iPhone OS 4.0 prediction recap
Thursday, 8 April, 2010 — software apple iphone ipad
Yesterday, I posted thoughts on what Apple would announce at today’s iPhone 4.0 OS event. Today, Apple announced seven “tent-pole” features. There are 100 or so other features, so while I can say I hit on some things, I can’t say I hit or missed on others.
- Multitasking. I was right on being able to background and that it would be limited to the iPhone 3GS (and I presume the iPad). I was very wrong on how it would be implemented. Apple’s solution looks elegant
- Fast user switching. No info, but I doubt it for the initial 4.0 release.
- A more mature mechanism for notifications. Notifications are part of the background piece, but it doesn’t appear to be what I thought it would.
- New maps features Unknown.
- Lock screen widgets. Based on the brief lock screen I saw, I’m calling this a miss.
- Lock screen emergency number dial. As above, a miss.
- Unified inbox for Mobile Mail. A hit
- Email signature differentiated by account. Unknown.
- Multiple Exchange-account support. A hit.
- A better document management method. Unknown.
- No wallpaper on the iPhone. Very wrong.
- No (native) turn-by-turn navigation. Not seen, but since they demo’d TomTom, I’m going to guess Apple’s not pursuing this themselves.
- No video-conferencing support. Unknown.
All in all, I’m pretty happy with what was announced and I’m looking forward to seeing the rest this summer.