eLifespaces

Today Apple announced the newest iPhone / iPod operating system - OS 4.0 due to be released this summer. 4.0 boasts over 100 new features such as Create playlists, 5x digital zoom, tap to focus on video, gift apps, geotagging, places in the photo app, change the homescreen wallpaper, bluetooth keyboards, and spell checker just to name a few.

However, the main focus of today's event was on the 7 biggest new features of OS 4.0


Multitasking - includes seven services (Task completion, Voice over IP, Background audio, Local notifications, Fast app switching, Background location, and Push notifications). Until now, you could only use one app at a time, if you wanted to listen to your Pandora radio app, while playing a game or sending an email, you couldn’t do it. Now with 4.0 you can have multiple apps running in the background. To switch back and forth between apps, you just press the home button twice and a new dock appears showing the apps which are running in the background. Apps such as Skype can now be used much more effectively. Before, when you navigated away from the app, it would go offline, now with 4.0 you can receive Skype calls even while using other apps.

Folders - Now you can make a folder which contains a group of apps. For example, if you have several games and you want to keep them together, you can make a folder by just holding down an app until it starts to jiggle, and then just drag one app on top of another and it instantly makes a folder. It also automatically names the folder based on the categories of these apps, or you can rename it yourself.


Enhanced Mail - Now you can consolidate all of your email accounts into one inbox. Mail now has the ability to have more than one active Exchange account (although I would personally be happy with just one working Exchange account since I could never get my iPhone to work with Exchange). Apple has also added the ability to organize email by thread and to open attachments with apps on your iPhone.

iBooks - Now your iPhone is a mini ebook reader - nuff said (Oh, and you get Winnie to Pooh just like the iPhone’s big brother, the iPad)
 
 
 
More Enterprise features - More than one Exchange account (already mentioned), better data protection, wireless app distribution, support for Exchange Server 2010, VPN support
 
 
 
Game Center - Think of a gaming service like Xbox live for the iPhone / iPod. Includes Social gaming networks, Friend invites, Matchmaking, Leaderboards, and Achievements.


Mobile Advertising - This is a feature the developers and especially Apple are going to love while the end users are probably going to hate it. Apple is allowing developers to put annoying pop up style ads right in the App you are using so that you can click on them and see the advertising without ever leaving your app. Apple provides the advertisers and serves up the data from their servers while splitting the advertising dollars with the developers 60/40. As a developer, I should be more supportive of this feature, but I just see it as another annoying pop up ad that the world could do without.

Well there you go, those are some of the new features announced this afternoon by Apple for the summer release of the iPhone / iPod OS 4.0. The iPad will have to wait until the fall to receive a new OS. Unfortunately, not all of the new features like multitasking will work on the original iPhone or even the 3G, so if you want to take advantage of the new OS, you will have to have a 3GS .....or maybe a 4G by the time the OS is released this summer.

Check out this video of the new features from engadget.