for improvement as indicated by Apple's latest news release.

Apple has unveiled its latest iPhone software upgrade with new features ranging from copy-and-paste and message notifications to picture messaging.

While such features already exist on rival mobile phone devices like the BlackBerry from Research In Motion and Treo from Palm, some iPhone users had complained it lacked functions such as multimedia messaging and the ability to copy and paste text.

The company said an early version of its 3.0 operating system for the iPhone would be available to developers today, with consumer availability this summer.

The software would support automatic alerts of items such as sports results or the arrival of an instant message.

Apple promised multimedia messaging with the new system, allowing users to send each other photos from the phone. It also announced a peer-to-peer capability that lets users near each other interact with their iPhones for features such as gaming.