Posted at 19:03 on Monday, 05 April 2010
TECHNOLOGY Hot on the heals of Microsoft’s announcement to journalists declaring that it’s Time to Share, Apple has just sent out an invite to a sneak-peak of iPhone OS 4.0.
Let me start by saying that I in no way think that the iPhone OS announcement is more important than what Microsoft are unveiling. The remarkably cool Microsoft invitation package just doesn’t give any specifics about what’s happening (although I could venture some guesses).
An email from Apple to the media did go out, however, on the same day as Microsoft’s invitation. It’s obviously just dumb luck that they were sent out at the same time but I’m fairly sure the events occurring just two days either side of my birthday was completely intentional. For that, I would like to thank the Steves — both Jobs and Ballmer.
The Apple event is pretty explicitly going to be about iPhone OS 4.0 — something rumours have been circling around at a rate only bested by those of the iSlate, Apple Tablet, MacBook Touch iPad. I’ll say it: I’m excited. Here, Apple could very easily quell the disappointment people feel towards their devices in one fell swoop — but will it be too little, too late?
As per usual with Apple products, the iPad was received positively, marred by the same old (yet very real) faults that critics pick out and Apple detractors use as ammunition to vigorously hate the device — and the word ‘hate’ is definitely accurate. I sincerely hope that iPhone OS 4.0 sets out to right the wrongs in all three of their mobile products: the iPhone, the iPod Touch and the iPad. There are many things the software currently lacks that people are clamouring for and some of those I predict will indeed arrive with version 4, but some are surely nothing more than technological unicorns.
They’re obviously not announcing or releasing any new hardware this week, that will most likely happen during the summer just as it does every year, but because it’s making it’s first appearance now I think it’ll probably have a fairly big developer-potential focus. Here’s a small explanation of some of the things I predict will appear in 4.0 – a list I will revisit with some thoughts on Thursday when the announcement is made.
Flash Support
Sorry, but it’s just not going to happen. Although I think that abandoning Flash support on the iPhone and iPad before HTML 5 has established itself in the browser as a viable replacement — which it inevitably will — was hasty and tactless, hell will freeze over before Steve Jobs backtracks on his scathing (and just as tactless) remarks about Flash. But still, I guess someone had to be the first to fully reject Flash in favour of HTML 5 and, as evidenced by some major sites setting up to deliver video in HTML 5, Apple are probably prime canaries for that coalmine.
Multi-tasking
It irks me a little when people say the iPhone OS can’t “multitask”. It absolutely can. I can very easily listen to music while writing a blog post and have my Mail app check for email. I unfortunately cannot leave a third-party IM app open while I do this and that is something to shout about. Saying outright that the iPhone OS can’t multitask is a very misleading statement but among that hyperbole is a nugget of truth.
Fortunately, when I stare into my crystal mouseball this is something I do foresee making it into iPhone OS 4.0. I have no scientific evidence for this (apart from a few rumours sparked by exposed iPhone SDK code) but I frankly think it’s been far too long now. It’s somewhat acceptable on the iPhone but now that we’ve got a blazing fast system-on-a-chip, Apple’s proprietary A4; a good amount of RAM and some kick-ass battery life on the iPad things are getting a little ridiculous.
I guess this will manifest itself as another App Store approval criterion and may even be something users can specifically allow or disallow – like the ability to prevent Applications from sending you push notifications or accessing your GPS location.
The ability to release a game on the iPhone without having to worry about optimising for a possibly very background process-ridden environment is something that has been very attractive to developers and hopefully something Apple will maintain. An interesting take on that would be to extend the SDK to allow the opposite to background processing — killing (or requesting the user to kill) other processes running upon launching a very resource-heavy game. Just a thought.
User Interface
Call me meticulously crazy, but I think the sharper and more solid chrome UI elements we see on the iPad will make their way onto the iPhone and iPod touch, too. We won’t see any of the concepts that are limited to the iPad – such as contextual drop-downs – but after seeing the more muted and shiny trimmings of the iPad UI, I can’t see why they wouldn’t appear on the iPhone to give it a new visual lease of life (if only aesthetically).
This is something that happened upon to the release of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). 10.4, Tiger had some style elements that were unnecessary and simply made things look ugly – in particular, the faint horizontal bars that spanned inactive menu items. In Leopard, they disappeared and the OS as a whole looks much more polished as a result. In the current iPhone interface, however, they’re back — although not present on the iPad. I think the disappearance of lines, along with the silvery finish as demonstrated in the iPad’s Safari browser, will be included on the iPhone and the iPod touch as of 4.0.
Other tweaks & additions
Among the miscellany that will surround the bombshell that is the multitasking ability, I’m guessing there will be other small changes to the experience.
I’m cheating a bit on this one as Steve Jobs has confirmed personally that the Mail app on the iPhone (and iPad) will include a “universal” inbox where incoming items from all your accounts will be accessible. So that’s coming. Among that, I’m also feeling some kind of iBook integration with the iPhone (it just seems lazy, apart from that).
It’s been a big month for Apple and the tech industry as a whole. I’ll be watching the liveblogs this Thursday, fo sho’ and as usual, I’ll be contributing my thoughts on the proceedings of both this and the Microsoft announcement right here.
