Big day today at Apple headquarters where took place the Apple iPhone 4.0 OS preview. What everybody expected is now confirmed by Steve Jobs itself: multitasking will be supported soon on all Apple devices.
Like usual the event started with some updates: 450.000 iPads had been sold, 3.5 million times an iPad app had been downloaded till today and the number of total apps in AppStore reached 185.000. Next we go to iPhone, which sold out in almost 50 million units.
Now let’s see the “developer preview” for iPhone 4.0 OS. It seams it will be released this summer and contains over 1500 new APIs and 100 new user features.
Dear, Holy Multitasking…might say some of Apple lovers, this is finally a dream come true and now we can execute more than one action, same time on our iPhones. The demo seems flawless, Steve showed us he can surf ebay, play a game or check his mails. Each action it’s stopped when another launches in, but you can switch back to it without a problem, the multitasking tray can be accessed by hitting the Home button. He explained that Apple managed to implement the multitasking feature preserving battery life and performances.
We told you there are over 1500 new APIs through this OS update and Apple presented 7 of them:
–Background audio feature show us how Pandora app can play in background without interrupting you doing other things.
–Voice over IP featured Skype app and we found out that we can receive calls or updates on our iPhones even if they are locked. A red bar will appear in the top of the phone to remind that you are still in a call.
–Background location will update the status of your location so each time you will change your position the iPhone will wake up and update it. On the status bar an arrow will be added to indicate each time an application will ask your location.
–Push Notifications
–Local Notifications will appear on the screen each time we perform an action(eg. when you connect the iPhone to TV).
–Task Completion was presented through Flickr’s file upload. We can continuously upload photos on our account in the background even if we switch away from this action.
–Fast app switching one of the most expected feature will let us switch through the apps, storing the state of each running app and then resuming one of them.
Mail service has been optimized also and now we can use an unified inbox, multiple exchange accounts, fast inbox switching, threaded messages or open attachments with apps.
Another good thing is that Games or Apps can now be selected and put into folders. You can have unlimited folders on the menu and they will act just like an icon. So now from 180, you can have 2160 apps.
Games will contain several features: social gaming network, invite friends, matchmaking, leaderboards and achievements. It seams they want to get near the PS3 or Xbox customers.
iBooks option, released on same time with the iPad will be also on the new iPhone 4.0 OS.
iAd is there to make a challenge for Google Ad-Sense and Steve Jobs boys felt that there is a “bread to eat” in this section. The bad news is that the ads will be placed inside apps, even if they say that this will be a mix of emotion + interactivity and won’t redirect you towards that ad destination. Apple says they will sell and store this ads and give to developers 60% of the revenue.
Each time you click an iAd, you will expand it to the screen, but an “x” will appear if you plan to go back to your app.
It will be available on iPhone 3G, 3GS and iPod Touch 2-and and 3-rd generation, but the 3G model and the 2-and generation of iPod Touch will not support multitasking. For the iPad it will be released later this year.
Enough for the moment, the new iPhone 4.0 OS version will be out sometime this summer, but still we didn’t find out anything about the 4-rd generation of iPhone.
Image was taken from iphonetechie.com
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