You heard that right, people -- iPhone OS 4 just brought multitasking to the platform! Apple says they've figured out how to implement third party multitasking without hurting performance or battery life, and they're demoing it now -- you just double click the home button and see a list of your apps, and you can just tap to switch between apps. The system actually runs the services apps need in the background -- the apps don't need to do them individually, so it's not a "true" multitasking system, but it seems plenty effective. There are seven services: background audio, which allows you to use the standard pop-over iPod controls, Voice over IP, which can receive calls in the background, location services for GPS and social networking (there's an indicator if any service is tracking you), updated push notifications with local notifications, task completion so you can finish things like uploads in the background, and fast app switching, which lets apps sleep and resume instantly. Notably missing? Anything for managing a conversation, like IM or Twitter, which is a big omission. Win some, lose some, we suppose.
Update: Here's a big "lose some" -- only the iPhone 3GS and iPod touch 3G will support multitasking. The iPhone 3G and below won't -- Steve says the hardware doesn't support it. Sad face.
Got your iPhone developer credentials handy? Then you'll want to head straight on over to the iPhone Dev Center, where you can now download the iPhone SDK 4 beta and get a taste of what everyone else will see this summer (or fall). And don't worry too much if you're not among the lucky iPhone devs.
All that great stuff we just heard about iPhone OS 4.0: multitasking, tentpoles, app folders, Game Center, iAd -- okay, maybe you weren't all that excited about iAd -- seemed destined to hit the iPad this summer. Surely, right? Instead, rather than finishing with his usual "one more thing" flourish today, Steve Jobs just left a stunned audience with the terse statement that Apple will be "bringing OS 4 to the iPad this Fall."
Just a bit more than a year after we first laid eyes on iPhone OS 3.0, Apple is back with the latest big revision of the OS that powers the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. It's shipping this Summer (iPad in the Fall), and the developer preview will be out today. iPhone 3GS and new-gen iPod touch will get all the features, but some features won't make it to the iPhone 3G, original iPhone, and older iPod touches. The biggest new feature is multitasking, which Apple says is going to be the "best" implementation in the smartphone space, though it's obviously not the first. App switching is activated by double tapping the home button, which pulls up a "dock" of currently running apps, and Apple claims it can do this without hurting battery life or performance for the front app. Unfortunately, this multitasking won't be available for devices older than the 3GS and new iPod touch. Multitasking is just one of seven different new "tentpole" features, including Game Center, enhanced Mail, and more...
Notable new features for users ("tentpoles" are in bold):
Multitasking.
Spell check (like on the iPad).
Bluetooth keyboard support (again, on the iPad).
User-defined wallpaper (a jailbreak favorite).
Tap to focus when recording video, just like with photos, and a 5x digital zoom for the camera.
Playlist creation and nested playlists.
App folders for sorting apps! You can even put an app folder in the dock.
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.
Developers are getting plenty of new tricks too:
1,500 new APIs.
Full access to the camera.
Date and address "data detectors."
Background audio (think Pandora).
Background VoIP (think Skype).
Background location data, both with live GPS for backgrounded turn-by-turn, and cell tower-based for lower power draw.
Local notifications. Like push notifications, but sends a notification straight from the app without needing a push notification server, perfect for an alarm, for instance.
Fast app switching. Saves the state of an app and resumes it from where you left off, without dwelling in memory.
iAd. Apple says it's for keeping "free apps free." The ads keep you in the app, while also taking over the screen and adding interactivity -- using HTML 5 for video -- up to simple gaming in-ad. Apple will offer a 60 / 40 split on revenue, and users can even buy apps straight from an ad.
If you were wondering exactly what Apple had in mind with its acquisition of Quattro Wireless a few months back, the picture gets a little clearer today with the announcement of the iAd mobile ad platform alongside iPhone OS 4.0 today with the company saying that iPhone devs have a billion "ad opportunities" per day. The idea is to keep users in the apps to see interactive, "emotional" ad content as often as once every three minutes -- not to "yank" them out, as Steve puts it -- while developers are rewarded with a 60 percent cut of the revenue. Ads are hosted and served by Apple, and while there'll be some sort of approval process, Steve's describing it as a "light touch," so it probably isn't the same process traditional apps go through. This makes things considerably more interesting for the mobile advertising business as a whole, since Google's been trying to seal the deal on an acquisition of industry leader AdMob for a while now in the face of some pretty intense FTC scrutiny. Certainly seems like this would grease the wheel a little bit, doesn't it?
Apple just announced Game Center, which is a social gaming network for the iPhone -- it sounds a lot like Xbox Live, actually. It's has a friend system, leaderboards, and achievements -- and we're guessing it'll blow up out of the gate, given how many games are on the platform. It's being previewed in iPhone OS 4 right now, and it'll launch later this summer. We're hunting for more info, we'll let you know!
There you have it -- according to Steve Jobs at today's iPhone event, nearly half a million iPads have been pushed so far alongside 3.5 million iPad app downloads -- a perfect few orders of magnitude above the 3,500 iPad apps presently available. It's not clear whether that includes units sold to third party retailers (like Best Buy) that are still sitting on store shelves, though, so there's quite a bit of potential for variability there. Separately, he's mentioned that 50 million iPhones have now been sold worldwide alongside 35 million iPod touches -- so yeah, needless to say, the iPad has some big shoes to fill if it wants to hit the same level of rousing success.
We're on the ground outside of Apple's iPhone OS 4 event, awaiting the doorbuster stampede we hope to be a part of soon. Keep it tuned here, and check back at the times below for the official start!
.png)
No comments:
Post a Comment