Apple announces iPhone OS 4.0, available this summer

 

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Posted on 8 Apr 2010 at 19:18

Apple Messiah Steve Jobs has announced iPhone OS 4.0, the first major update in over a year, which will introduce many new features to the OS behind the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. The headline is, undoubtedly, support for multi-tasking and it will be available for iPhone and iPod touch this summer, and in autumn for the iPad.

Inside iPhone OS 4.0, there are more than 1,500 new APIs, giving developers access to calendar, photo library and quicklook amongst other features. Although multi-tasking is the headline, there are 100 new features in the OS including spell check, Bluetooth keyboard support, user-defined wallpapers, some camera software upgrades, playlist creation and nestled playlists, and App Folders for organising your apps.

Jobs admitted that Apple wasn't the first to the multi-tasking party, "but we're going to be the best." He claimed that in most cases, multi-tasking seriously compromised battery life and made the phone feel sluggish. Apple prevented this from happening by looking at "tens of thousands of apps" to work out which parts needed to run in the background.

These were distilled into a new framework with support for background audio, voice over IP, background location, push notifications, local notifications, task completion and fast app switching. This allows the state of the app to be stored when you switch to another and then resumes from where you left off when you come back.

Multi-tasking is only going to work on iPhone 3GS and iPad - the iPhone 3G and iPod touch 2G's hardware "just can't do it," said Jobs.

App Folders will thankfully work across all devices running iPhone OS, which works by dragging an app over another on the home screen. It automatically creates a folder named after the section of the iTunes App Store where it was purchased and can be changed. Each folder's icon is made up of miniature icons for the apps stored in the folder.

Email handling has also been spruced up - the biggest new feature being support for multiple Exchange accounts. There's also support for a new unified inbox, too. IT departments will also welcome wireless app distribution, which will enable IT managers to deploy apps to their employee's iPhones without the employee needing to dock the device.

iBooks is also making its way to iPhone and will support syncing with the iPad, allowing you to continue reading where you left off on a different device.

Finally, Apple also unveiled its new iAd platform, a new advertising framework built directly into the OS that will allow developers to embed advertising in their apps. Apple says that the ads will be sold and hosted by Apple and it'll take 40 per cent of the revenue for the privilege.

However, rather than being standard ads, they're interactive and much more compelling. They could include mini-games or even location-based information. They're essentially apps within apps. It's being billed as the future of advertising - we'll see whether it proves true, but it's quite an exciting new take on advertising.

Author: Tim Smalley