iPhone OS 4.0
Well, today was the day Apple broke its silence on the upcoming OS for the iPhone and iPad. iPhone OS 4 has been eagerly anticipated since the iPad was unveiled, and I have to say that Apple didn't disappoint with the features. I really look forward to getting it this summer, and here are a few of the reasons why.
- Multitasking
- Enhanced Mail
- Game Center
Multitasking:
This has been a longtime complaint of many iPhone users who want to listen Pandora while surfing the web, or driving and a call comes in and your navigation app closes. Apple has finally blessed the dev community with several ways to background apps. Most of them will allow apps to run in a very small footprint while backgrounded helping to reduce draining the battery and degrading performance. One of the coolest demos they showed today was backgrounding Skype. Even if the phone is locked, you can still get incoming calls. No more having to always run the app while waiting on a call.
Enhanced Mail:
Unified Inbox! Talk about one of my biggest complaints with my phone right now. I have several mail accounts and it is several taps to get from one mailbox to another. The unified inbox is something I absolutely love about Mail.app, and cannot wait to use it on the iPhone. Another awesome feature will be to add multiple Exchange accounts to my phone. That way I can check both work accounts and set up my gmail account all using exchange.
Game Center
This is the biggest feature I am looking forward to. It is basically XBox Live for the iPhone. I feel bad for Openfeint and Plus+, but a global iPhone community with matchmaking and friends would be absolutely awesome. I think this is a major blow for the DS and PSP. Not a killer, but a community like this for all your games will be absolutely awesome. It is one of the features that really sets the 360 apart. Hopefully devs will take advantage of this quickly.
Overall I think that Apple has put some really impressive new features out there with the new iPhone OS. Over 1500 new APIs for developers, and 100 new features for end users make this a pretty large update. Some of the ones that I didn't really touch on, backgrounds for the homescreen, app folders, quick view, iAd (really awesome btw), and a ton more. Coming to the iPhone this summer, and iPad this fall. Man this really makes me want an iPad even more!