The second biggest news out of San Fran today? The announcement of iPhone OS 4.0, Apple’s biggest improvement to the iPhone OS since, well, 3.0. This new version includes multi-tasking (although backgrounding would be the proper term), app folders, a new version of Mail, and a carrier unlock (Not officially sanctioned by Apple, but available nonetheless).
The weirdest thing? It’s now called iOS. And iOS is a name owned by Cisco.
All of the standard stuff is there – just as we expected – with the addition of the iBook store. Click through for more info.
- There have been 50 million iPhones sold so far (along with 450,000 iPads)
- OS 4.0 will be going out to phones this summer, but a developer preview is currently available. The iPad will get it in the fall. iPhone and iPod touch 1Gs are out of luck, I’m afraid.
- Thousands of new APIs, including many “accelerate” APIs which allow developers to add hardware acceleration
Multi-tasking is coming. They admit they are a bit late to the party. Video here, details below.
-double tap of home button shows running applications. Invoke at any time, it’ll pause games and so on.
-the app-switching tray pushes up the other home icons and has a sort of metallic background.
-it’s a bit disappointing, actually: it’s more the ability to switch quickly between “active” apps. Nice, though.
-it’s not a task manager. You can’t close or modify apps, and Jobs says you don’t need to. Furthermore he says that if the user needs a task manager, the UX team is blowing it.
-iPhone 3G and iPod touch 2nd gen will not get multitasking.- There are seven background services that will be allowed, and which shouldn’t significantly affect the performance of other apps:
-Background audio: i.e. Pandora can play in the background and popup controls can control it.
-Background VoIP: Skype calls will continue if you need to switch apps; a “return to call” button will show, and you can also receive Skype calls on a locked phone.
-Background location: turn-by-turn directions can continue when you leave the app. Music can run at the same time and will quiet down when directions need to be said. Very slick. Uses cell-tower-enhanced AGPS. A notification will show in the status bar if an app is transmitting your location. You can also turn off location app-by-app.
-Push notifications: the same push notifications you know and love.
-
Local notifications: in-phone notifications for, say, pop-up alarms and such. Local app stuff.
-Fast app switching: this is the service by which apps can store their state when you switch to and from them.
-Task completion: allows, say, a Flickr upload to continue if you close the app. - Folders. These are basically stacks of apps. Drag one app onto another to create a folder. This will really help un-clutter some iPhone screens (makes room for people to buy more apps). Makes for a maximum of 2160 apps. Is there an app for taking it easy on app downloading?
- Homescreen wallpapers. Yes, very nice.
- Enhanced mail. Several changes here:
-Unified inbox. Web mail, MobileMe, multiple exchange accounts – thank god. This is nice.
-Thread organization. Handy for such a powerful inbox.
-Attachments for third-party email. Get your Gmail attachments right in Mail now. 
iBooks: I think we all expected this. It looks just like the iPad version, though somewhat smaller, obviously. Sync bookmarks and such between devices. Comes with Winnie the Pooh!- Better email encryption, and some sort of in-app encryption is in the works.
- SSL VPN support. Non-bold flavor text.
- Social gaming features: challenge friends to games, compare high scores on leaderboards and so on. Matchmaking and achievements. Nice, looking forward to this on the iPad. Hot seat Civ 4 with someone I’ve never met? Why not?
- Support for Bluetooth keyboards
- May support camera with flash (not confirmed)
- iAd: In Steve’s words, somewhat paraphrased: “Developers [of free apps] need to find a way to start making their money. A lot of developers turn to advertising – and we think these current advertisements really suck. If you look at advertisements on a phone, it’s not like on a desktop. On a desktop, its about search. On mobile, search hasnt happened. People aren’t searching on their phones. People are spending their time in apps. The average user spends over 30 minutes using apps on their phone. If we said we wanted to put an ad up every 3 minutes, that’d be 10 ads per device per day — about the same as a TV show. We’re going to soon have 100m devices. That’s a billion ad opportunities per day! “This is a pretty serious opportunity, and it’s an incredible demographic. But we want to do more than that. We want to change the quality of the advertising. We’re all familiar with interactive ads on the web. They’re interactive, but they’re not capable of delivering emotion. We have figured out how to do interactive and video content without ever taking you out of the app.”
-Apple will sell and host the ads; the revenue will be split 60/40, with devs getting the 60. Anybody can make them, just like apps.
-Ads are done in HTML5 (a little dig in there for Adobe)
-Fully interactive; the Toy Story ad he showed looks like a native app, includes a game, graphical interface and everything. They can call out for showing times, current prices, and so on. It’s essentially a commercial break app.
-Access to APIs: somewhat scarily, ads will have access to location, accelerometer, and a lot of other stuff.
TK
The mark “ios” is trademarking from Cisco.
Well Apple nicked the name iPhone from Cisco, the iPod UI from Creative Labs and even the name Apple from Apple Corps Ltd Why change the habit of a lifetime.
iPhone was named iPhone by the media, as a riff on iPod, many months before Apple introduced iPhone. Cisco purchased their iPhone name, which they never used, from a company that also riffed on iPod, a year after it had been introduced. Apple paid Cisco even though their rights had expired.
I had all the Creative Labs MP3 players that predated iPod, as well as the first few iPods. Nothing alike at all. Not even close.
Apple Corps? Maybe my grandfather would care about that if it were true.
Cisco released a range of VOIP phones under the iPhone brand in 2006.
The UI on the original Ipod was a direct rip off of the Creative Zen player, and Apple ended up paying Creative $100 million over the patent infringement.
Apple were taken to court by Apple Corps not long after they were founded and had to pay a settlement for the right to continue to use the name.
The iPhone 4 announcement today was great, Although I was a bit dismayed that it will still stick on AT&T, despite of all the issues of users against that carrier.
The battery of the iPhone 4 is amazing. Hopefully, Evo can catch up to that aspect.
Those users are misinformed.
BTW Biggs, nobody out here calls the city “San Fran” except maybe pretentious transplants. Hope all is well out in The N-Yo.
“There have been 50 million iPhones sold so far (along with 450,000 iPads)”
I thought 2 million iPads have been sold?
I thought the same. Actually, it’s a fact. They have sold 2 million.
Clearly the author buggered that stat up. :-)
Badly.
450,000 and 2 million are not the closest of numbers to mix up.
If he had written 200,000, I could have understood a mistype, but where does 450,00 come from.
450,000 was the number of iPads sold after the first weekend of availability of the Wi-Fi model.
This is a regurgitated post, with the new name on it. Back when Apple did the iOS reveal, only 450,000 had been sold.
Ah gotcha, so lazy journalism then.
“On mobile, search hasnt happened. People aren’t searching on their phones.”
More Steve Jobs b.s. – just as Google about their mobile search stats. I definitely search on my mobile phone.
Seriously, I search on my phone for everything. My 6 year old son has a question for me and says “Daddy, just look it up on your phone”.
Search is one of the most integral parts of me having a smartphone.
He means “in the Web browser.”
Even when people search Google on iPhone they tend to use the Google Mobile app, not the browser, because it has voice queries and location. And people use Yelp or Showtime or other specialized apps to get meals or movie searches. On a desktop, you tend to go to the browser for everything.
I see your point and I don’t they both display results and that is where the ads are. What am I not seeing here?
why can’t they just google the word before naming their products. Cisco ‘IOS’ is all over the web.
This is going to drive me crazy. I work with “Cisco’s IOS” all of the time and now google searching in going to go to hell on this.
Same thing as what happened with Avatar: The Last Airbender. I’ll never forgive James Cameron for that one.
James Cameron had the name as a script WAY before The Last Airbender. Avatar was created back in 1994. The Avater Nickelodeon franchise not until much later. From an Adobe Developer team Keynote (they used Adobe tools extensively – perhaps exclusively in the production of the film), Cameron said he didnt want to make it back then because technology wasn’t ready for what he wanted to do…
I digress, I am VERY anxious to download my update for OS4, err iOS ;)
It all comes down to what you fall in love with first. I loved watching ‘The Last Airbender’ with my son, so that is where my heart it. Also the name was pretty useless in the grand scheme of James Camerons movie. It could have been pretty easy to call it Pandora or something like that. The TV show was already very well established by the time he decided to make that movie.
But I digress as well. I’m a Droid owner but the iOS 4 looks pretty damn nice. But now my Cisco loyalties come into play. :)
If you name your product by sticking an “i” in front of a word like iMac or iPod then you’re asking to have it obliterated by a future Apple product.
Cisco is big enough to make up their own names.
Cisco do make up their own names, iPhone and IOS were both Cisco names well before Apple ‘borrowed’ them.
iPhone was first released as a product in 1998 by Infogear, who were purchased by Cisco in 2000. Apple didn’t try and trademark the name until 2002.
IOS has been used by Cisco since 1987, well before Apple started putting an i before a word and magically adding unicorns to a so so produce.
as for iAds: “If we said we wanted to put an ad up every 3 minutes, that’d be 10 ads per device per day”
This will infuriate users with the new data cap. So all these slick ads get delivered in your apps and then you’re stuck with the bill when you go over your cap? Yay.
“Ads are done in HTML5″
And one of the main complaints Flash haters had was Flash-based ads… oh the irony.
iAds are harmless static banners until you click on them, at which point they become interactive apps. Very different from Flash banners, which people hate because they blink at you and suck up CPU. So no irony.
Are you writing this based on facts and knowledge? Because I see animation in iAd ads, not just “static banners”. Check out the demos.
I’m quite surprised they haven’t done more to curtail unlocking. And most of these features prove that they believe in shipping first and doing things smart later.
You’re surprised at the lamest things. Get a clue and stop bothering people.
hahahah!
Maybe because they are bound by law to allow unlocking, and were sued when they made updates that intentionally bricked the phones of people who did unlock.
Maybe.
Yes you can close apps in the “task manager” you lamers.
Just press and hold and then hit the close button.
Where/when can we get it?
> backgrounding
Yet you call the same thing multitasking when Android does it.
I’m underwhelmed by this morning… sorry, guys.
I was waiting for an announcement that they’d open the phone to other carriers. Restricting it for yet another term with ATT exclusively kills the attractiveness of the new phone for me.
So, is this going to be called the new Apple iDroid, since all of the “new” features have been available on Android phones since they’ve been out? Typical of Apple, always playing catch up after their first gen devices. Granted, the iPhone was a ground-breaker…since then same ol’ same ol’ just with a few new bells and whistles all their competitors already have had.
really man. i mean really?.. i agree the market is competitive.. but apple is still ahead of the curve than many others.. look at that sweet display.. its been 3 years and still no phone comes close to the iphone display.. i mean not in terms of resolution and size.. in touch sensitivity, tracking accurately..
What an awful story title. The title makes it out to be that it’s been released.
I think iPOS suites the iPhone better!
Then why bother reading the article and posting? Do you have nothing better to do?
The new OS is not ‘here’ if I am not able to download it.
“SSL VPN support. Non-bold flavor text.” -> Looks like someone forgot to change the boiler plate text with actual content….
Just can’t help to say that apple rocks!
Sorry, what’s the big news here?
Wasn’t iPhoneOS 4.0 announced a couple of months ago?
I’m actually looking forward to OS 4 for my iPhone 3g. Even though there still isn’t much for the 3g with this update, I’m really excited about the folders you can create with it as I feel it will save so much room and time for my iPhone. Bring on summer!!!world.com
why does apple have to name the folders it would have been better to do it ourself anybody now when we will get it in england.
why not released yet ?
Nice, I liked this, here is some hands on experience I’ve had any feedback is welcome.
http://playlaughknow.blogspot.com/2010/06/ios-4-new-iphone-os.html