As if we needed any more evidence that Apple’s flagship smartphone, iPhone, was severely lacking in the most basic features – Steve Jobs has held another media-frenzy of press launch to announce a minor upgrade to the phone operating system – Version 4.0 – with over 100 new features. Mock them, though I do, for holding an entire press event for something so minor, I admit that I am going to propagate that by reviewing it, when I didn’t do so with my own phone’s OS upgrade last week – ho hum.
One of the very first things Apple have addressed is multi-tasking, with Jobs giving a piss-poor explanation about how they’ve developed their own way to do multi-tasking that doesn’t drain battery life – unfortunately their way is exactly the same way as the Palm Pre has done multi-tasking since it came out more than a year ago. In any case, the iPhone’s multi-tasking features simply involves allowing multiple applications to run at the same time, except when their exited they no longer function or update, which can be adapted using their new API to work with, for example, playing music while the app is open but not active. Double-pressing the home button brings up a list of running apps and will likely involve some sort of functionality within that list of each app, such as the list showing music controls on running music apps and so on. The Palm Pre does much the same, and always has, running multiple apps in a “deck of cards” fashion that allows you to scroll through running apps much like pressing the Windows Key and Tab does in Vista, except linearly, saving on battery life by having the applications stop updating themselves or running at full pelt when they’re not the foreground app, until the user specifically elects to close the app. The difference is that Palm have had this for a year, and haven’t had the device out for three years of development – so when Steve Jobs says they were working on this “So that’s what took so long” – I can all too quickly call bullshit.
As if Apple’s baffling desire to tout the iPod Touch as a gaming device rather than what it is, a music player, wasn’t bad enough, now the iPhone is getting a “Game Center” to turn the games in the app store into a socially competitive time-killer. Simply put, this involves better network play, leaderboards and acheivements, something already present in the games themselves quite often, but something Apple wants to usurp for themselves. The upcoming Windows 7 Phone will include integration with XBox Live, which will undoubtedly trump this attempt by Apple for serious gamers because the latter option actually has a high-end console rather than a pissy little handheld alone.
In a shameless display of lazy, ball-scratching capitalisation, the new iPhone OS comes, like it or not, with built-in spam by third parties, giving Apple a cool 40% of the revenue generated. “iAd” sticks adverts into apps which include interactive elements (as in those godawful shoot 5 iPads to win one) and videos – of course, none of these ads, as they do on the web, will run in Flash, instead his holiness has decreed that no ad shall enter his kingdom unless they are scripted in HTML5, which Jobs weirdly claimed was “industry standard”……..no Steve, no it’s not.
When asked if any of the devices in what I’ve just named Apple’s iRange will ever support Java or Flash, Jobs’ reply was a flat “No”.
Other notable features include allowing background location apps to use triangulation instead of battery-behemoth GPS, which I hope will be an optional feature – some people are pedants for an exact location, something which bouncing signals randomly around nearby cell towers to give a vague idea of where you are can’t do – so that running things like FourSquare doesn’t kill your battery and making an available idea of your location ironically important as you have no battery left to call anyone if you need a lift.
Menu screen wallpapers, app grouping, unified e-mail inbox, bluetooth keyboard support and a feast of other new features paled into obscurity in the face of the announcement that the new iPhone OS will be able to run iBooks – Apple’s eBook store that was created around the announcement of the iPad and it’s eReader functionality. Tellingly, an update to my Palm Pre last week to allow support for paid apps saw the appearance of thousands of eBooks – none of which I have bought specifically for the reason that, if trying to read a book on an OLED screen wasn’t bad enough (*cough*iPad*cough*), reading on a screen so small would be insufferable – which renders the integration of iBooks on the iPhone completely pointless. Some will try, and they will suffer.
iPhone OS 4.0 will come to the iPhone 3GS and 3rd-Gen iPod Touch in the summer and to the iPad in the autumn. So far, no announcement has been made about the cost, if any, of this update but there’s been no indication that the update will come out for the original iPhone or the 3G – meaning there’s now an actual reason to buy a 3GS – Steve Jobs, you cunning fox!