Apple launches iPhone OS4

Apple today announced the iPhone OS4 operating system for iPhone.The event was held at Apples HQ in San Fransisco earlier today. Here are a couple of highlights of the event:

• Apple have already sold 450k iPads since Saturday !!!
• 3.5 Million iPad apps have been downloaded already
• iPhone has a 64% Mobile Browser usage share in the US
• Over 85 Million iPhones & iPod Touches sold already
• Dev preview of OS4 released today
• over 1500 new API’s for developers
• released to the public in South African winter (June/July) and to the iPad in Spring (Sep/Oct)
• Some of the new iPhone OS4 features may not be able to run on the older 3G and 2nd Gen iPod models.
• 7 new “Awesome Features” (Tentpoles according to Steve)
  1. MULTITASKING !!! – Woot, this will be big :)  Access your open apps by double clicking the home button. The software is also designed not to make your battery drain when using multitasking
     1. • Audio For apps like Pandora or Radiopod
        • Voip for Apps like Skype or FNB connect
        • Background location, so services like Tom Tom or NDrive can run in the background while using other apps
        • Push notifications
        • Local notifications means your notifications can now running on the phone instead of going through a server
        • Task completion, so now apps can load stuff in the background, like Pictures in Flickr
        • Fast App switching, means you can now switch to another app quickly
     • Couple of different API’s that allow you to run the app in the background
  2. Folders
     Eish, I need this function. I’m running out of screen space on my iPhone, and can never find my apps. Now I am able to create a folder where I can store specific apps like, games, utilities etc. VERY cool ! Now instead of having 180 apps I can have over 2,000.
     
  3. Enhanced Mail
     • You can now have a unified inbox, meaning all your mail accounts will be in 1 mail programme. No need to switch back between accounts
     • You can now also filter by thread, so you can keep track of conversations easier, much like GMail does
  4. iBooks comes to the iPhone. Yip, now we can spend more money-making Apple rich and Amazon poorer. Good move. Going to be interesting to see the books literally flying off the shelves
  5. Enterprise Features
     By adding a whole bunch of security features, now opens a whole new door for Companies to start implementing the iPhone into the workforce. They can now also deploy apps wirelessly to devices.
  6. Game Center
     • Over 50,000 game titles on the iPhone !!
     • Apple have added a Social gaming network, that now allows us to challenge and compete against friend. Brilliant concept. Keen to see how this one takes off
  7. iAd
     Apart from being the shortest name of an Apple Product (apart from i), Apple is now allowing Developers access to ad revenue in Free apps. So put Apple ads in your app, and you can make money from your free app. Clever ! Estimating over a BILLION ad impressions per day.WOW. The ads will also run “within” the app. Gonna be interesting to see how they implement that. 60% of the revenue goes to the developer. Not bad, Nige !
     The ad platform looks very cool, and opens up a whole new market to iPhone app ad developers. You can interact with the ads, by playing games, using location based services etc. This will be interesting for things like Gowalla and Foursquare which will now be able to use Location Based ads (Thanks Mike :) )
     

The new iPhone OS4 is only scheduled for release in about 3 months time, so hold onto your horses, this will be an interesting update. I can’t wait. What you think ? Leave your comments below