iPhone OS 4.0: Apple has done it again(video)

iPhone OS 4.0

Apple tends to iron out major gripes in each release of their iPhone OS. Think cut-copy-paste, MMS, system-wide search etc. Today they announced iPhone OS 4.0 which is one of the most sig­nif­i­cant updates to date. Here’s a run down of the fea­tures from Engad­get:

• Mul­ti­task­ing!
• Spell check.
• Blue­tooth key­board support
• User-defined wall­pa­per No more jailbreaking!.
• Tap to focus when record­ing video + and a 5x dig­i­tal zoom for the camera.
• App fold­ers for sort­ing apps! Now that’s what I’m talk­ing about!
• Enhanced Mail! You can have a merged inbox view, switch between inboxes quickly, and sync to more than one Exchange account. There’s also threaded mes­sag­ing (at last!) and in-app attach­ment viewing.
• iBooks, just like on iPad, only smaller. You can wire­lessly sync books between plat­forms, a la Kindle.
• Enter­prise fea­tures, includ­ing remote device man­age­ment and wire­less app distribution.
• Game Cen­ter. It’s like Xbox Live, but for iPhone games. Includes achieve­ments, leader­boards, and match mak­ing. It will be avail­able as a “devel­oper pre­view,” and out for con­sumers later this year.

You can also store more than 2000 apps on your device as opposed to about 200 now because of the folder thing. No one can argue with that fea­ture list. The SDK also gives devel­op­ers access to new APIs. Devel­op­ers will now have full access to the cam­era, cal­en­der, photo library, video library etc. among other things.

Most of the fea­tures are going to be avail­able for all iPhones and iPod Touches, even my 3 year old first gen iPod Touch is get­ting in on the action. Unfor­tu­nately, mul­ti­task­ing is not one of those fea­tures, only the iPhone 3GS and 3rd Gen iPod Touch are get­ting that. The rea­son for that is the hard­ware — Apple says the older devices i.e, iPhone 3G and below, are not pow­er­ful enough. The rest of the cool fea­tures are com­ing though.

I couldn’t agree more. My iPod Touch can’t han­dle some of the newer apps com­ing out and besides, its bat­tery isn’t hold­ing up as long as it used to. I’m sur­prised that Apple keeps releas­ing updates for that old thing, Sam­sung and other com­pa­nies would have given up about 2 years ago!

Here’s a video show­ing how mul­ti­task­ing will work. Inter­est­ingly, there is no task man­ager. Apple said some­thing like “there’s no need to have one…the user shouldn’t have to worry about these things…”  Hmm… I don’t know about that, but its Apple, they know what they are talk­ing about.

Apple also announced iAd — an in-app adver­tis­ing pro­gram. This is pretty inter­est­ing for devel­op­ers and users — it means more money for devel­op­ers and more free apps for users. It’s a win win sit­u­a­tion. The Ads are not like the ban­ner ads we see on the net and they won’t re-direct you to obscure web­sites. They are more inter­ac­tive with stuff rang­ing from wall­pa­pers to mini-games. They con­tained within the apps. It will be inter­est­ing to see what the final cut will look like.

The update is com­ing to the iPhone and iPod Touch in Sum­mer and it’s head­ing to the iPad in Fall. The speak­ing of the iPad — this makes it a really worth­while device. Mul­ti­task­ing was one of the biggest issues peo­ple had with it. I’m prob­a­bly going to get one when it comes out this side, I’ll lug my lap­top around for heavy duty stuff and I’ll have the iPad for web-surfing, blog­ging and some gam­ing. Sounds like an idea to me don’t you think?