As Apple have a habit of doing whenever Mr. Steve Jobs shows his face, they’ve caused quite a frenzy in the smartphone world yet again. This is a bigger announcement than normal for any firmware update released by Apple especially in the wake of the release of the iPad. We knew Steve Jobs had something up his sleeve but as usual we had no idea.
Steve said iPhone OS 4.0 is coming to us in the summer but only the iPhone 3GS and 3rd Gen iPod Touch will support features like multitasking as the older iPhones and iPod touches haven’t got hardware up to the task.
The iPad on the other hand isn’t due to get the upgrade until Fall which is rather strange.
So let’s take a look at what he came up with; His 7 “TentPole Features” as he likes to call them
1. Multitasking
Thank you Steve! It’s about time you got your act together and brought this out, we’ve been waiting a while but you’ve finally got on with it. He acknowledged that Apple wasn’t the first to implement multitasking, but he was adamant that Apple would be the best, by coming up with a way that doesn’t degrade the performance of the app users run in the foreground and doesn’t drain battery life as significantly as it might.
So how does it work? Well in order to switch applications, users double-click the Home button which brings up a dock-like window showing all running applications; tap on an app to switch to it. If you’re playing a game, it will pause when you switch, and you’ll be able to resume right where you left off when you switch back. Now things like Pandora and Tom Tom Sat Nav will all be able to operate in the background and you can still browse the web etc…
2. Folders
While you may have been able to organise all your apps into folders when you jailbroke your device, this is the first time this much needed feature is coming to the iPhone/iPod Touch. When you’re editing your Home screen, you can drag one app on top of another app to automatically create a folder. The iPhone automatically names folders based on the categories of the apps for you as well and you can also pin these folders to the dock.
Also, Steve announced that you can now finally change your background wallpaper and not just the one on your lockscreen. A simple thing that we should have been able to do long ago, but sure better late than never.
3. Enhanced Mail
Apple have taken a good look at their mail app and revamped it completely for iPhone OS 4.0. They’ve added support for new features such as the unified inbox, which allows you to see all incoming mail from multiple accounts. You can also quickly jump between inboxes for these multiple accounts. In addition, Mail also now supports more than one Exchange account at a time, and you can also organize by thread.
Attachments are also improved, you can now tap them and open them up in external applications, including third party apps.
4.iBooks
iBooks just made its debut on the iPad, now it’s coming to the iPhone as well. Complete with the ability to purchase books directly from your device and you’ll be able to sync your place and bookmarks between multiple devices: leave off reading a book on your iPad, and you can start reading it in the same place on your iPhone.
5. Enterprise
This isn’t quite as exciting as some of the other features but Apple has allowed e-mails and attachments to be encrypted using your PIN code. They’ve also made API’s available to developers to let them encrypt data in their apps.
Apple’s also rolling out improvements for mobile device management, for those companies that deploy large numbers of iPhones and companies can now wirelessly distribute applications anywhere in the world from their own servers. There is also support for multiple exchange accounts as mentioned earlier and support for exchange 2010.
6. Game Center
Apple have really giving Microsoft a dig here, with their own competitor to their Xbox Live service as well as the Playstation Network. It’s a social network gaming center. You’ll be able to invite friends, participate in online matchmaking, compete in leaderboards, earn achievements, and more. It should be interesting to see what game developers come up with for this.
7. iAd
This rumored advert came true and Apple are looking to make a hit at Google here. Steve expressed his dislike at adverts in apps since the user was discouraged from clicking them as they would be forced to exit the app. However these new adverts provide an interactive experience and allow you to play around with them in a separate window. He demoed some fairly impressive adverts and 60% of the revenue would be going to developers.
He also made a point to Adobe stating that they were all entirely developed with HTML 5.
So there you go, that’s basically the Apple event, What do you think?
Let us know in the comments
Special thanks to Engadget and gdgt for supplying the pictures and info throughout the coverage
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