Finally Apple decided to add multitasking to the iPhone to compete with all the new devices coming up and existing.
At an Apple press event, CEO Steve Jobs announces multitasking support in the newest iPhone operating system. Users will finally be able to switch back and forth between applications like Pandora and Skype without having to shut down the app entirely to enter a new one.
Their excuse to not bringing multitasking until now is they were waiting to make multitasking right. Now they allowing some multitasking, that doesn’t mean your application will be running all the time in a iPhone, means that a few features of your applications are allow to keep running. For example, the Pandora Box applications that brings you music from the Internet, now can take advantage or keep streaming audio, even when you switch to read your email.
As well the folders option was a must, allowing you to organize much better all your fart applications into one folder called “Farts”.
A huge improvement that I have been waiting for, is the email accounts all merge into one view, so I don’t have to go back to read each account, all we’ll be in different colors to keep the once that are different. Also, now you can use your bluetooth keyboard to write your long emails, just will be hard to keep that keyboard in your pocket as well.
New features on the iPhone 4.0 are:
- Multitasking with background services
- Audio
- VoIP
- Location (GPS, Cell location)
- Push Notification.
- Local notification.
- Task completion.
- Folders to organize your apps better with side to side and now with folders in and out.
- Email improvements
- One Inbox for all your mail, if you don’t like that like me, you still can access individual mail accounts
- Thread mail like Gmail for all your accounts.
- Attachments for third-party apps.
- iBooks like the iPad.
- Bluetooth keyboard support.
3G and 3GS iPhone will be able to upgrade to OS 4.0. However my biggest fear is that will make the 3G iPhone a horrible experience. Already iPhone 3G owners are complaining about the slow experience of the iPhone 3G with OS 3.0, that OS was created for the iPhone 3GS that is much faster, the iPhone OS 4.0 was created for the iPad that has twice the memory and better CPU.
My recommendation to iPhone 3G users is to do not upgrade to 4.0. We should also expect to see new hardware for the iPhone coming up this summer with the release to support the OS 4.0.
A summer release, yet the iPhone OS 4.0 specific date of release hasn’t been confirm. Yet this big release from Apple is the answer to users and mainly to Windows Phone 7 that will be coming at the end of 2010. When big companies compete, the users always win
Video of the event can be found here:
http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/1004fk8d5gt/event/
Cheers
Al