Earlier this week, Apple sent out invitations to media outlets for journalists to attend a revealing of iPhone OS 4.0. It isn’t expected that they will reveal the next hardware revision of the iPhone until sometime in June, so this event will focus on just software.
Apple’s event is set to begin today at 10AM Pacific/1PM Eastern time. Several prominent tech blogs will be covering the event.
Here’s a short list of several liveblogs covering the event:
Take your pick. I plan to write a followup post with comments and reflections.
What will Apple unveil?
Not much is known, but rumors suggest Apple may make multitasking available to third party apps in some fashion. A longstanding complaint with iPhone OS from some users has been that aside from certain Apple-sanctioned apps (e.g. iPod, Mail, MMS, etc.), no third party apps have been allowed to run in the background. Apple’s position seems to be that unchecked multitasking would impact performance and battery life, detracting from the user experience.
Given the popularity of “task killers” for Android OS, Apple’s fears may not be unfounded. But even so, some users would rather Apple not make the multitasking decision for them. Multitasking can be a blessing and a curse. Consider this description of a popular Android app, Advanced Task Killer:
Advanced Task Killer allows you to stop running background processes or apps in memory. The Android operating system can run multiple apps in memory concurrently which currently is its own Gift and Curse. Cursed… as some processes and apps can bring an Android phone performance to a crawl. By default, you can’t easily close open applications or running background processes unless you go [deep into system settings].
Besides multitasking…
An unverified rumor posted at MacRumors suggests that Apple may be developing a smaller iPad in the 5″ x 7″ form factor for release in 2011 (this rumor doesn’t make any sense to me. Why a slightly different iPad?). Though the smaller iPad rumor seems unlikely, it seems reasonable that as the iPhone OS device ecosystem grows, Apple may introduce features such as resolution independence to simplify development for differently sized devices.
Many are also wondering what Apple’s plans are with regard to AT&T exclusivity, and how long it will be before we see a Verizon iPhone.
Daring Fireball’s John Gruber notes in his excellent iPad review that the handling of documents in iPhone OS is severely lacking:
There is, however, a severe shortcoming inherent to the iWork suite of iPad apps: document syncing between Mac and iPad. It’s a convoluted mess. In short, the only way to edit a document on your iPad that was created on your Mac, or vice versa, is to go through a convoluted multi-step process of exporting, copying, syncing or downloading, and importing.
…
The workflow for iWork is downright antediluvian. It’s not just pre-Cloud, it’s pre-network. It’s effectively the “Who’s got the latest revision of this file?” workflow of the days when we moved files from one machine to another via floppy disks.
Finally, users have long asked for a better notification system and a more informative home screen. For example, Android devices allow users to place web-enhanced widgets that provide updates or display information. Check out this quality mockup from teehan+lax:
We’ll know when we know
As usual, we really won’t know anything for sure until this afternoon. Apple events benefit and suffer from their secrecy. Occasionally, an overabundance of excitement and anticipation will lead some to a feeling of disappointment and deflation in the aftermath.
Apple's invitation graphic
