iMore » multitasking

Reminder: You really don’t need to manually manage apps for iPhone or iPad

Rene Ritchie — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 04:07:40 +0000

About a year ago I wrote a post explaining why you don’t have to kill multitasking apps in iOS. iOS 4 had been introduced, bringing multitasking to iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, and because Apple added the ability to jiggle and close them in the fast app switcher, some users decided to do just that. All. The. Time.

We’re on to iOS 5 now, we have some new players like Newsstand in the multitasking equation, and apparently the community is just as deeply divided as ever on the issue, even developers, even Apple Geniuses. So Frasier Speirs has put together a post of his own on the subject of iOS multitasking misconceptions, and while he ultimately proffers the same thesis as yours truly — you really don’t need to manually manage apps in iOS — he goes into far more detail about the whys and wherefores.

Regardless of how you feel, whether you think you should leave absolutely all task killing safely to Apple, whether you think you should purge every app, every time, or whether you’re still on the fence, take a read of Speirs’ article and give it some consideration.

Source: speirs.org

Zephyr updated to version 1.0.1 [jailbreak]

Allyson Kazmucha — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 02:49:22 +0000

Zephyr by chpwn has been updated to version 1.0.1 to add a few enhancements and fix a few existing bugs. Among the changes are fixes to disable multitasking gestures within apps such as Cut the Rope or Words with Friends where you may not want gestures to be active.

For those not familiar, Zephyr adds multitasking gestures to the iPhone similar to those found on the iPad. It registers bezel to screen swipes to allow a much easier way to multitask and switch between apps than the options you are given stock. If you’re jailbroken, you can pick up Zephyr from Cydia for $2.99. You can check out all the changes and enhancements to Zephyr via the Pastie link below.

Source: @chpwn via Pastie

SwitcherCleaner helps clean up the multitasking Fast App Switcher [Jailbreak]

Andrew Wray — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:56:35 +0000

SwitcherCleaner is new jailbreak mod in Cydia that changes the behavior of the multitasking Fast App Switcher to only show apps that are actually running in the background, and keeps the quit button visible at all times.

*Requires iOS 5 or higher

SwitcherCleaner contains two features of SwitcherMod for iOS5.

RemoveRecents: show only running apps

AlwaysAvailableQuit: show quit button anytime

No icons added to the homescreen

No options to configure

In addition, SwitcherCleaner helps save time for power-users with the AlwaysAvailableQuit function, removing the requirement to tap-and-hold an icon before you’re able to kill the app.

It’s a great tool for anyone who wants to keep their Fast App Switcher clean.

Free — Cydia Link

Daily Tip: How to kill background apps in iOS 5

Andrew Wray — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:08:14 +0000

iPhone or iPad feeling kind of sluggish or an app freezing up on you and wondering how to manually force-quit multitasking apps to free up memory? iOS 5 does a great job automatically pausing or killing background tasks, but once and a while a big game, rogue process, or similar situation can drain resources or tie up memory. Luckily, iOS 5 makes it easy to quit these apps any time you like.

Double click the Home button to bring up the multitasking Fast App Switcher.
Touch-and-hold an app to put it into ‘jiggly mode’.
Tap the red minus-sign icon that appears at the top left corner of the app.
Watch the app close and disappear from the Fast App Switcher.
Hit the Home button again to exit jiggly mode.
Hit the Home button one more time to return to your Home Screen.

That’s it! Next time you notice you’re iPhone or iPad is acting strangely or running slower than normal, just close a few of the apps you have running in the background. Problem solved!

Daily Tips range from beginner-level 101 to advanced-level ninjary. If you already know this tip, keep the link handy as a quick way to help a friend. If you have a tip of your own you’d like to suggest, add them to the comments or send them in to dailytips@tipb.com.

Daily Tip: More ways to speed up a laggy iPhone and iPad

Allyson Kazmucha — Fri, 13 May 2011 01:39:48 +0000

While iOS may have one of the smoothest user experiences, that certainly doesn’t mean it isn’t immune to some of the same issues other phones and electronic devices suffer from. I’ve definitely experienced slowdowns on my iPhone or iPad from time to time. There are a few things you can do to help speed up a sad iOS device. Hit the jump for a few common and more advanced suggestions. Here are some more tips on speeding up your iPhone or iPad.

Clear out your multitasking tray

Apple swears up and down that multitasking will not slow down your iPhone or iPad since iOS uses a type of “caching” or saved state process instead of true multitasking. Under normal circumstances, you don’t need to kill tasks in iOS multitasking, but I’m still convinced that some apps can have memory leaks. App store apps are not as immune as jailbreak apps. So if you’re jailbroken, you may definitely notice a difference doing this. I can check my memory usage via SBSettings and have less than 100MB free (the iPhone 4 has 512MB, for example). After clearing out my multitasking tray, that number magically jumps to over 300MB free.

Delete your text messages

I know this sounds like an odd one but believe me, having thousands of text messages can make not only your texting app run slower but it can slow down spotlight search if you have it set to search texts as well. I am definitely a constant culprit when it comes to leaving thousands of texts lingering around. My text app starts lagging and when I search for items in spotlight, I notice a definite lag. Deleting them typically makes my device a lot more snappy. This would obviously not apply to iPad users.

If you’re jailbroken, limit what you install

Jailbroken users have to be even more careful about installing and running applications from Cydia. It’s always important to make sure that the apps you are installing don’t conflict with each other (which sometimes is not an easy task). You also want to be sure that applications you have installed are compatible with the version of iOS you are running. The App Store won’t let you install anything that isn’t compatible with your device but Cydia will. So make sure you’re looking for those things. If you have a problem jailbreak app, uninstall it and see if your device speeds up.

If you guys have any other suggestions or helpful hints for how you speed up your iOS devices, let us know in the comments!

Tips of the day will range from beginner-level 101 to advanced-level ninjary. If you already know this tip, keep the link handy as a quick way to help a friend. If you have a tip of your own you’d like to suggest, add them to the comments or send them in to news@tipb.com. (If it’s especially awesome and previously unknown to us, we’ll even give ya a reward…)

White iPhone 4 showing off prototype iOS 4 fast app switching, folder UI? [Updated]

Rene Ritchie — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 13:50:41 +0000

Vietnamese site Tinhte might just have gotten their hands on an official white iPhone 4 from Apple… running a previously unseen version of iOS! While it could also just be a clever set of Jailbreak tweaks, the video shows a new version of the multitasking fast app switching that replaces the dock icons in iOS 4 with miniature tiles of the actual apps, sort of like Exposé for iPhone.

Whether this is something destined for an interim iOS 4.4, our first hint at iOS 5, or some Jailbreak wizardry only Apple knows for sure. But it is interesting that it shows up on the anniversary of the Gizmodo iPhone 4 leak, isn’t it?

UPDATE: Per comments, yes there are some old icons but also some Apple internal test icons. Weird. Second video from the same source that shows off, among other things, 64GB, a new rendering for Folders, and Facebook built into settings.

UPDATE 2: This might just be a prototype iPhone 4 running an early test version of iOS 4 which included Folder and Fast App Switching UI Apple later decided against implementing (going with what we see now in the release version of iOS 4.)

Check out the video after the break and let us know, real, fake, or really fake? And if real, what do you think?

[Tinhte via Engadget]

TiPb Answers: No, you don’t need to kill all the apps in your multitasking dock

Rene Ritchie — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 17:55:26 +0000

One of the most frequent questions we’re getting these days is how to close all apps at once — basically how to force quit or kill every app from the new multitasking/fast app switcher dock Apple introduced in iOS 4 for iPhone and iPod touch and iOS 4.2 for iPad.

The short answer is you don’t need to. Really. If you’ve been worried about it, relax. It’s all good.

For the long answer, read on after the break!

Multitasking is more of a marketing terms these days than a technical one. Don’t think of your iPhone as a Windows or Mac OS X machine because it’s not. It isn’t Windows Mobile or even Android either. iOS doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t (most of the time) leave a bunch of rogue processes running in the background that have to be force-quit.

iOS manages all that for you. Most applications, when you exit them, save their state and “go to sleep”. So if you were playing a game or looking at Settings and then hit the home button or switch to another app, it keeps track of where you were in the game or what page you were on in Settings, then stops the app. When you tap the icon to launch the game or Settings again, it reads the state and returns you to the same place in the app. It only seems like it was multitasking — it wasn’t. If you haven’t used an app in a long time, iOS might not even keep the saved state (you’ll notice the app re-launched and shows you a splash screen instead of going back to the last place you left it.)

This means, for most apps, you never — not ever — need to “delete” them or close them from the multitasking dock. You might feel a desire to, even an obsession to. But you really don’t need to. Really. (Breath out!)

The only exceptions are:

Streaming audio like Pandora. This can keep playing in the background but if you pause or turn off the music, it ends. No need to force quit these apps either. (Just check to make sure volume isn’t off, otherwise you might as well pause the music…)
VoIP apps like Skype. These can keep running in the background and Skype especially can drain your battery. You can close Skype or other VoIP apps if you aren’t actually waiting for a call.
Turn-by-turn navigation like TomTom. These can stay in the background and give you location and voice instructions and if you don’t need it anymore you can quit it to spare your battery the aGPS hit
Task completion, like finishing uploading a picture to Facebook or downloading your Twitter stream. These will automatically close when the activity is finished. Even if the activity doesn’t finish they’ll close after a short period of time anyway. So again, unless you really want to stop what they’re doing there’s not need to close them.

There will be rare — rare — occasions when a specific app, even an Apple app like Mail, stops working properly and a force-quit can get it to restart and behave itself. Once an a while your iPhone or iPad might get really sluggish and closing any big, recently played games might help.

But when it comes to closing ALL apps, ALL the time, just remember:

You don’t ever — never as in not ever — have to close ALL the apps in your multitasking, fast app switcher dock. It’s a sniper rifle, not a nuke. So just relax and enjoy your apps and let iOS do the heavy lifting for you.

iPad competitors: Will the true multitasking please stand up?

Rene Ritchie — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 18:41:56 +0000

One of the most persistent complaints levied against the iPhone and iPad were/are the lack of multitasking. This, of course, has always been silly. However, now that BlackBerry QNX PlayBook>, Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablets like Xoom, and HP webOS 3.0′s TouchPad are set to launch, “true multitasking” is again finding its way into the bullet points of competitively positioned slide decks and ad campaigns. It’s still silly but it’s also more complicated now.

Does iOS offer “true multitasking”, does its competitors? Let’s take a look, after the break.

The no iOS multitasking myth

Going back to the original iPhone’s introduction in 2007, Steve Jobs’ demonstration clearly showed music fading out as a call came in, staying on a call while browsing the web or sending email, and music fading back in as a call ended. Those of us who had Treo’s at the time were astounded at how smooth iPhone multitasking was, and how it didn’t crash or reboot the phone once.

From launch, the iPhone had great multitasking. It just didn’t have 3rd party apps. Fast forward to 2008 and iOS 2, the App Store launched and while Apple’s own apps continued to enjoy great multitasking, 3rd party App Store apps weren’t allowed any background processes at all. This kept things nice and simple and stable for a certain group of consumers but frustrated power users to no end.

Fast forward again to 2010 and iOS 4 (specifically 4.2 for iPad) and Apple set up a system to allow App Store apps limited multitasking. Not fake multitasking. Not untrue multitasking. But limited multitasking. Apps that were transferring data could keep the connection alive in the background for a short length of time after exit to finish the transfer (like a photo upload or status stream download). Music apps like Pandora could be streamed in the background. VoIP (Voice over IP) apps like Skype to keep a process in the background to receive or continue calls. Turn-by-turn navigation apps like TomTom could keep giving voice directions in the background. True multitasking all, it addressed a huge percentage of mainstream needs. (Not all needs mind you, persistent internet connections for SSH, etc. would have been nice for power users…)

In addition Apple added a few others things to enhance the “appearance” of multitasking from a user perspective. Instead of just leaving apps running forever in the background, using battery power and system resources and requiring user intervention to manage, Apple created a way to “save state” on exit. So, the next time an app launches it’s in the same place it was when last it was used. They also (re-)set double click on Home to launch a fast app switcher dock. Hidden behind the regular dock, invisible to users who don’t need or want it, it can be called up to quickly jump between recently used apps (or to expose controls for audio, brightness, etc). Not at all “true” multitasking but important when it comes to the perception of multitasking.

It’s a compromise solution, one that tries to address the aforementioned battery life and resource issues with ease of use and convenience and while it’s not perfect and could use some improvement, it’s pretty good. (Especially when you see how fast some competing devices chew through battery life.)

It’s also something that might be addressed further when iPad 2 — with more RAM and processing power — and iOS 5 are shown off sometime this spring.

Competitive multitasking

RIM’s QNX-powered BlackBerry Playbook, HP’s webOS 3.0-powered TouchPad, and the slew of Google’s upcoming Android 3.0-powered tablets, spearheaded by the Motorola Xoom, are all more or less touting “true multitasking” as a competitive advantage over the iPad. These are the same companies and campaigns touting Flash as the “whole internet/web” and both statements are, ironically, untrue. (We won’t touch on Flash here but suffice it to say that while Flash is the most popular plugin on the web, it’s far from the only plugin on the web.)

Lest you think this partisan or apologist, Kevin from CrackBerry.com was quick to point this out back during CES when RIM first spoke about true multitasking — what functionality does it provide to the end user?

Having a movie or video game continue to animate while in card view (webOS or Playbook variety) is great eye candy but isn’t functionally any better or truer multitasking than having it save state or pause and then resume when brought back to the foreground. You can’t interact with it when in background and more importantly — you can’t interact with multiple cards the way you can with multiple windows on a PC which really does offer true pre-emptive multitasking. To the best of my knowledge you can’t watch a movie and play a game at the same time, or drag and drop content between browsers and document editors, for example.

Cards (again webOS or Playbook) are a brilliant and elegant way to visualize multitasking for end users but until you can start dragging and dropping data between them the way you can on a Mac or Windows they’re functionally no better than the fast app switcher on iOS.

iOS, in fact, used card view before either webOS or PlayBook — Pages in Mobile Safari date way back to the original iPhone — Apple simply lacked the vision to (or chose not to) exploit them throughout the OS. (Even in Safari on iPad I’d argue a tabbing system would be more functional than the grid of pages we now enjoy.)

So while I’d dearly love for Apple repatriate cards/page to the iPad multitasking OS, I’d really only love it if it came with that multiple usage functionality. And when/if that comes, I hope Apple can figure out a way that isn’t at the expense of mainstream usability. (If part of the success of iOS is attributable to Apple ruthlessly cutting away everything and anything that wasn’t simple and easy for consumers to use, is complexity creep — while desirable to power users — the best thing for the platform as a whole?)

Android 3.0 Honeycomb seems to be bringing more of the desktop metaphor to the tablet space, including more multitasking. Their user interface and user experience, however, still seem to be on the back-burner. (Apple’s priorities are almost directly inverse to Google’s in that regard.)

The truth about true

The iPad multitasks fine. webOS and the strikingly similar BlackBerry tablet OS multitask with better visualization but it’s arguable about whether or not that’s “truer” and I’d argue it isn’t. Further, I’d argue that at this point it really doesn’t matter in terms of end user functionality. Android 3.0 Honeycomb may multitask more like a desktop but that’s neither more true nor proven better for a wide swath of users. Buried in all that, however, are a few important truths. The pad/tablet industry is still in its infancy and Apple, Google, HP, and RIM aren’t anywhere near done exploring interactions and interfaces on their devices. They’re all getting better. And since there are a few really strong players (and perhaps Microsoft one day as well), consumers get choice and the competition drives all of them to get better so we consumers choose them.

Multifl0w update brings Cards/Pages-style multitasking to iPhone [Jailbreak]

Andrew Wray — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 22:19:52 +0000

Multifl0w was recently updated in Cydia and brings a WebOS-like “Cards” (or Mobile Safari “Pages” if you’re Apple-centric) interface to iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad multitasking system.

Multifl0w has been available in Cydia for some time now, but previously only allowed for an exposé display of apps (up to 9 at a time) running in the background. The mod features smooth animations and is low on system resources, and also packs full Activator integration for gesture support. If you’ve ever used ProSwitcher in the past then you’ll be familiar with the way Multifl0w handles app switching.

I prefer Multifl0w over the stock iOS app-switcher dock and have been using it on both my iPhone and iPad for the past day or so with no crashes or hiccups. Multifl0w is available in the Cydia Store now for $4.99. Check out the pics after the jump, and let us know if you’ve seen any bugs or issues with the update in the comments!

[Multifl0w]

2010 TiPb Award for Favorite New iPhone/iPad Feature of the Year goes to…!

Rene Ritchie — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 19:11:24 +0000

Your votes have been counted, your voices have been heard, and we’re proud to announce the 2010 TiPb Readers Choice Award for Favorite New iPhone/iPad Feature of the Year goes to… Multitasking!

Narrowly beating out Retina Display, Multitasking has been one of the most requested iOS features since the original iOS device, iPhone 2G, was released in 2007. Well it took 3 years and 4 versions — even longer than copy and paste — but iOS 4 finally brought background tasks to iPhone and iPod touch, and iOS 4.2 is poised to do the same for iPad. Sure, some may quibble that the mix of fast app switching, saved state, background audio, location, and VoIP threads, local and push notifications, etc. (see the full walkthrough for details) aren’t “true” multitasking but functionally it achieves what 90% of users need, with minimal impact on battery and management overhead. Which is pretty much what Apple said when they introduced it at the iOS 4 preview back in March:

iPhone OS 4’s new multitasking offers users a new way to quickly move between apps, and provides developers seven new multitasking services to easily add multitasking features to their apps. These services include background audio, so apps like Pandora can play music in the background, and VoIP, so VoIP apps can receive a VoIP call even when the iPhone is asleep or the user is running other apps. iPhone OS 4 provides multitasking to third party apps while preserving battery life and foreground app performance, which has until now proved elusive on mobile devices.

There’s always a discussion as to whether Apple should do things sooner or do them better. For both copy and paste and multitasking Apple claims it took them a while but their solution is indeed better. The jury is still out on that but one verdict is clear — iOS multitasking is your favorite new feature of 2010.

Vote now for your favorite new iPhone/iPad feature of the year – TiPb Awards

Rene Ritchie — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 13:38:02 +0000

The 2010 TiPb Awards are underway and it’s time to vote on all your favorites. This time it’s for your favorite new iPhone/iPad feature of the year.

This year we have a lot to choose from. iOS 4 brought tons of functionality and iPad, iPhone 4, and iPod touch 4 made them shine, but there can only be one 2010 TiPb Readers Choice Award winner! Choose your favorite in the pole above and then let us know why you chose the favorite you did in comments below. (And if you don’t see your favorite here, add it as a write-in as well!)

Ready, set, vote!

iOS 4.2 for iPad walkthrough

Rene Ritchie — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 19:49:56 +0000

Complete feature guide to Apple’s iOS 4.2 update for iPad

iOS 4.2 is the grand unification update, the software that brings iPhone, iPod touch, and for the first time, iPad all onto the same version number and at the same time. Yes, it’s the one firmware to rule them all.

Announced during Apple’s 2010 special music event, for iPad’s that have been running iOS 3.2 since launch back in April, the change is nothing short of a revelation. Multitasking, folders, and unified inbox from iOS 4.0 join Game Center and TV show rentals from iOS 4.1, and add in AirPlay video sharing and AirPrint wireless printing fresh to iOS 4.2.

Huge.

And we’re going to take you through it, after the break!

(Note, if you’re interested in iPhone or iPod touch, we’ve got a complete iOS 4.2 for iPhone walkthrough as well!)

What hasn’t changed

Almost everything has changed this time. Likely because there’s no weather or clock apps to ignore. Still, there doesn’t seem to be anything new in Contacts yet, but we’ll keep our eyes peeled.

Huge update, we told you.

Hardware changes

No, that’s not a typo. As you’re read below, Apple has added a software orientation lock to iOS 4.2 for iPad, similar to how it works on iPhone. That means the previous, hardware-based orientation lock is no longer needed, so they’ve made that a mute switch like on iPhone. Yes, they really changed a hardware button. Yes, it will make iPhone owners less confused but it will mess with existing iPad owners.

Either way, be advised.

System-wide enhancements

Many of the system-wide enhancements that came with iOS 4.2 for iPhone were already present in IOS 3.2 for iPad — spellcheck, text replacement, etc. And unfortunately, there’s still no sign of VoiceControl, which both iPhone and iPod touch have. There is, however…

AirPlay

AirPlay is an evolution of Apple’s AirTunes system that used to let you stream music between iTunes on Windows or Mac and Apple TV or Airport Express connected speakers. AirPlay takes that to the next level, letting you stream video and pictures as well as music from iPad (or iPhone or iPod touch) and the new 2010 Apple TV. Built-in apps like iPod, Video, and YouTube can stream, but unfortunately it looks like all other apps, including Apple’s own Safari and all App Store apps are currently limited to audio-only. Whether this is intentional or Apple simply ran out of time and didn’t finish making public APIs for video is unknown but hopefully this will be expanded upon in a future update.

You can tell AirPlay is an option when its icon appears to the right of the volume slider. It looks like a TV-style box with a triangle being inserted up into it. (Yeah, seriously). AirPlay compatible apps, when AirPlay compatible devices are present, will show the AirPlay icon as a button. Tap it and you get a list of devices you can stream to. Tap one and your video will switch from iPhone to TV. And since it’s called AirPlay and not AirView, here’s hoping Apple also expands the functionality in the future to project game video onto the big TV screen, leaving iPhone and iPod touch as a full on multitouch game controller. Hey, we can dream…

AirPrint

AirPrint is Apple’s wireless printing service. By the time it ships, it should be able to send pages to almost any printer on the same Wi-Fi network, or to certain printers directly (HP ePrint have already been announced). Needless to say, this answers one huge piece of previously missing functionality. (The one it doesn’t answer, and still isn’t answered, is easier file transfer and sync).

AVRCP Audio/Video Remote Control Protocol for stereo Bluetooth

Yes, you can finally — finally — control volume, skip tracks, and do pretty much anything your stereo Bluetooth headset allows. Unfortunately, at least in my tests, volume changes on the headset don’t show up on the iPhone’s volume slider — but they do work in both iTunes Store streaming and iPod apps.

Home Screen

SpringBoard, the app that runs the home screen and overall interface in iOS, finally gets the iOS 4 crown jewels of multitasking and folders, but there are a few small changes to go through first.

The little northeast pointing arrow that indicates a location-based service is running, be it Wi-Fi mapping or aGPS, now shows up in the status bar along the top, just like iOS 4 on iPhone.

The red bar that shows background VoIP is here, long and thin though it may be. (And yes, tapping it does indeed take you right back to your VoIP/Skype call).

Spotlight

There’s more control inside Settings for Spotlight, but nothing in the search interface itself that we can find yet. If Apple were to create a true universal search, including for settings, app content, etc. like webOS 2.0 or BlackBerry OS 6, that would terrific.

Multitasking

While Apple’s built-in apps (like iPod, Mail, etc.) have had background multitasking since iOS 1.0 for iPhone and iOS 3.2 for iPad, with iOS 4.2 it finally comes to 3rd party App Store apps.

As to how it works, instead of a traditional “leave full apps running in the background” approach, Apple instead chose to implement a more restricted but, they felt, better performing and power friendly solution involving 7 specific background API (application programming interfaces.)

Local notifications

In addition to the existing push notification service from Apple’s servers, which provide sound, badges, and alert popups for everything from IM to VoIP calls, to game challenges, iOS 4.2 adds local notifications so something like an alarm-clock app could register an alert that would sit in the iPhone in the background until the proper time, then activate. That takes the online server out of the equation which is good for tasks that don’t need additional information from the cloud, and so don’t have to activate the radios.

Task completion

There’s another API for task completion so that, for example, if you’re uploading a picture to Flickr and leave the app, it can register a thread to keep uploading the picture in the background while you do something else. That means the entire app doesn’t have to keep running, freeing up memory and lightening battery load, and even the thread will terminate when the upload is done.

Fast app switching and saved state

Fast app switching deals with the perceptive speed that multitasking offers. With iOS 3.2 if you left an App Store app it would shut down completely. If you went back — regardless if it was a second or a week or later — it would usually restart not from where you left off but from the beginning. A few developers tried to add persistence on their own, saving your place when you came back as best as previous OS versions allowed, but most didn’t — especially games. Also, if you closed one app and went to another, you could theoretically be stuck swiping back or forth between 11 home screen pages. And with a 9.5-inch screen, that could be a lot of swiping!

Saved state is now built into iOS 4.2 for iPad. If you switch out, Apps have their currents state recorded to memory and if/when you go back, the app checks the memory save and resumes from that state.

To enable fast app switching, Apple’s created a new UI metaphor. Now, when you double tap the home button, the screen turns translucent and slides up, allowing you to peek at the apps running “in the background”. (Technically frozen with state saved and threads registered with the background API).

Apps in the fast switcher UI are sorted in order of last usage. That means, if you’re moving between a set of commonly used apps, they’re most likely right next to each other and not screens and screens away. These two elements combine together to make launching apps perceptively much faster, even though the apps don’t have to be running in the background consuming resources just for that convenience.

Positionally the fast app switcher replaces the space traditionally reserved for the Dock, so while it’s a tad confusing the concept of apps at the bottom of the screen being more permanent and easily accessible remains. Behaviorally, while they look like a secret Dock, they function like the Home Screen itself in that you can swipe from right to left to scroll through a several 4-icon sets of multitasking apps.

Given iPad has only 256MB of RAM, we assume Apple will discretely kill off the least-used app in the stack when things get tight or a certain amount of time passes. That means, yes, sometimes you will come back to that game and have it start over rather than resuming, but resources on mobile devices — they be constrained.

(Here’s also hoping iPad 2 gets 512MB of RAM like iPhone 4 did.)

iOS 4.2 helps users visualize what’s going on when switching apps by introducing a new, carousel-like animation. It’s a bit different than the carousel style used in iPhone and iPod touch, more like panels swinging around, but it works well. The new animation occurs when you switch between two apps either via the new, double-click-Home to trigger to launch the multitasking UI, or when one app calls another app (i.e. when you’re in Contacts and you tap to send a contact an SMS).

Launching or leaving an app retains the same, zoom-based effect as always.

Interlude: Task Killing

At the iOS 4 event, Steve Jobs likened task managers (in the multitasking, not to-do sense) to styluses — if you need them there’s something wrong. Initially this created confusion in iOS 4 when it was noted, if you hold your finger down on multitasking apps, they’d jiggle and bring up a delete icon that, if tapped, removed them. So um, yeah.

It appears like there’s a couple things going on. First, with built-in Apple apps, like Mail, if you “delete” it from the fast app switcher, the service will re-spawn immediately so you will still receive Mail (it doesn’t kill the background thread that checks, sounds/vibrates, and updates the badge). However, the respawn will sometimes fix issues of mail not loading properly, for example.

For App Store apps, if you “delete” them it flushes their saved state and forces them to reset and reload when next you launch them, i.e. they won’t resume from the previously saved state and their threads seem to be restarted.

And yes, you can still hold down the Sleep/Wake button until the red Shut Down slider appears, then hold down the Home button until you return to the home screen, and that will flush the RAM and give you a general reset.

Widgets

Just like to the left of the main home screen is a special Spotlight screen, to the left of the fast app switcher is a special widget dock containing a software version of the iPad’s previous hardware orientation lock control.

That’s right. The hardware orientation lock button has been reassigned as a mute switch, to match the iPhone, and now orientation lock is software based. Unlike the iPhone, however, you can lock in both portrait and landscape mode.

More over, there are three circular music controls to skip back/rewind, play/pause, or skip ahead/fast forward whatever audio is currently queued up (including streaming music). Whichever app is currently playing the music, be it iPod, iTunes or Safari (streaming podcasts, for example), or an App Store app (like Pandora or Slacker) is shown at the right so you can jump back to it and access further controls.

iPad 4.2 also gets something more than iPhone — it gets all the widgets in one dock, and it gets a brightness slider thrown in to boot. The extra screen real estate pays off with instant access to crank things down for reading or up for watching movies.

The presentation may not be as visually slick as Palm webOS’ Card view (which looks like iPhone Safari’s Page view) or Mac OS X Expose mode, but it keeps tens of millions of existing iPad users grounded in the interface they’re familiar with and that’s what Apple is prioritizing.

Background music, location, and VoIP

Speaking of streaming music, perhaps most famously, Apple is allowing apps to register three specific types of threads for persistent backgrounding (they can just keep running until you close them). Again, this isn’t the whole app running, just one thread from the app, so the idea is it won’t slow down performance, use up memory, or drain battery to the same degree. These API are for streaming music, location, and VoIP (voice over IP).

This means you can listen to Pandora, Slacker, etc. while surfing the web. Navigon, TeleNav,TomTom, etc. can keep using the GPS and alert you to directions while you’re on the phone, and to further save resources, non-critical location apps like FourSquare, Gowalla, Loopt, etc. can be alerted when you change cell towers. Fring, Skype, Line2, etc. can answer calls and receive messages when you’re not in the app, making them more equal telephony citizens.

What’s still missing are background API for timeline updates, so that IM, Twitter, RSS, etc. could update like Mail does and have new messages ready and waiting when you return to the app. Also, there’s no API to let internet sessions like SSH, RDP/VNC remain active when you exit an app making it more onerous for network administrators and others to manage remote machines. Hopefully these can be added in future revisions.

Folders

There are umpteen hundreds of thousands of apps in the App Store, tens of thousands specifically for iPad, and more and more every day. With iOS 3.2 on iPad we had 11 pages for 180 apps viewable, but you could install many more and use Spotlight as a way of finding and launching them. And Organizing them efficiently? Forget about it.

Enter Folders. A Folder is simply a grouped icon that holds up to 20 other icons inside it. (And for those keeping count at home, the new math means a whopping 3600 apps can be kept available at once. Super hudder).

The way it works is you tap a Folder icon and once again the Home Screen fades and splits open, this time below the Folder. Inside the split are all the apps contained in the group.

To create a Folder, you begin by tapping and holding an icon to put it in jiggly mode, just like you did before to delete or move it. Then, drag it over and drop it on top of another icon to create a Folder. (This works better when icons aren’t at the right edge of the screen, as the “get out of the way” behavior sometimes supersedes the Folder behavior, causing the icon to wrap to the next line before you can drop on top of it.) Once created, iOS reads the apps’ category data and tries to name the folder for you, but you can easily edit it and change it to anything you want.

As you add apps to a folder, tiny representations of the apps icon appear inside the folder icon in a 3×3 grid. Since iOS 4.2 on iPad supports more app than the iPhone version, 20 instead o 12, as you add more than 9 apps, the grid of tiny icons scrolls up to show the new apps being added. Since 20 isn’t divisible by 3, when you hit 19 or 20 that row contains only 2 icons. Once you leave jiggly mode, the folder icon scrolls back down to show only the first 9 icons again. So, if you need visual reminded for certain apps being in certain folders, make sure you add them first so they’ll be visible.

To remove apps from a Folder, put them in jiggly mode inside the Folder and drag them out (or just delete them if you don’t want the app anymore at all). You can also move them around within the Folder to customize their order.

Folders can be put in jiggly mode and moved as well, but not deleted (they can only be deleted by removing all the apps from within them, and which point they self-destruct for you). You can even move them to the Dock, which means you could have 120 apps readily available at any time for quick launching.

You can also manage them from iTunes 10′s app interface if a mouse and keyboard helps you speed up the process. (Oh, the irony.)

And while you still can’t delete Apple’s built-in apps, you can take the ones you’re not using and hide them away inside a folder so they waste as little Home Screen space as possible.

Again, not as visually exciting perhaps as Mac OS X’s Stacks, but it keeps current iPhone users in a familiar interface while adding much-needed functionality.

Calendar

Calendar app appears to be functionally identical to iOS 3.2 but for the color scheme. The shades are all pastel now, just like iPhone on iOS 4.1. Full on Miami Vice light purples and greens and peaches and tones only Prismacolor has names for. No idea what this change was about.

Notes

Notes finally — finally lets you change fonts. That’s right, if Marker Felt was never your thing, you can now jump into Settings and switch it to Chalkboard (essentially Marker Felt with a shave and a haircut), and Helvetica, used by the rest of the interface.

Curiously — and frustratingly — there doesn’t seem to be AirPrint support for Notes.

Maps

A minor tweak, but the current location/current direction button changes from the previous crosshairs to a north-east pointer to match the new location services icon used in the title bar, much like the iPhone’s did under iOS 4.0.

Video

Video, the app that unlike the iPhone but like the iPod touch houses all movie, TV, and video podcasts on iPad, enjoys AirPlay integration so all of the preceding should be able to easily stream to the 2010 Apple TV (and perhaps 3rd party AirPlay devices one day, if any offer video support).

YouTube

YouTube only gets a minor update this time, which is kind of disappointing given how great YouTube has been making YouTube.com work for iOS devices. In any event, if you’ve ever wished you could give a YouTube video the old thumbs up or thumbs down right on your iPad, the you’re in luck.

And, of course, the AirPlay is right there, giving us hope any HTML 5 video will be instantly transportable to the TV.

iTunes Store

iTunes store gets AirPlay too in case you want to stream a video podcast and shoot it over to your 2010 Apple TV. Speaking of streaming, thanks to iOS 4.2 background audio, streaming on iPad is now as rock solid as it’s been on iPhone since 4.0.

Most of the time you can scrub and it re-buffers and keeps playing flawlessly. You can stop it and come back hours or even days later — even after using the iTunes app to search for other things or the iPod app to play different audio — and it still knows where you left off and starts playing again instantly without missing a beat. I almost never download podcasts anymore. That’s how good the streaming is now (especially if you’re mobile with an iPad 3G).

Ping

Ping isn’t exclusive to iOS 4.1 — it’s already available to iOS 4.0.x users — but Apple is touting it as a new feature and it’s being launched at roughly the same time, so it makes some amount of sense to fold it in here for easy reference.

A social music network, Ping debuted with iTunes 10 but only became accessible on iPad with iTunes 10.1 and iOS 4.2. You get to it via the double talk bubbles tab, bottom middle. If you haven’t yet synced your iPad with iTunes 10.1, you’ll get a Ping splash screen telling you to do so. Why it can’t just ask for your login like Twitter or Facebook and even Apple’s own Game Center is beyond me. Cut the tether already.

Once you’ve signed on, the Ping tab will come up with the Activities view. Activities show what’s going on with the people you’ve followed — status, pictures, and videos from recording artists like Lady GaGa, and comments, likes, and shared music from friends. It gives you the ability to like or comment on any of those things and, of course, instant access to preview and purchase the music being liked or commented on in iTunes. That also means there’s currently no way to share or discuss music that’s not in iTunes, specifically in your local country’s iTunes store, which can be frustration for Beatles fans in the US, and fans of far, far more artists internationally.

Actions are fairly simple. To like or add a comment to an activity, tap the appropriate button. To preview or purchase a song that was posted, tap anywhere on the song widget, from album art to title. To be taken to the song’s album, double tap on the title.

The People tab gives you a list of people you follow and people who follow you, as well as a featured button for a list of recording artists.

Tapping on a person gives you profile page with recent activity and an easy follow/stop following toggle. You can also switch to an info view that contains a short bio and buttons to see the person follows and who follows them. Similar to Twitter, people can either let anyone follow them or decide to approve followers on a person to person basis.

The My Profile view, as the name suggests, shows you your own recent activity and, at the bottom, has a button for My Info that shows you your own profile. You can’t (yet?) edit this info on iOS, however, and will need to go back to iTunes 10 on Mac/Windows for that.

I’m not sure if it’s the blank loading screen, but iTunes Store has never felt like the snappiest app on iOS and including Ping inside it likewise makes it feel less snappy than Twitter or Facebook. It also doesn’t seem to save state of, or cache, the tabs – perhaps because they’re web pages being re-loaded each time – which makes the experience of moving between apps seem sluggish. There’s also no refresh feature, you need to switch between tabs to check for new data, and sit through more reload screens…

At least Apple finally added social integration, albeit by way of Twitter and not Facebook as they’d originally tried. Most of that seems to live inside the desktop iTunes, where you can link your Twitter account, find people you follow on Twitter, and friend them on Ping as well. What you like on Ping then gets tweeted to your Twitter account. That could be to your liking or incredibly not.

TV show rentals

The other addition is TV show rentals. They’re only available in the US and from ABC (whose parent company, Disney, counts Steve Jobs as its biggest share holder), and FOX (whose owner, Rupert Murdoch, sees mobile devices as a way to save old media), and cost $0.99 per episode. You have 30 days to start watching and 48hrs. to finish once you start.

Ping

Ping hasn’t show up in iOS 4.2, but since the UI is web-based Apple can update it at any time, so it’s almost certainly will be coming to the iPad with this release. We’ll update when it shows up. It will be interesting to see what Apples does to balance the rather awkward iTunes Windows/Mac UI with the fairly standard iOS on iPhone UI.

App Store – iAds

App Store, like iTunes Store is mostly just a thin app container around constantly updated web content, but Apple has snuck something new in this time, if not for users than at least for developers. And yeah, we’re talking about iAds…

iAd

Okay, so iAd really shouldn’t be considered a feature, at least not for users, but it will be a feature of iOS 4.2 for developers, and it will go in apps, so we’re mentioning it here.

iAd will provide developers with an easy-as-Xcode way to place advertising in their apps, both paid and free. Apple is setting a high bar for their ads, however. No simple Google-style text, annoying punch-the-monkey, or jarring transition out of the app and into the browser, they claim to want great looking, highly interactive, emotionally compelling content that will connect with rather than alienate users. Served every 3 minutes…

Settings

Settings is a boring app that often contains a great number of terrific surprises when it comes to Apple iOS updates. iOS 4.2 for iPad is no exception.

Brightness & Wallpaper

iPad gets all the wallpapers that iPhone got with iOS 4, some of them re-rendered to look even sharper on the big 9.7-inch screen.

General: Location Services

Since Apple is, post Google-breakup, awfully serious about user privacy, Location Services get a new Settings tab that lets you turn them off completely, but also turn them off in each app separately if you like.

General: Passcode lock

iOS 4.2 brings alphanumeric passcodes to iPad by default (no more configuration file required). Turn it on and you can have a nice, strong, even gnarly pseudorandom string… if you can remember it.

And yes, you get the Vader-black keyboard standard if you flip that switch.

General: Restrictions

To the list of things you can lock down and lock out, iOS 4.2 adds Deleting Apps, no doubt to the cheers of parents with young children everywhere. You can also prevent changes to location services (so your kids can’t stop you tracking them, unless they’re hax0rs) and email accounts.

If you don’t want them playing multiplayer Game Center games, you can stamp that out as well. You can even turn off friend requests.

General: Keyboard

iOS 4 spell check causing more problems for you than it’s fixing? No problem, you can now turn it off.

Mail, Contacts, Calendars

Gmail is dead, long live Google Mail.

Inside MobileMe, Google Mail, or other IMAP accounts, you can choose whether or not to enable sync. Again, there’s no support for Exchange ActiveSync accounts yet (including Gmail via GoogleSync).

Because mail now supports threaded email messages, Settings now gives you the option to turn that feature on or off.

Notes

Notes now has its own Settings tab because, as mentioned previously, you can now change the font in Notes, and here’s where you do it.

You can also choose the default account for Notes sync if you have more than one IMAP mail account set up.

Game Center

Game Center, Apple’s social gaming network went live with iOS 4.1 for iPhone and iPod touch and comes to the iPad with iOS 4.2. As of this writing, Apple has a Game Center section set up in the App Store to help you find games that support it. To start off, you can create or login to an account, update your status, and add friends.

And yes, on iPad Game Center takes advantage of the full screen. You get a double column-view instead of single like on iPhone, and that means your lists (like friends) will on the left and the detail view (like stats) will be on the right.

Also, the sign in/welcome screen currently shows a number of app icons “dealt” card-like across Game Center’s game table style UI. Tapping them does indeed take you to the App Store to get the game.

You can also see a list of your games that support Game Center. Tapping on one gives you general info and the ability to hit Play and go straight to the game. Tapping on Leaderboards lets you see top scores for Today, This Week, and All Time.

Achievements shows everything you can earn for playing the game.

Safari

iOS 4.2 finally gives iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad the ability to find text on a Safari web page. This is similar to Windows or Mac, where you just hit CTL-F or CMD-F, type your text, and off you go. On iPad Safari you use the regular old search field (still confusingly labeled Google by default) and start typing the text you want to find.

Where previously you only got suggested search terms, now you get an additional section at the bottom to find the word on the page. Tap it and the first match on the page is highlighted in yellow and a set of buttons slide up on the bottom for “Next” and “Done”, as well as a counter for how many matches of the word there are on the page, and which one is currently highlighted (e.g., 7/16). Hit next until you find the one you want, hit done when you’re finished. If you want to change the find term, the search box is repositioned alongside the controls to make it convenient.

No more tedious manual scanning, no more javascript bookmarklet workaround. Just happy surfing.

The previous + icon, for adding bookmarks and Web Clips is gone, replaced by the Action button found in other apps. Hitting the action button gives you all the same options as before, but now also includes AirPrint.

AirPlay will show up inline for videos where compatible but is currently limited to audio only.

Behind the scenes, Apple has added support for the accelerometer and gyroscope and generally improved HTML 5 support. (That means the potential for more, better web apps in the future.)

Mail

iOS 4.2 for iPad Mail gets a unified inbox just like iPhone has had since iOS 4.0. For those with multiple email accounts whose previous iPad experience involved tapping into and out of those boxes many, many times a day this is a hugely welcome addition.

Unlike iPhone, the split column view of iPad lets you see your inbox choices on the left in landscape mode and in popover in portrait so it can be even faster to move around. The list includes all Inboxes, a specific account’s inbox (which is considered fast inbox switching), or into the complete folder and sub-folder system of a given account (how Mail has worked in iOS 3.2).

Once inside, All Inboxes is visually indistinguishable from an account-specific inbox, it simply contains all of their messages.

What is distinguishable are the carets (technically greater-than symbols) to the right of certain messages that indicate a message is part of a thread. A number, typically 2 or 3, accompanies the caret to indicate how many replies are in the thread.

Tapping on a message that’s part of a thread gives a second list of all messages in the thread. Tapping on one of them shows you the message in the main column.

A thread view contains a small vertical bar at the top with the subject of the thread and time of the most recent reply. A button to the top left of the message contains the name of the inbox you came from so you can back out again, leave the thread completely, and see all your messages.

So yes, the tap, tap, tap of inbox navigation persists, albeit shifted from moving into and out of inboxes to moving into and out of threaded messages.

Great news for heavy ActiveSync users, iOS 4 supports multiple accounts. So, for example, you can now have your work Exchange server and home Google account both set up to push through ActiveSync (which is what Google Sync users behind the scenes) at the same time.

Also for Gmail users, the Delete button has now been properly renamed as Archive (since Google really doesn’t want you deleting anything if they can possibly help it), and the trashcan replaced with a storage box icon.

Lastly, in iOS 3.2, when you wanted to abandon an email, you would hit Cancel and get options to Save (store the email in Drafts), Don’t Save (trash the email), and Cancel (go back to writing the email). The naming of these options was likely too confusing so in iOS 4.x they’ve been replaced with a big red Delete Draft button (to trash the email) and Save Draft.

Photos

Photos get a bump in the functionality department, primarily through the Action button getting AirPrint. Just tap, choose a compatible printer, and your photos go wirelessly from iPad digital to hardcopy ink or laser.

Photos also get AirPlay and you can swipe through them and watch them change on Apple TV. Unfortunately AirPlay for video isn’t supported.

iPod

iPod on iOS 3.2 for iPad was fairly well rounded already, so the bump up to 4.2 seems fairly minor at this point. You get AirPlay, so you can send music to Air Port express speakers, or video to the 2010 Apple TV.

Availability

iOS 4.2 is a free update currently in Gold Master (GM) for final testing, and unless anything major comes up, it should be released this week.

Conclusion

iOS 4.2 on iPad is a revelation. It’s the way iPad is meant to be. That’s not to say it’s perfect or has every feature on every geek’s wish list — it certainly doesn’t — but it has enough new functionality to make iPad much more valuable.

Like with iOS 4 on iPhone, multitasking and folders extend the existing UI in a way that gives power users what they need, but keeps casual users either grounded in familiar metaphor, and feature-phone types blissfully unaware it’s even there.

AirPrint addresses an important bit of functionality for home and business alike, and AirPlay has the potential to turn the TV video scene upside down.

Sure, non-obtrusive notifications, and glanceable, lock-screen widgets — and hey, AirEasyFileTransfer — would be grand, but iOS 5 beta is only 4 months or so away…

For now, we’ll just thank Apple’s iOS team again — this is one hell of an update. If you notice anything we’ve missed, send us an email or drop a note in the comments and we’ll add them to the next update.

ToDo for iPhone Updated to support local notifications and much, much more…

Allyson Kazmucha — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 19:43:25 +0000

ToDo for iPhone by Appigo has long been one of my favorite productivity apps. I’ve been desperately waiting to see this app updated mainly with support for local notifications. The fact that you’d have to open the app in order to update the badge was somewhat irritating. It’s part of the reason I switched back to Evernote.

Not only does ToDo now support local notifications, it’s been updated with complete multitasking support as well as high resolution graphics for the iPhone 4 and iPod Touch 4th gen. It also supports password protection and adding multiple alerts for tasks. I’ve noticed the app overall is a lot more responsive as well.

Anyone here a die hard ToDo user? And if you use something else, let us know why. This update tempting anyone to give ToDo a try for the first time?

[iTunes Link]

iOS 4.2 beta for iPad walkthrough

Rene Ritchie — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 18:45:00 +0000

Complete feature guide to Apple’s iOS 4.2 beta for iPad

Announced during Apple’s 2010 special music event, its in beta as of September 15, and will become available to the public sometime in November. For iPhone and iPod touch already running iOS 4.1, the feature list is short. For iPad’s that have been running iOS 3.2 since launch back in April, the change is nothing short of a revelation. Multitasking, folders, and unified inbox from iOS 4.0 join Game Center and TV show rentals from iOS 4.1, and add in AirPlay video sharing and AirPrint wireless printing fresh to iOS 4.2.

Huge.

And we’re going to take you through it, after the break!

Previously

iOS 4 is new to iPad but it’s not new to iPhone or iPod touch. To see what came previously in iOS 4, check out:

What hasn’t changed

Almost everything has changed this time. Likely because there’s no weather or clock apps to ignore. Still, there doesn’t seem to be anything new in Contacts yet, but we’ll keep our eyes peeled.

Huge update, we told you.

Hardware changes

Either way, be advised.

System-wide enhancements

AirPlay

AirPlay is an evolution of Apple’s AirTunes system that used to let you stream music between iTunes on Windows or Mac and Apple TV or Airport Express connected speakers. AirPlay takes that to the next level, letting you stream video and pictures as well as music from iPad (or iPhone or iPod touch) and the new 2010 Apple TV. Built in apps like iPod, Photo, Video, etc. can stream, but it looks like any App Store apps that use the built in video system can also stream if they so choose. We’ll have to wait and see if that functionality makes it out of beta, and which apps choose to implement it, but if apps like Hulu, Air Video, etc. integrate, it could be killer.

And since it’s called AirPlay and not AirView, here’s hoping Apple expands the functionality in the future to project game video onto the big TV screen, leaving iPad as a full on multitouch game controller. Hey, we can dream…

AirPlay compatible apps, when AirPlay compatible devices are present, will show the AirPlay icon as a button. Tap it and you get a list of devices you can stream to. Tap one and your video will switch from iPad to TV.

AirPrint

AVRCP Audio/Video Remote Control Protocol for stereo Bluetooth

Home Screen

SpringBoard, the app that runs the home screen and overall interface in iOS, finally gets the iOS 4 crown jewels of multitasking and folders, but there are a few small changes to go through first.

The little northeast pointing arrow that indicates a location-based service is running, be it Wi-Fi mapping or aGPS, now shows up in the status bar along the top, just like iOS 4 on iPhone.

The red bar that shows background VoIP is here, long and thin though it may be. (And yes, tapping it does indeed take you right back to your VoIP/Skype call).

Spotlight

Multitasking

While Apple’s built-in apps (like iPod, Mail, etc.) have had background multitasking since iOS 1.0 for iPhone and iOS 3.2 for iPad, with iOS 4.2 it finally comes to 3rd party App Store apps.

Local notifications

Task completion

Fast app switching and saved state

(Here’s also hoping iPad 2 gets 512MB of RAM like iPhone 4 did.)

iOS 4.2 helps users visualize what’s going on when switching apps by introducing a new, carousel-like animation. The new animation occurs when you switch between two apps either via the new, double-click-Home to trigger to launch the multitasking UI, or when one app calls another app (i.e. when you’re in Contacts and you tap to send a contact an SMS).

Launching or leaving an app retains the same, zoom-based effect as always.

Interlude: Task Killing

Widgets

iPad 4.2 also gets something more than iPhone — a brightness slider. The extra screen real estate pays off with instant access to crank things down for reading or up for watching movies.

Background music, location, and VoIP

Folders

The way it works is you tap a Folder icon and once again the Home Screen fades and splits open, this time below the Folder. Inside the split are all the apps contained in the group.

You can also manage them from iTunes 10′s app interface if a mouse and keyboard helps you speed up the process. (Oh, the irony.)

And while you still can’t delete Apple’s built-in apps, you can take the ones you’re not using and hide them away inside a folder so they waste as little Home Screen space as possible.

Again, not as visually exciting perhaps as Mac OS X’s Stacks, but it keeps current iPhone users in a familiar interface while adding much-needed functionality.

Calendar – Now in pastel

Notes – Fonts they are a changin’

Maps – Button tweaked

Video – Airplay enabled

YouTube – Thumbs and AirPlay

And, of course, the AirPlay is right there, giving us hope any HTML5 video will be instantly transportable to the TV.

iTunes Store – TV Rentals, AirPlay, Ping (eventually)

TV show rentals

Ping

Ping doesn’t show up in iOS 4.2 beta 2, but almost certainly will be coming to the iPad with this release. We’ll update when it shows up. It will be interesting to see what Apples does to balance the rather awkward iTunes Windows/Mac UI with the fairly standard iOS on iPhone UI.

App Store – iAds

iAd

Okay, so iAd really shouldn’t be considered a feature, at least not for users, but it will be a feature of iOS 4.2 for developers, and it will go in apps, so we’re mentioning it here.

Settings

Settings is a boring app that often contains a great number of terrific surprises when it comes to Apple iOS updates. iOS 4.2 for iPad is no exception.

Brightness & Wallpaper

iPad gets all the wallpapers that iPhone got with iOS 4, some of them re-rendered to look even sharper on the big 9.7-inch screen.

Here they are in action:

General: Location Services

General: Passcode lock

iOS 4.2 brings alphanumeric passcodes to iPad by default (no more configuration file required). Turn it on and you can have a nice, strong, even gnarly pseudorandom string… if you can remember it.

And yes, you get the Vader-black keyboard standard if you flip that switch.

General: Restrictions

If you don’t want them playing multiplayer Game Center games, you can stamp that out as well. You can even turn off friend requests.

General: Keyboard

iOS 4 spell check causing more problems for you than it’s fixing? No problem, you can now turn it off. [9to5Mac]

Mail, Contacts, Calendars

Gmail is dead, long live Google Mail.

Inside MobileMe, Google Mail, or other IMAP accounts, you can choose whether or not to enable sync. Again, there’s no support for Exchange ActiveSync accounts yet (including Gmail via GoogleSync).

Because mail now supports threaded email messages, Settings now gives you the option to turn that feature on or off.

Notes

Notes now has its own Settings tab because, as mentioned previously, you can now change the font in Notes, and here’s where you do it.

You can also choose the default account for Notes sync if you have more than one IMAP mail account set up.

Game Center

Achievements shows everything you can earn for playing the game.

Safari

No more tedious manual scanning, no more javascript bookmarklet workaround. Just happy surfing.

And, of course, AirPlay will show up inline for videos where compatible.

Mail

Once inside, All Inboxes is visually indistinguishable from an account-specific inbox, it simply contains all of their messages.

Tapping on a message that’s part of a thread gives a second list of all messages in the thread. Tapping on one of them shows you the message in the main column.

So yes, the tap, tap, tap of inbox navigation persists, albeit shifted from moving into and out of inboxes to moving into and out of threaded messages.

Photos

iPod

Availability

iOS 4.2 is currently in developer beta. There will likely be 4 or so betas before it goes Gold Master (GM) for final testing, and then is released to consumers in November.

It will be a free update.

Conclusion

AirPrint addresses an important bit of functionality for home and business alike, and AirPlay has the potential to turn the TV video scene upside down.

Sure, non-obtrusive notifications, and glanceable, lock-screen widgets — and hey, AirEasyFileTransfer — would be grand, but iOS 5 beta is only 6 months or so away…

As always this is a walkthrough and not a review, so we’ll save the pros and cons for when it ships. For now we’ll just thank Apple’s iOS team again — this is one hell of an update. If you notice anything we’ve missed, send us an email or drop a note in the comments and we’ll add them to the next update.

iOS 4 limitations: Multitasking saves state, doesn’t check for timeline updates

Rene Ritchie — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:12:37 +0000

We’ve had a few TiPb readers ping us to ask what’s going on with timeline-based apps like Twitter, IM, RSS, etc under iOS 4 multitasking — specifically why they aren’t updated or updating any more when they open. The answer is the current timeline update conundrum.

First, it’s important to remember that Apple didn’t include background timeline updates in their multitasking API. Apps can stream music, they can wait for VoIP activity, and they can handle location for navigation or check-in, but they can’t update your Twitter, IM, or RSS the way Apple’s own Mail app can. Apple’s SVP of iPhone Software, Scott Forstall said they prefer iOS handle that via push notification instead.

Push notification is fine for alerting you that a new update (tweet, IM, article, etc.) has come in, but when you launch the app — because of the lack of background timeline updates — the app has to then check back with the server and download every update since the last time it ran.

Under iPhone 3.0, this was handled by most apps when you launched them (some more quickly than others). Under iOS 4, however, apps now save state and restart from where you last left them. And therein lies the problem — many apps aren’t checking for updates because they haven’t been relaunched, they’ve just been continued from their last saved state.

No relaunch, no check for updates.

UPDATE: per comments below, tweets, and emails, developers are telling us that apps can, in fact, be coded to check for updates when they return to the foreground and that it’s not overly difficult to implement (and some apps are indeed implementing it).

If that’s indeed the case, the question becomes: why is the only solution in many of our favorite timeline apps still a manual refresh? (i.e. trigger the reload action by tapping a button or other gesture, sometimes backing out a screen or two to get to a place you can do it — which defeats some of the benefit of saved state.)

Do we need to start a “naughty and nice” list for this functionality?

Pandora update for iOS 4 now available to download in App Store!

Jeremy Sikora — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 17:06:12 +0000

If you are a Pandora user and are currently running iOS 4 on your iPhone or iPod touch then head into the App Store to update the app to version 3.1 which contains the new multitasking feature. Today, at some point, Apple will be releasing iOS 4 to the masses so it is no surprise we will start to see many applications in the App Store updated to be compatible with iOS 4.

So waste no time and take advantage of the latest version of Pandora!

[Thanks to all of you who sent this in!]

NAVIGON shows off iOS 4 multitasking for iPhone turn-by-turn navigation

Rene Ritchie — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 18:05:04 +0000

A double dose of NAVIGON today as they’ve put out a video showing off MobileNavigator on iOS 4 making use of background location. Fast app switching, saved state, and the Location API for taking a call while still receiving navigation directions are all on display.

We’ve also got a video interview with MobileNavigator for iPhone product manager Bern Hahn taken during WWDC 2010 for your viewing pleasure. He tells TiPb what he thinks of Apple’s iOS 4 multitasking, the iPad, and of course, iPhone 4.

Video action after the break.

Multitasking with NAVIGON MobileNavigator iPhone and iOS 4

YouTube link

NAVIGON talks MobileNavigator, iOS 4, iPad, and iPhone 4 at WWDC 2010

YouTube link

Which iOS 4 feature are you most looking forward to?

Rene Ritchie — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 12:53:14 +0000

TiPb’s done a HUGE iOS 4 feature walkthrough (seriously, every change we could find) but I’m still curious — which iOS 4 feature are you most looking forward to? Is it all about the multitasking? Were you desperate for folders? Did you need multiple ActiveSync accounts like yesterday? Game Center got you drooling? Bluetooth keyboard standing by?

With iOS 4 set to be released on Monday, June 21, there are only a few short days of anticipation left!

NOTE: We didn’t include FaceTime since that seemed bound to iPhone 4 and we had a separate iPhone 4 feature poll up including that yesterday.

Check your answer in the poll above, then tell us why in the comments.

iOS 4 walkthrough

Rene Ritchie — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 04:24:31 +0000

Complete feature guide to Apple’s latest iOS 4

iOS 4 (previously iPhone OS 4 or iPhone 4.0) continues Apple’s relentless yearly mobile OS update cycle. If 2007 was the mainstreaming of the multitouch user interface, 2008 all about the App Store, and 2009 was filling in the feature list, then iOS 4 promises to be… well, that’s why we’re here.

(And yes, iOS. That’s the new name Apple has licensed from trademark-holders Cisco to represent the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch — and maybe soon the Apple TV and who knows what else — family.)

Back on April 8 at the sneak preview event, Apple promised 7 “tent-pole” features and 100+ general user features overall, along with 1500 major new API for developers. We’re going to walk you through the ones that matter most.

Note: iOS 4.1 is now available. See our complete iOS 4.1 walkthrough for the latest on Game Center, HDR photography, Ping social music network, and the other new features.

See also our iPhone 4 review for more on hardware specific features.

iOS 4 in 10 minutes: video quick-start guide

If you don’t have time (yet) to read this massive iOS 4 walkthrough and are eager to get the basics down now, here’s a quick 10 minute video guide to get your started.

We’re showing it off on an iPhone 3GS, which should be similar to how it will work on an iPod touch G3. If you’re using the iPhone 3G or iPod touch 2G you won’t get the multitasking and wallpapers. You’ll blame Apple. Apple will blame the hardware. The hardware will try to frustrate you into upgrading to an iPhone 4. You’ve been warned.

Note: If you haven’t updated yet, save yourself some time and potential hassles and go read our getting ready for iOS 4 post first first. Then once you’re good to go, sit back, relax, and hit play on the video below.

YouTube link

What Hasn’t Changed

As always, we’ll start off by telling you what hasn’t change so we can clear the deck for what has. For more information on any functionality that’s pretty much identical to past versions, check out our previous walkthroughs:

And here’s a quick list of the unchanged apps in iOS 4:

Stocks: Similarly, Stocks got landscape and a slew of swipe-able data last time, so the update love gets skipped this time.
Weather: Almost comedically at this point, it’s still unchanged from iPhone 1.0. Still no HTC TouchFlo 3D style animations, no landscape mode with more/different information. Not even a Calendar-style icon update to show current local weather. Nada.
Voice Memo: Introduced in iPhone 3.0, it looks pretty much the same in iOS 4.
Clock: With nothing but a lap feature added last time, we lose the “but” and keep the “nothing” for iOS 4.
Calculator: Upgraded back in 2.0 for landscape scientific mode, all Calculator gets this time is a slight icon tweak towards the red.

(We’re not counting getting a resolution bump for iPhone 4 Retina Display as a functional change.)

System-wide enhancements

Spell check

Spell check, which debuted in iOS 3.2 for iPad, is a system-wide addition to iOS 4 now as well. Words the OS thinks you’ve misspelled will be underlined in red (familiar to any Microsoft Office or Mac OS X user). Tapping on them will give you a popup containing a recommended replacement. Tapping the popup replaces the misspelled word with the (hopefully!) correctly spelled one.

Combined with the iPhone’s existing — and industry leading — predictive auto-correct, it’s a powerful combination.

Text Replace

Cut, copy, and paste also gets an iPad-debuting feature with “replace” now added to the popup options.

Additionally, if iOS 4 autocorrects a word and you immediately backspace, a popup will appear offering to replace the correction with the originally typed word.

VoiceControl

We haven’t found any specific documentation on this yet, and it doesn’t seem to be listed as one of the options flying by on the on-screen suggestions, but per the comments below asking “what time is it” will now have VoiceControl speak the current time to you. It’s possible other commands have been added as well. If you come across any, let us know.

Wi-Fi

iPod touch (and I believe iPhone) can now stay connected to Wi-Fi even when in sleep mode. This means background VoIP calls, push notifications, and other apps that require an active Wi-Fi connection can just keep working.

Virtual Keyboard

Instead of just hitting the globe key to cycle through languages on the virtual keyboard, you can now hold it down to get a popup showing all currently enabled international keyboards.

Bluetooth Keyboard Support

You’re going to get tired of us saying “like the iPad” but remember when we told you spring’s influx of iPad news would be important come summer’s new iPhone news? You were warned for a reason. iPhone is getting iPad’s Bluetooth keyboard support. Thank goodness for that.

Over-the-air Carrier Setting Updates

Based on reports from Rogers/Fido users in Canada, iOS 4 adds the ability for Carrier Setting Updates to be pushed out over-the-air (OTA) to iPhones and installed on-device. (In previous versions iTunes would handle the update and sync it over).

Home Screen

SpringBoard, the app behind the Home Screen gets an iOS 3.2 for iPad-style update to support custom wallpaper. Yes, the default background in iOS 4 is water drops on gray, which is not default but included in the iPad’s wallpaper gallery. Also like iPad, the Mac OS X reflective Dock (buh-bye grid) and translucent top bar have been brought over.

(If you get a new iPhone 4, or do a clean install of iOS 4, you’ll also note Clock, Compass, Calculator, and Voice Memos have been moved to a Utilities folder by default — more on Folders later).

In addition to the iPad wallpapers, Apple has also introduced a few new ones, all seemingly focused on livening up the home screen without being too visually distracting. Natural textures and muted patterns get an obvious focus here with stones, rocks, and textiles front and center.

(See all of them in our iOS 4 wallpaper gallery)

In addition to previous status icons, the top bar will now show a north-east pointing arrow to alert you that location-based services (GPS) are being used. (So you’ll see this in Maps and when using navigation, location-based social networks or games, etc.) An orientation lock icon will also show if you’ve enabled the widget to lock your screen in portrait mode (see below).

The color bands indicators across the top of the screen that highlight running voice or data connections (green for Phone, red for Voice Memo, blue for tethering) get expanded. Red now serves double-duty to indicate a VoIP app (like Skype) is active in the background.

How the SpringBoard has been once again extended to visualize new, core-level OS changes is where things get more interesting…

Spotlight

First, and strangely least, the Spotlight Home Screen introduced in iPhone 3.0 now gets to look beyond on-device data and reach for the clouds. Literally. Well, insomuch as the cloud here is Google and Wikipedia, which are very welcome additions. (Hopefully Twitter will be added in as well at some point). Tapping either will launch you into Mobile Safari and the appropriate search result page.

Multitasking

While Apple’s built-in apps (like iPod, Mail, etc.) have had background multitasking since 1.0. four years, many gripes, and stiffer Google Android competition than later, background multitasking comes to App Store apps. (At least for iPhone 4 and last year’s iPhone 3GS).

Why no iPhone 3G? Apple abjectly refuses to put their name on an implementation where hardware constrains software — see video recording last year — and that means iPhone 3G isn’t up to their multitasking standards.

Local notifications

In addition to the existing push notification service from Apple’s servers, which provide sound, badges, and alert popups for everything from IM to game challenges, iOS 4 adds local notifications so something like an alarm-clock app could register an alert that would sit in the iPhone in the background until the proper time, then activate. That takes the online server out of the equation which is good for tasks that don’t need additional information from the cloud, and so don’t have to activate the radios.

Task completion

There’s another API for task completion so that, for example, if you’re uploading a picture to Twitter and leave the app, it can register a thread to keep uploading the picture in the background while you do something else. That means the entire app doesn’t have to keep running, freeing up memory and lightening battery load, and even the thread will terminate when the upload is done.

Fast task switching and saved state

Fast task switching deals with the perceptive speed that multitasking offers. With previous versions of iOS, if you left an App Store app it would shut down completely. If you went back — regardless if it was a second or a week or later — it would usually restart not from where you left off but from the beginning. A few developers tried to add persistence on their own, saving your place when you came back as best as previous OS versions allowed, but most didn’t — especially games which was aggravating when phone calls pulled you unexpectedly out of them. Also, if you closed one app and went to another, you could theoretically be stuck swiping back or forth between 11 home screen pages.

Saved state is now built into iOS 4. If you switch out, Apps have their currents state saved to memory and if/when you go back, the app checks the memory save and resumes from that state. [Thanks Aaron]

To enable fast app switching, Apple’s created a new UI mechanic. Now, when you double tap the home button, the screen turns translucent and slides up, allowing you to peek at the apps running “under the hood”. (Technically frozen with state saved and threads registered with the background API).

Positionally the fast task switcher apps take up the space traditionally reserved for the Dock, so while it’s a tad confusing the concept of apps at the bottom of the screen being more permanent and easily accessible remains. Behaviorally, while they look like a secret dock, they function like the Home Screen itself in that you can swipe from right to left to scroll through a several 4-icon sets of multitasking apps.

Given even the iPhone 3GS has only 256MB of RAM, we assume Apple will discretely kill off the least-used app in the stack when things get tight. Whether or not that means the icon disappears from the multitasking UI we don’t know, but worst case you just have to go to the home screen, re-launch it (hopefully from saved state) and all you notice is a slightly longer start up time. iPhone 4 is supposed to have 512MB of RAM which should allow for significantly more threads to run in background without slowdown or other problems.

iOS 4 helps users visualize what’s going on when switching tasks by introducing a new, carousel-like animation. The new animation occurs when you switch between two apps either via the new, double-click-Home to trigger to launch the multitasking UI, or when one app calls another app (i.e. when you’re in Contacts and you tap to send a contact an SMS).

Launching or leaving an app retains the same, zoom-based effect as always (though the wallpaper in iOS zooms slightly as well, like on the iPad).

YouTube link

Interlude: Task Killing

It appears like there’s a couple things going on. First, with built-in Apple apps, like Mail, if you “delete” it from the fast task switcher, you will still receive Mail (it doesn’t kill the background thread that checks, sounds/vibrates, and updates the badge) but the app seems to do some sort of data cache refresh at times.

For App Store apps, if you “delete” them it does appear to force a reset when next you launch them, i.e. they won’t resume from the previously saved state and their threads seem to be restarted. [Thanks Justin!]

Widgets

Just like to the left of the main home screen is a special Spotlight screen, to the left of the fast app switcher is a special widget dock containing an software version of the iPad’s hardware orientation lock control (though it currently only locks in portrait mode). More over, there are three circular controls to skip back, play/pause, or skip forward any music (including streaming music) — and rewind or fast forward if you hold them down. Lastly, whichever app is currently playing the music, be it iPod, iTunes (streaming podcasts, for example), or an App Store app (like Pandora or Slacker) is shown at the right so you can jump back to it and access further controls.

YouTube link

The presentation may not be as visually slick as Palm webOS’ Card view (which looks like iPhone Safari’s Page view) or Mac OS X Expose mode, but it keeps tens of millions of existing iPhone and iPod touch users grounded in the interface they’re familiar with and that’s what Apple is prioritizing.

Note: Previously you could assign the double-click home button action to trigger Phone Favorites, Camera, or Spotlight. On iPhone 3G under iOS those options remain. On iPhone 3GS under iOS, in early betas you could double-click-and-hold the home button to trigger Phone Favorites, but this function doesn’t appear to have survive to the final release. Hopefully something will replace it and soon.

Background music, location, and VoIP

Speaking of streaming music, perhaps most famously, Apple is allowing apps to register three specific types of the threads for persistent backgrounding (they can just keep running until you close them). Again, this isn’t the whole app running, just one thread from the app, so the idea is it won’t slow down performance, use up memory, or drain battery to the same degree. These API are for streaming music, location, and VoIP (voice over IP).

Folders

There are over 200,000 apps in the App Store and likely a ton more by the time I finish writing the sentence. Literally. iPhone 1.0 had one Home Screen but with only the built-in apps available back then, it wasn’t even a limitation. With WebApps, it grew to 9 pages for a 148 app limit. With iPhone 3.0 we were given 11 pages, for 180 apps viewable, but you could eventually install many more and use Spotlight as a way of finding and launching them. Organizing them still wasn’t a real option.

Enter Folders. A Folder is simply a grouped icon that holds up to 12 other icons inside it. (And for those keeping count at home, the new math means a whopping 2160 apps can be kept available at once. Shudder).

The way it works is you tap a Folder icon and once again the Home Screen fades and splits open, this time below the Folder. Inside the split are all the apps contained in the group.

To create a Folder, you begin by tapping and holding an icon to put it in jiggly mode, just like you did before to delete or move it. Then, drag it over and drop it on top of another icon to create a Folder. (This works better when icons aren’t at the right edge of the screen, as the move behavior seems to supersede the Folder behavior, causing the icon to wrap to the next line before you can drop on top of it.) Once created, iOS reads the apps’ category data and tries to name the folder for you, but you can easily edit it and change it to anything you want.

Folders can be put in jiggly mode and moved as well, but not deleted (they can only be deleted by removing all the apps from within them, and which point they self-destruct for you). You can even move them to the Dock, which means you could have 48 apps readily available at any time for quick launching.

And while you still can’t delete Apple’s built-in apps, you can take the ones you’re not using and hide them away inside a folder so they waste as little Home Screen space as possible (as Apple now does by default with the Utilities folder mentioned previously).

Again, not as visually exciting perhaps as Mac OS X’s Stacks, but it keeps current iPhone users in a familiar interface while adding much-needed functionality.

YouTube link

The ability to manage Folders has also been added to iTunes 9.2, mirroring the creation, editing, and removal features found on-device.

Messages

Messages in iOS 4 gets the same built-in Spotlight search that Mail and other apps got with iPhone 3.0. It appears at the top of the main messages screen. (There’s no search within an individual Messages thread). [@justin_horn]

Messages (finally) gets a character counter so you’ll know when you’re getting close to, or going past, the SMS limit (which would cause a second message to be sent). It kicks in after you’ve typed 50 characters or so. [@iMuggle]

iOS 4 will now put an exclamation badge on the Messages app as a way to inform you when an SMS text or MMS multimedia message fails to send.

There’s also a new API to allow in-app SMS for developers who want to include the functionality in their own apps. While this might be similar to the iPhone 3.0 embedded email option, and whether or not it will let users reply to SMS without leaving an app, it doesn’t seem as elegant a solution as a global background messaging system.

Calendar

Calendar removes two long-standing gripes and adds something pretty much invisible from the interface but awesome in terms of functionality.

First, you can now show all or hide all calendars or individually check/uncheck just the calendars you want to see.

Birthday calendars have also been added to the option, something that was previously only possible to see under certain setup conditions.

Lastly (and most excitingly), Apple has finally added Calendar access for developers. What this means is you may soon see apps where you can buy tickets for a local movie and have the show time automatically added to your Calendar.

Photos

Photos, at least for Mac users, gets the same iPhoto ’09-based organizational features introduced with the iPad: Events, Faces, and Places.

If you have a Mac with iPhoto ’09 and you’ve let it automatically file your photos by time stamp (Events), through facial-recognition algorithms (Faces), and via geo-location (Places). All these join the previous Albums view to form the bottom tab bar.

Landscape mode is also now supported in album and gallery views [@antonioj].

Previous betas included a Rotate function under the action button that would turn a photo 90 degrees, but this doesn’t seem to have made it into the final. Hopefully it will return.

If you Email Photo, you now get the option of sending a small, medium, or large version (shrunken pixel dimensions and hence file size), or at actual size.

Lastly, developers have been given access to the photo and video library (not just the image picker as in previous OS versions).

Camera

Tap to focus, introduced in iPhone 3.0 for still photography, now gets expanded to video recording for the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4.

Still photography maintains its leg up, however, via a new 5x digital zoom. When you tap the screen, a slider pops up allowing you to swipe to the right to increase magnification and swipe left to decrease.

With iPhone 4, there’s an additional control to swap between the beefed up 5mp back-facing camera, and the all new front-facing VGA camera (if you want to take a self-portrait/profile picture). There’s also an icon to show the new rear-mounted LED flash. This feature sounds like it’s automatic for still but can be turned on and left on for night-time video shooting, but we’ll have to wait and see when iPhone 4 ships.

Developers also get full access to and control of video playback and recording.

YouTube

You can now watch YouTube videos in portrait mode if you really want to. They’ll still default in landscape, so you may have to rock the accelerometer back and forth to get them to switch.

Maps

For developers, overlays can now be added to embedded maps to show extra data like routes or annotations.

Notes

When you first enter notes it looks unchanged from previous versions of the iPhone OS. However, there is now an Accounts button at the top left of the list page and tapping it takes you to a new screen where you can choose to view All Notes, just the notes on your iPhone, or just the notes that are synced via IMAP to your email account(s). Yes, that means over the air (OTA) notes sync is finally here — with the caveat that Exchange doesn’t seem supported yet.

(UI-wise this is similar to how you back out/left in Calendar or Contacts to toggle data sources.)

The way these show up in Mac OS X is via the built-in Mail.app client in the Notes tab.

On Gmail they show up as a generic label. In other IMAP clients, regardless of OS, they’ll show up as generic IMAP folders.

iTunes Store

The iTunes store itself is the same, however, audio streaming from the app has taken a huge leap forward. Since iPhone OS 2.2 you’ve been able to tap the title of a podcast to begin streaming (rather than downloading) the audio, even in the background while using other apps, but it was sometimes hit or miss. It would drop out, it would time out, you couldn’t really scrub through it, and if you left it for a while it would lose its place and start over.

In iOS 4 it’s rock solid. You can scrub and it re-buffers and keeps playing flawlessly. You can stop it and come back hours or even days later — even after using the iTunes app to search for other things or the iPod app to play different audio — and it still knows where you left off and starts playing again instantly without missing a beat.

As mentioned previously in the multitasking section, when iTunes is using the background music streaming API (I’m assuming thats’ what it’s using) it gets the widget position in the fast task switcher interface, complete with widget controls.

Settings

This year, like every year, some of the more numerous and interesting changes Apple delivers in their new OS are tucked neatly away in the Settings app.

General: Network

You can now choose to not only turn off 3G data or roaming data, but all cellular data.

General: Location Services

At the iOS event, Apple made a big deal about user privacy when it came to location (like a shot at Google). That manifests here with far more granular controls over which apps are allowed to access your location data (GPS, Wi-Fi mapping, and cell tower triangulation) and the aforementioned north-east pointing arrow that shows up when any app has used your location in the last 24 hours.

General: Spotlight Search

Since double clicking the home button is now a hard-wired to launch the fast-task switcher for iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4, the Home Button setting is gone and replaced by direct access to Spotlight Search preferences.

Since iPhone 3G won’t be getting multitasking those options remain under iOS 4 for that device.

General: Passcode Lock

Previously available only through an Enterprise profile, iOS 4 brings stronger, alphanumeric passcodes to all iPhone users. That means you’re no longer stuck with only a 4 digit pin, but can now create longer passcodes with far greater variation. Of course, longer, more varied passcodes are more of a hassle to remember and enter, but that’s the cost of good security.

Mail, Contacts, Calendars

As previously mentioned, Notes will now sync over IMAP and the settings for that appear here. First, all the way at the bottom, you can choose which account to use as the default for note sync.

Inside MobileMe, Gmail, or other IMAP accounts, you can choose whether or not to enable sync. Again, there’s no support for Exchange ActiveSync accounts yet (including Gmail via GoogleSync).

Safari

When you tap into the Safari’s URL bar in iOS 4 and start typing, Safari starts to do a “keyword search”, i.e. display predictive results based on your bookmarks and history. Anything that contains the text you’re inputing either in the URL or history is listed below the URL field so the moment you see what you want you can just tap it and go.

This makes it easier to find something if you don’t remember the exact web page address or if you know you recently saw a site, and know what it was about, but don’t remember where exactly it was. Just start typing a few words you do remember and let Safari do the heavy lifting. Highly convenient and certainly “awesome”. [To misappropriate the term from Mozilla]

Also, welcome to iOS search options, Microsoft Bing.

Messages

Here’s where you can turn on that new character count option.

iPod

The iPod app now has an overlay that shows you information about songs and podcasts. While functional it’s not terribly attractive so it’s nice to be able to toggle it off right here.

App Store

iPhone 2.0 brought us the iTunes App Store, iPhone 3.0 added in-app purchases, and now iOS raises the mercantile stakes once again with…

iAd

Functionally these are built in HTML5 (no Flash need apply) and seem to work as apps-within-apps. Tapping on a banner brings up a full-screen ad-as-webapp and examples shown included plenty of animated UI effects and content that ranged from videos to freebies like wallpaper, to free and paid apps you could download from within the ad (no trip to the App Store needed). An exit button is persistent at the top left so users can quit the add at any time.

Apple will be selling and serving the ads, so all we can do is hope they’re unobtrusive and actually reach the quality levels presented. For paid apps that also try to include in-app iAds, that bar will rightly be very, very high.

Quick Look

Just like Mail can preview documents, Quick Look will allow developers to present the same functionality in their apps.

Accelerate

2000 hardware accelerated math APIs probably won’t be seen by users, but there’s not doubt we’ll feel them in the games. Zoom. Zoom.

File Sharing

Again it looks like the iPhone is finally getting in iOS what the iPad got in 3.2 with the file/document transfer feature now exposed in iTunes sync.

Now all we need is an elegant way to share and wirelessly sync those documents across multiple devices and users. MobileMe 2.0, souped up iWork.com 2.0, where are you?

Phone

The biggest addition to the iOS 4 Phone app is iPhone 4 exclusive — FaceTime. When connected to Wi-Fi and making a call to another iPhone 4 user, the Hold button gets replaced with a FaceTime video icon. (Where the hold option goes under these circumstances is as yet unknown.)

Tapping that initiates a FaceTime video call. During the FaceTime video call, the person you’re calling fill the screen, your own camera input is boxed in the lower left corner (you can touch and drag it to move it around), and mute, hang up, and switch camera buttons line the bottom of the screen. (Switch camera toggles between the rear-facing and front-facing cameras on the iPhone 4).

Mail

Mail gets a unified inbox. Let’s write that again — Mail gets a unified inbox. For those with multiple email accounts whose previous iPhone experience involved tapping into and out of those boxes many, many times a day this is a hugely welcome addition.

As with Calendars, Notes, etc. you can tap a button on the top left, in this case Mailboxes, to back into a selection screen where you can then go into All Inboxes, a specific account’s inbox (which is considered fast inbox switching), or into the complete folder and sub-folder system of a given account (how Mail has worked from iPhone 1.0 to iPhone 3.0).

Once inside, All Inboxes is visually indistinguishable from an account-specific inbox, it simply contains all of their messages.

What is distinguishable are the small carets (technically greater-than symbols) to the right of replies that indicate a message is part of a thread. A number, typically 2 or 3, accompanies the caret to indicate how many replies are in the thread.

Tapping on a message that’s part of a thread doesn’t take you to the message but rather to a second list-view, similar to the inbox itself, but containing only the messages from the thread. Tapping on one of them then takes you to the message. A thread view contains a small vertical bar at the top with the subject of the thread and time of the most recent reply. A button to the top left of the message that’s part of the thread also contains the subject of the thread and lets you back out and see the thread again. The button then switches to contain the name of the inbox so you can back out again, leave the thread completely, and see all your messages.

So yes, the tap, tap, tap of inbox navigation persists, albeit shifted from moving into and out of inboxes to moving into and out of threaded messages.

Like iOS 3.2 for iPad, you’ll be able to open email attachments in apps. Now there’s no iWork (Numbers, Pages, Keynote) for iPhone yet, but plenty of apps should support it as they push out the iOS 4 compatible versions.

Also for Gmail users, the Delete button has no been properly renamed as Archive (since Google really doesn’t want you deleting anything if they can possibly help it).

Lastly, in previous versions of the iPhone OS, when you wanted to abandon an email, you would hit Cancel and get options to Save (store the email in Drafts), Don’t Save (trash the email), and Cancel (go back to writing the email). The naming of these options was likely too confusing so in iPhone OS they’ve been replaced with a big red Delete button (to trash the email), Save as Draft, and Cancel. And yes, you can still cancel a cancel. (iPad, by contrast, still has Save and Don’t Save, but no Cancel since it’s in a popover rather than full-screen menu and you can just tap away to cancel).

Safari

More iPad to iPhone cross-polination means we get search auto-complete in iOS. As you type, suggestions appear in a list view below. And as with the iPad, while Google and Yahoo! branding remain in the search boxes (along with Bing now as well), they no longer get brand advertising on the keyboard — it simply remains labeled Search now regardless of which engine is set and default.

While HTML5 video would work under iPhone 3.1.3, it would launch the full screen QuickTime player to do so. Under iOS, it seems to play in-line as well [MobileGeekdom], like it does on the iPad.

If history is any indicator, Apple will likely also integrate whatever advancements WebKit and the Nitro JavaScript engine make between now and release this summer. However, there’s no sign of Safari 5 desktop‘s key new features — reader (think built-in Instapaper) and extensions.

iPod

When you have a song playing in the iPod app and you tap the album art, in addition to all the previous controls that popped up, you now get a dark overlay with white text giving you the info metadata of the song or podcast. This is another iPad bring-over, though not the most attractive one by a long shot. (Remember, it can be turned off in Settings).

Album art has been added to album views, jazzing up the track lists.

And in yet another iPad-like update, on-the-go playlists are dead, long live… just regular old playlists. You can add them via an item in the playlists list, at which point you get a popup that asks you for a name. Next, you tap on any songs you want to add, and when you’re done, you have a new playlist. If you’re not happy with it, or any playlist, just swipe to bring up the usual red Delete button and annihilate it.

Contacts

When you sync contacts from more than one source (i.e. Exchange and MobileMe, on-device and Google Sync, etc.), and there are duplicates, rather than showing the same contact twice iOS 4 will instead create a single, linked contact. This works on any iOS 4 device, including iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, recent iPod touch, etc.

If you look at a linked contact, the header will show Unified Info at the top so you know it’s linked. At the very bottom of the contact it will show you the source of the links (i.e MobileMe, Google). Tapping on the source lets you see the original, non-unfied info from just that source.

If you don’t like the idea of your contacts being linked, you can tap edit and hit Unlink. If iOS 4 missed linking a contact that ought be linked, tap edit, scroll down to the bottom, tap Link Contact and choose the contact you want linked.

Game Center (Preview)

Game Center is Apple’s entry into the social gaming network space (think Xbox Live or Playstation Network for iOS devices). With Game Center you’ll be able to invite friends to play, use matchmaking to challenge other players, gain achievements, and have your scores displayed on a leader board.

Game Center won’t launch with iOS this summer, but is scheduled for release “later” this year.

iBooks

Though not a built-in app (you’ll need to go get it from the App Store when it becomes available), as part of iOS Apple announced they were bringing iBooks to the iPhone.

Apple has announced new features, including notes and bookmarks, and that those along with highlights will automatically be synced across all the iOS devices logged into your iTunes accounts. (So you can have the same book, at the same place, with the same annotations on your iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad).

Also, iBooks will be able to add PDFs to a second book shelf and open them in the same iBooks interface.

Due to the fracture and regionalism in books, it’s going to take Apple a while to get deals in place with all publishers in all areas which means most countries won’t have paid content at first, only public domain books from the Project Gutenberg library.

Accessibility

Apple really doesn’t get enough credit for the outstanding accessibility features they build into their OS, both desktop and mobile. iOS 4 continues to lead the industry. VoiceOver supports 21 languages to read out loud whatever your finger touches on the screen, and a “rotor” gesture lets you temporarily change languages now on the fly.

Bluetooth support has been extended to more than 30 braille devices with tables for more than 25 languages.

Touch Typing lets you run your finger across the keyboard, hear the letter you’re currently over, and release your finger to type it.

The basic rotor has been made visible so sighted users can see it in action, and you can now add custom settings to move through content.

iOS 4 pricing and availability

Apple has announced that iOS 4 will be coming to iPhone and iPod touch on June 21, and iPad later this fall. In a huge departure from previous years, Apple is also making it a free update to all users, iPhone and iPod touch alike. (If you have a compatible device, see directly below).

iOS 4 device compatibility

Before we begin it’s important to note that not all iOS 4 features will be available for all iOS devices.

iPhone 4 (2010): All features
iPad (2010): Coming this fall
iPhone 3GS and iPod touch G3 (2009): No features requiring iPhone 4-type hardware (i.e. FaceTime)
iPhone 3G and iPod touch G2 (2008): No multitasking, custom wallpaper, and Bluetooth keyboard support.
iPhone 2G and iPod touch G1 (2007): not compatible/no update

Yes, the original iPhone 2G and iPod touch G1 don’t look to be getting iOS 4 at all — Apple considers them outdated. Second generation iPhone 3G and iPod touch G2 are getting the update but no multitasking — Apple doesn’t consider them powerful enough (similar to video recording last year). And it should go without saying only iPhone 4 (and perhaps a forth generation iPod touch when it ships this fall) will be able to use hardware specific features like the Retina Display resolution or the front-facing camera.

Additionally, Apple’s own iMovie for iPhone will only run on iPhone 4 — apparently it needs the A4 chipset — so there might be other apps that go 2010-only. Legacy, right?

Conclusion

Apple is again rounding out their offering with iOS 4, which is the sign of the maturity of the platform. Since they’ve stated several times now that they’re using the iPhone to “educate” users about multitouch interfaces, they’re going to continue keeping changes evolutionary for now, and the UI broadly consistent across devices. There won’t be any huge, revolutionary changes again until they have to, and they don’t have to yet. Restraint can be a virtue.

Some functionality is still not present, like non-interuptive notifications, widgets beyond the limited fast task switcher UI, wireless sync/sharing, less painful file round-tripping, etc. but Apple is no doubt working on this the way they worked on copy and paste and multitasking. The question is how and when, not if. After all, it’s only 9 or 10 months until the iOS 5 sneak preview in spring 2011, right?

But this is not a review — our full rundown of the pros and cons will come after the official launch, when we’ve had a chance to spend some quality time with the final version on the new iPhone 4 hardware.

Congratulations to the iOS team at Apple, phenomenal work. Again.

[Thanks to everyone who contributed screenshots and descriptions for this walkthrough. If you noticed we missed anything, drop us a note in the comments and we'll update as needed.]

Are iOS 4 background API really the best solution to multitasking?

Rene Ritchie — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 17:40:35 +0000

Multitasking was widely rumored to be coming to the iPhone with iOS 4, but instead of a traditional “leave full apps running in the background” approach, Apple instead chose to implement a more restricted but, they felt, better performing and power friendly solution involving 7 specific background API (application programming interfaces.) Is that, however, the best solution to the multitasking challenge as Apple claims? I spoke to several developers during WWDC 2010 and asked them that question.

First, we’ll review what Apple is doing in iOS 4, then we’ll see if developers think it works as well in reality as as Apple says it does on stage.

How does Apple say iOS 4 multitasking works?

Fast task switching deals with the perceptive speed that multitasking offers. With previous versions of iOS, if you left an App Store app it would shut down completely and if you went back — regardless if it was a second or a week or later, it would usually restart not from where you left off but from essentially the beginning. (A few developers tried to add persistence on their own, so they’d save your place when you came back as best as previous OS versions allowed, but most didn’t — especially games which was aggravating when phone calls pulled you unexpectedly out of them). Likewise, if you closed one app and went to another, you could theoretically be stuck swiping back or forth between 11 home screen pages.

Saved state is now built into iOS 4 so all developers can more easily have their apps remember exactly where you were when you left and put you right back at that position when you return, Apple has also added a fast app switcher UI that, when you double tap the home button, lifts up to show you your apps “in the background” sorted in order of last usage. That means, if you’re moving between a set of commonly used apps, they’re most likely right next to each other and not screens and screens away. These two elements combine together to make launching apps perceptively much faster, even though the apps don’t have to be running in the background consuming resources just for that convenience.

Lastly, but perhaps most famously, Apple is allowing apps to register three specific types of the threads for persistent backgrounding (they can just keep running until you close them). Again, this isn’t the whole app running, just one thread from the app, so the idea is it won’t slow down performance, use up memory, or drain battery to the same degree. These API are for streaming music, location, and VoIP (voice over IP).

How do developers think iOS multitasking really works?

Of the developers I spoke to during WWDC — and I certainly didn’t speak to them all — they were remarkably pleased with how iOS multitasking was working out in practice. For those who made large, resource intesive apps, they actually preferred Apple solution since they didn’t want to be blamed for performance hits on other apps while they were in the background (especially performance hits for other intensive apps like games). So far, they were also excited by the relatively low impact on battery life compared to traditional, full-on app backgrounding.

In terms of implementation, the devs I spoke with were really happy about how quickly they could implement the background APIs in their apps — really quickly, much faster than they thought.

(if you’re a developer with a different opinion, send it our way so we can get as well-rounded a sampling as possible).

How will users think iOS 4 multitasking works for them?

Like with copy and paste, it’s possible Apple really did take their time to get multitasking right. It’s also possible that, like many other Apple solutions, it will be outstanding at what it does, but limited or non-functional for those who want to do more — like have an SSH session stay open in the background, or have their Twitter, IM, or RSS timelines be ready and waiting, just like mail, when they open an app.

We’ve heard from Apple, we’ve heard from developers, and starting June 21 when iOS 4 goes live for end users, we’ll hear how it works for all of them in the real world.

That, of course, will be the true test.

TomTom talks iPhone, iOS 4 multitasking – TiPb at WWDC 2010

Rene Ritchie — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 01:03:33 +0000

Tom Murray, SVP of Marketing, TomTom sat down with me to discuss their turn-by-turn navigation app for the iPhone. Announced at WWDC 2009, over the last year TomTom has managed to get the app to where all its core functionality is in place and they can give iPhone users a really first-class tool to get them from point A to point B. Now, with iOS 4 and its multitasking API for location, they can start getting them in style.

Since TomTom does everything from owning their own maps to selling their own devices, they’re uniquely positioned do things like crowd-source changes in roads or analyze patterns in routes and get that fed back into their system so their 40 million users can share local wisdom whether they’re improving their daily commute or driving in a new city for the first time.

With the iPhone, Apple is providing the device (and the GPS) but TomTom still offers a car kit to supplement and extend the built-in hardware. (I asked if the existing car kit would be compatible with the just-introduced iPhone 4, but they hadn’t had a chance to get their hands on it yet so they’re waiting to whether it fits, whether it requires an adapter, or whether some reengineering will be in order).

No word on an iPad version yet, unfortunately, but turn-by-turn navigation on smartphones is still growing. With free-as-in-Google and open source map apps now on the scene, TomTom is investing in the quality of their service and the trust in their data.

Check out our video interview, after the break!

[TomTom on iTunes]

YouTube link

iPhone OS 4: orientation lock, iPod controls in fast app switcher

Rene Ritchie — Tue, 04 May 2010 19:50:17 +0000

Today’s iPhone OS 4 beta 3 update has brought with it some interesting new features, including a soft-version of the iPad’s orientation lock and iPod controls added into the fast app switcher (multitasking) UI.

When you double click the home button to bring up the fast app switcher, you can now scroll all the way to the left to get the new orientation lock and iPod controls. The default on the orientation is off but a tap will turn on, or turn off, the lock. (Home screen doesn’t sound like it rotates, however).

iPod controls include back, play/pause, and forward, with the name of the current track written beneath.

The background for the app switcher (and for folders) has also changed from the rubbery, pock-mocked, dark gray of beta 1 and 2 to a new cross-hatched medium gray.

Video after the break! For more check out our complete iPhone OS 4 beta preview and feature walkthrough.

[Thanks anon!]

YouTube link

iPhone OS 4: Multitasking fast app switcher animation

Rene Ritchie — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 11:34:32 +0000

iPhone OS 4 beta 2, released yesterday, has introduced a new, circling, side-switching animation for multitasking fast app switching. The new animation occurs when you switch between two apps either via the new, double-click-Home to trigger to launch the multitasking UI, or when one app calls another app (i.e. when you’re in Contacts and you tap to send a contact an SMS, as noted by @ranger_bill, when clicking on a link in Mail to open Safari, etc.).

Launching or leaving an app retains the same, zoom-based effect as always (though the wallpaper in iPhone OS 4 zooms slightly as well, like on the iPad — gotta love those little details Apple puts in).

Check out our complete iPhone OS 4 preview and feature walkthrough for more and hit up the video after the break!

YouTube link

iPhone OS 4 beta 1 jailbreak on iPhone 3G – multitasking included

Jeremy Sikora — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 21:42:11 +0000

Apple has not been shy in stating that the original iPhone 3G will not support iPhone OS 4 multitasking but iPhone hacker cdevwill has proved them wrong – sort of. After the break you can see a YouTube video of an iPhone 3G running iPhone 4.0 jailbroken with functional multitasking.

While this all seems like a bed of roses stop and think about it for a minute: the only apps someone could test currently are those built in the iPhone OS 4 software (many of which have always multitasked) – no 3rd party apps. You’ll notice in the video the amount of time it takes to open the clock application. Now imagine trying to play a game like Plants vs. Zombies and checking your Twitter all while streaming Pandora.

So while multitasking on an iPhone 3G appears to work, don’t expect a very smooth experience. This is more than likely the reason Apple claims it will not work (even if they’d rather you upgraded your hardware).

If you want to learn more about jailbreaking in general stop by our forum dedicated to the topic and be sure to check out the video after the break!

[Via BGR]

Fring, Slacker, TeleNav, NAVIGON comment on Apple’s iPhone OS 4 multitasking

Rene Ritchie — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 22:04:19 +0000

The first of Apple’s big iPhone OS 4 announcements was multitasking, and the first set of multitasking announcements were APIs to let streaming music (think internet radio), location services (think navigation, check-in games, social networks), and VoIP services (think internet telephony) register threads in the background. For users this means you can keep listening to your songs, getting your turn-by-turn directions, and answering your virtual phone all while surfing the web or playing a game.

To find out what it means for developers, we asked some. Read what they had to say after the break!

NAVIGON, which makes MobileNavigator [$79 -- iTunes link]:

We are very excited about the background location feature and will work on implementing this into our app, so that the app can run in the background and provide directions when, for example, taking a call. We’ve really been waiting for this, so it’s great to see this happening now.

TeleNav, which powers AT&T Navigator [Subscription - iTunes link], Rogers Navigator [Subscription - iTunes link] and other location-aware services and apps:

Overall, we are very excited about the new multitasking and background location features as it opens up a variety of new capabilities for navigation and other location-based services on the iPhone. We’re actively working on new features and capabilities and look forward to sharing these with consumers soon.

Slacker, which offers Slacker Radio [Subscription - iTunes link]:

Right now 4 out of 5 of our mobile apps are on platforms that support multitasking and our listeners have let us know they enjoy being able to utilize their smartphone’s functions while listening to their favorite music. We are elated that soon Slacker listeners using their iPhone will have this same capability.

Fring, which makes the VoIP service of the same name [Free - iTunes link]

fring is congratulating Apple for reaching this decision, which will only enhance the iPhone/ iPad’s user experience. With the allowance for VoIP calls over 3G and now the background VoIP functionality, Apple is taking great steps allowing for the freedom of choice fring has been a big supporter of, since day one.

Seems like they’re happy. While some internet chatter has revolved around whether iPhone OS 4 is providing “true” multitasking or not, the end result for the user is that they’re getting these 3 types of functionality in the next update. Of course, we’d enjoy other services as well, including persistent connections for SSH and like protocols, and background updates for timelines like IM, but from zero to this for 3rd parties is certainly a good start.

iOS 4 beta walkthrough

Rene Ritchie — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 02:55:17 +0000

iOS 4 (previously iPhone OS 4, iPhone 4.0) continues Apple’s relentless yearly mobile OS beta and release cycle. If 2007 was the mainstreaming of the multitouch user interface, 2008 all about the app store, and 2009 filling in the feature list, then iPhone 4 promises to be… well, that’s why we’re here.

(And yes, iOS. That’s the new name Apple has licensed from trademark holders Cisco to represent the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch — and maybe soon Apple TV and who knows what else — family.)

Apple promises 7 “tent-pole” features and 100+ new user features overall, along with 1500 major new APIs for developers. We’re going to walk through the ones that matter most. As with previous years, Apple is likely to release a half-dozen or more betas, as often as every second week or so, leading up to a Gold Master (GM) seed on or around WWDC 2010 (date yet to be announced) for iPhone and iPod touch, and September for iPad.

Things can and will change. Features will come and go. And all sorts of iOS secrets will be discovered deep inside the code strings. We’ll update when any of that happens.

What Hasn’t Changed

iPhone 2.0
iPhone 2.1
iPhone 2.2
iPhone 3.0
iPhone 3.1
YouTube: Accounts were a big addition in iPhone 3.0, so iPhone 4 sits this update out, at least so far.
Stocks: Similarly, Stocks got landscape and a slew of swipe-able data last time, so the update love gets skipped this time.
Weather: Almost comedically at this point, it’s still unchanged from iPhone 1.0. Still no HTC TouchFlo 3D style animations, no landscape mode with more/different information. Nada.
Voice Memo: Introduced in iPhone 3.0, it looks pretty much the same in iPhone 4.
Clock: With nothing but a lap feature added last time, we lose the “but” and keep the “nothing” for iPhone 4.
Calculator: Upgraded back in 2.0 for landscape scientific mode, all Calculator gets this time is a slight icon tweak towards the red.

System-wide enhancements

Spell check

Spell check, which debuted in iPhone 3.2 for iPad, is a system-wide addition to iPhone 4 now as well. Words the OS thinks you’ve misspelled will be underlined in red (familiar to any Microsoft Office or Mac OS X user). Tapping on them will give you a popup containing a recommended replacement. Tapping that replaces the misspelled word with the (hopefully!) correctly spelled one.

Combined with the iPhone’s existing — and industry leading — predictive auto-correct, it’s a powerful combination.

Text Replace

Cut, copy, and paste also gets an iPad-debuting feature with “replace” now added to the popup options.

Bluetooth Keyboard Support

Home Screen

SpringBoard app, the power behind the Home Screen gets an iPhone 3.2 for iPad-style update to support custom wallpaper. Yes, the default background in iPhone 4 beta 1 is water drops on gray, which is not default but included in the iPad’s wallpaper gallery (yet strangely not included in iPhone 4′s) Also like iPad, the Mac OS X reflective Dock (buh-bye grid) and translucent top bar have been brought over.

Apple has brought over some of the iPad wallpapers but also introduced a few new ones, all seemingly focused on livening up the home screen without being too visually distracting. Natural textures and muted patterns get an obvious focus here with stones, rocks, and textiles front and center.

(See all of them in our iOS beta 4 wallpaper gallery)

In addition to the previous color bands across the top of the screen that indicate running voice or data connections (green for Phone, red for Voice Memo, blue for tethering) red is used again to indicate a VoIP app (like Skype) is active in the background.

As mentioned, the Calculator app also gets a new icon. Where things get more exciting is how Home Screen has once again been extended to visualize new, core-level OS changes.

Spotlight

Multitasking

While Apple’s built-in apps (like iPod, Mail, etc.) have had background multitasking since 1.0. Now, four years, many gripes, and stiffer Google Android competition than ever, background multitasking comes to App Store apps. At least for the iPhone 3GS and the 4th generation iPhone Apple will more than likely introduce this coming summer. RAM limitations and Apple’s abject refusal to put their name on an implementation where hardware constrains software — see video recording last year — means iPhone 3G will get a lot of 4.0, but won’t get multitasking.

We won’t get into the saved-state, streaming music, location, and VoIP APIs, push and local notifications, and task completion that make up the 6 innards of the service because this is a GUI walkthrough. Fast task switching, however, is where we see background multitasking made manifest, and this is what it looks like.

You double tap the Home Screen and the UI turns translucent and slides up, allowing you to peek at the apps running “under the hood”. (Technically frozen with state saved an threads registered with those APIs, but we’re trying not to get technical here). Positionally the Fast Task Switcher apps take up the space traditionally reserved for the Dock, so while it’s a tad confusing the concept of apps at the bottom of the screen being more permanent and easily accessible remains. Behaviorally, while they look like a secret dock, they function like the Home Screen itself in that you can swipe from right to left to scroll through a several 4-icon sets of multitasking apps. We don’t know what the upper limit is yet (11 pages like Home Screen itself?) but it’s a lot.

Given even the iPhone 3GS has only 256MB of RAM, we assume Apple will discretely kill off the least-used app in the stack when things get tight. Whether or not that means the icon disappears from the multitasking GUI we don’t know, but worst case you just have to go to the Home Screen, re-launch it (hopefully from saved state) and all you notice is a slightly longer start up time.

In iOS beta 3, the fast app switcher UI gained a soft-version of the iPad’s orientation lock and audio controls. When you double click the home button to bring up the fast app switcher, you can now scroll all the way to the left to get the new orientation lock and audio controls. The default on the orientation is off but a tap will turn on, or turn off, the lock. (Home screen doesn’t sound like it rotates, however).

Audio controls include back, play/pause, and forward, with the name of the current track written beneath. If music is being played via the iPod app, the iPod icon will be displayed to quickly get you back to that app. If you’re streaming via the iTunes app (i.e. a podcast) then the iTunes icon will be displayed instead. We’re guessing iOS will show you the icon of whichever app is currently playing music using the new background audio API, and yes we mean Slacker and Pandora when they’re enabled as well.

YouTube link

At the iPhone 4 event, Steve Jobs likened task managers (in the multitasking, not to-do sense) to styluses — if you need them there’s something wrong. However, if you hold your finger down on multitasking apps to make the jiggle and bring up a delete icon that, if you tap it, removes them. Added to the list of things we don’t know — whether that kills their API thread or merely removes them from the Fast App Switcher interface. (And no, sadly you can’t re-arrange jiggling apps for fast switching, at least not yet — if you want your favorites close at hand, that remains a Dock thing).

The background for the app switcher (and for folders) has also changed from the rubbery, pock-mocked, dark gray of beta 1 and 2 to a new cross-hatched medium gray in beta 3.

The presentation may not be as visually slick as Palm webOS’ Card view (which looks like iPhone Safari’s Page view) or Mac OS X Exposé mode, but it keeps those 85,000,000 existing iPhone and iPod touch users grounded in the interface they’re familiar with and that’s what Apple is prioritizing.

Note: Previously you could assign the double-click Home to trigger Phone Favorites, Camera, or Spotlight. On iPhone 3G under iOS those options remain. On iPhone 3GS under iOS, you can now double-click-and-hold on Home to trigger Phone Favorites, but there doesn’t appear to be any mechanism to re-assign that functionality to Camera or Spotlight (see Settings, below). [@oliok] This appears to be gone under Beta 3.

YouTube link

iOS beta 2 introduced a new, circling, side-switching animation for multitasking fast app switching. The new animation occurs when you switch between two apps either via the new, double-click-Home to trigger to launch the multitasking UI, or when one app calls another app (i.e. when you’re in Contacts and you tap to send a contact an SMS).

Launching or leaving an app retains the same, zoom-based effect as always (though the wallpaper in iOS zooms slightly as well, like on the iPad).

YouTube link

Folders

There are 180,000 apps in the App Store and likely a ton more by the time I finish writing the sentence. Literally. iPhone 1.0 had one Home Screen but with only the built-in apps available back then, it wasn’t even a limitation. With WebApps, it grew to 9 pages for a 148 app limit. With iPhone 3.0 we were given 8 pages, for 180 apps viewable, but you could install many more and use Spotlight as a way of finding and launching them. Organizing them still wasn’t a real option.

Enter Folders. A Folder is simply a grouped icon that holds up to 12 other icons inside it. (And for those keeping count at home, the new math means a whopping 2016 apps can be kept on-screen at once. Shudder).

The way it works is you tap a Folder icon and once again the Home Screen fades and splits open, this time below the Folder. Inside the split are all the apps contained in the group.

To create a Folder, you begin by tapping and holding an icon to put it in jiggly mode, just like you did before to delete or move it. Then, drag it over and drop it on top of another icon to create a Folder. (This works better when icons aren’t at the right edge of the screen, as the move behavior seems to supersede the Folder behavior, causing the icon to wrap to the next line before you can drop on top of it.) Once created, iPhone OS reads the apps’ category data and tries to name the folder for you, but you can easily edit it to anything you want.

To remove apps from a Folder, put them in jiggly mode inside the Folder and drag them out (or just delete them if you don’t want them anywhere anymore). You can also move them around within the Folder to customize their order.

Folders can be put in jiggly mode and moved as well, but not deleted (they can only be deleted by removing all the apps from within them, and which point they self-destruct for you). You can even move them to the Dock, which means you could have 48 apps readily available at any time for quick launching.

And while you still can’t delete Apple’s built-in apps, you can take the ones you’re not using and hide them away inside a folder so they waste as little Home Screen space as possible (not that that’s as big a deal now as it used to be…)

Again, not as visually exciting perhaps as Mac OS X’s Stacks, but it keeps current iPhone users in a familiar interface while adding much-needed functionality.

YouTube link

Messages

Messages in iPhone 4 gets the same built-in Spotlight search that Mail and other apps got with iPhone 3.0. It appears at the top of the main messages screen. (There’s no search within an individual Messages thread). [@justin_horn]

Messages also (finally) gets a character counter so you’ll know when you’re getting close to, or going past, the SMS limit (which would cause a second message to be sent). It kicks in after you’ve typed 50 characters or so. [@iMuggle]

Calendar

Calendar removes two long-standing gripes and adds something pretty much invisible from the interface but awesome in terms of functionality.

First, you can now show all or hide all calendars or individually check/uncheck just the calendars you want to see.

Birthday calendars have also been added to the option, something that was previously only possible to see under certain setup conditions.

Lastly and most excitingly, Apple has finally added Calendar access for developers. What this means is, we’ll soon see applications where, by way of example, you can download a movie app, buy tickets for a local screening, and the app will be able to automatically add the show time to your Calendar.

Photos

Photos, at least for Mac users, gets the same iPhoto ’09-based organizational features introduced with the iPad: Events, Faces, and Places.

Landscape mode is also now supported in album and gallery views [@antonioj].

The action button now includes a Rotate function (yes!) that turns a photo 90 degrees counter-clockwise (to the left).

If you Email Photo, you now get the option of sending a smaller version (compressed dimensions and hence file size), or at actual size.

Lastly, developers have been given access to the photo and video library (not just the image picker as in previous OS versions).

Camera

Tap to focus, introduced in iPhone 3.0 for still photography, now gets expanded to video recording for the iPhone 3GS (and presumably the 4th generation iPhone).

Developers also get full access to and control of video playback and recording.

Maps

For developers, overlays can now be added to embedded maps to show extra data like routes or annotations.

Notes

(UI-wise this is similar to how you back out/left in Calendar or Contacts to toggle data sources.)

The way these show up in Mac OS X is via the built-in Mail.app client in the Notes tab.

On Gmail they show up as a generic label. In other IMAP clients, regardless of OS, they’ll show up as generic IMAP folders.

iTunes Store

The iTunes store itself is the same, however, audio streaming from the app itself has taken a huge leap forward. Since iPhone OS 2.2 you’ve been able to tap the title of a podcast to begin streaming (rather than downloading) the audio, even in the background while using other apps, but it was sometimes hit or miss. It would drop out, it would time out, you couldn’t really scrub through it, and if you left it for a while it would lose its place and start over.

In iOS it’s rock solid. You can scrub and it re-buffers and keeps playing flawlessly. You can stop it and come back hours or even days later — even after using the iTunes app to search for other things or the iPod app to play different audio — and it still knows where you left off and starts playing again instantly without missing a beat.

Settings

This year, like every year, some of the more numerous and interesting changes Apple delivers in their new OS are tucked neatly away in the Settings app.

General: Network

You can now choose to not only turn off 3G data or roaming data, but all cellular data.

General: Location Services

General: Home Button

Rather than gaining functions, the Home Button setting loses several. Since double-click for iOS on the iPhone 3GS (and presumably future iPhone hardware) is now reserved for launching the multitasking interface, gone is the option to assign it to launch Spotlight, Camera, or iPod. Also gone is the option to have it launch iPod when audio is playing.

Double-click-and-hold will now trigger Phone Favorites on the iPhone 3GS, but no options are presented yet to re-assign that to Spotlight, Camera, or iPod. So, the only thing that remains are the Spotlight search inclusion options. Looks downright barren now…

Since iPhone 3G won’t be getting multitasking (Apple cites hardware, i.e. RAM constraints) those options remain under iOS for that device.

General: Passcode Lock

Previously available only through an Enterprise profile, iPhone 4 brings stronger, alphanumeric passcodes to all iPhone users. That means you’re no longer stuck with only a 4 digit pin, but can now create longer passcodes with far greater variation. Of course, longer, more varied passcodes are more of a hassle to remember and enter, but that’s the cost of good security.

Mail, Contacts, Calendars

As previously mentioned, Notes will now sync over IMAP and the settings for that appear here. First, all the way at the bottom, you can choose which account to use as the default for note sync.

Inside MobileMe, Gmail, or other IMAP accounts, you can choose whether or not to enable sync. Again, there’s no support for Exchange ActiveSync accounts yet (including Gmail via GoogleSync).

Messages

Here’s where you can turn on that new character count option.

iPod

The iPod app now has an overlay that shows you information about songs and podcasts. While functional it’s not terribly attractive so it’s nice to be able to toggle it off right here.

App Store

iPhone 2.0 brought us the iTunes App Store, iPhone 3.0 added in-app purchases, and now iOS raises the mercantile stakes once again…

iAd

Task completion

With iPhone 4, when you close and app and that app is still performing an activity, the OS will allow it to complete that activity in the background. For example, downloading or uploading content from the internet.

Streaming music, location, and VoIP API

The underside of the multitasking/fast app switching UI mentioned at the beginning of the walkthrough are three specific types of API that an app can register threads with when you close them out. These are intended for streaming music (Pandora or Slacker being the classic examples), location-aware (i.e turn-by-turn navigation, check-in games, social networks, etc.), and VoIP (Skype and SIP clients) to register with the OS when you exit the apps proper so that your music can keep streaming, location can keep tracking, and VoIP can still alert you of phone calls even when the app isn’t running.

There’s no time-line API for instant messaging (IM), Twitter, etc. to register their threads with, however. Apple believes existing Push Notifications are sufficient but that means once an alert is received and you tap View, the app still has to pause and load the timeline/messages before you can view them. This is unlike the built-in Mail and Messages (SMS/MMS) apps that have new messages loaded and waiting when you get there.

Local Notifications

Like Push Notifications in iPhone 3.0 but not requiring an outside, internet connected server, local notifications will let apps you’re using (and perhaps apps that have registered one of the three types of background threads mentioned above) send you popup boxes, sound alerts, and icon badges.

For the user, these should be functionally the same and perhaps indistinguishable.

Quick Look

Just like Mail can preview documents, Quick Look will allow developers to present the same functionality in their apps.

Accelerate

2000 hardware accelerated math APIs probably won’t be seen by users, but there’s not doubt we’ll feel them in the games. Zoom. Zoom.

File Sharing

Again it looks like the iPhone is finally getting in iOS what the iPad got in 3.2 with the file/document transfer feature now exposed in iTunes sync.

While the iPad version identifies document-friendly apps (like Apple’s own Keynote, Numbers, and Pages) and lets you find and sync over files, the iOS beta 3 version currently only shows Mail and Stanza and doesn’t really let you do much else. However, it stands to reason this will at least reach feature parity with the iPad when Apple releases iOS to the public later this summer.

Now all we need is an elegant way to share and wirelessly sync those documents across multiple devices and users. MobileMe 2.0, souped up iWork.com 2.0, where are you?

Mail

Once inside, All Inboxes is visually indistinguishable from an account-specific inbox, it simply contains all of their messages.

So yes, the tap, tap, tap of inbox navigation persists, albeit shifted from moving into and out of inboxes to moving into and out of threaded messages.

Although not yet implemented in the current beta, like iPhone OS 3.2 for iPad, you’ll be able to open email attachments in apps. Now there’s no iWork (Numbers, Pages, Keynote) for iPhone yet, and the app Apple used to introduce this function doesn’t exist on iPhone yet either. Interesting.

Safari

More iPad to iPhone cross-polination means we get search auto-complete from both Google and Yahoo! in iOS. As you type, suggestions appear in a list view below. And as with the iPad, while Google and Yahoo! branding remain in the search boxes, they no longer get brand advertising on the keyboard — it simply remains labeled Search now regardless of which engine is set and default.

As usual, Apple seems to be increasing Safari’s HTML5 support. While HTML5 video would work under iPhone 3.1.3, it would launch the full screen QuickTime player to do so. Under iOS, it seems to play in-line as well [MobileGeekdom], like it does on the iPad.

If history is any indicator, Apple will likely also integrate whatever advancements WebKit and the Nitro JavaScript engine make between now and release this summer.

iPod

Album art has been added to album views, jazzing up the track lists. [Gizmodo]

And in yet another iPad-like update, on-th-go playlists are dead, long live… just regular old playlists. You can add them via an item in the playlists list, at which point you get a popup that asks you for a name. Next, you tap on any songs you want to add, and when you’re done, you have a new playlist. If you’re not happy with it, or any playlist, just swipe to bring up the usual red Delete button and annihilate it.

Nike+

You can now send you run data directly from the iPhone. [When Will Apple]. Under History, tap Send to Nike+ and you’re off and running (sorry). You’re then sent to Safari so you can login to Nike+ and see your data.

Game Center (Preview)

Game Center is Apple’s entry into the social gaming network space (think Xbox Live or Playstation Network for iPhone OS devices). With Game Center you’ll be able to invite friends to play, use matchmaking to challenge other players, gain achievements, and have your scores displayed on a leader board.

Game Center won’t launch with iOS this summer, but is scheduled for release “later” this year.

iBooks

Though not a built-in app (you’ll need to go get it from the US App Store when it becomes available), as part of iOS Apple announced they were bringing iBooks to the iPhone.

Not Concluded

This preview won’t be concluded until Apple concludes iOS with its final release this summer for iPhone and iPod touch, and this fall for iPad (unless that becomes iPhone 4.1).

iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS owners should get it for free as Apple’s 2-year accounting procedure allows. That there’s been no word about iPhone 2G owners could mean it’s either not going to be available for the oldest hardware, it won’t be free, or… there’s simply been no word yet. Likewise, there’s been no word on iPod touch pricing though it was $9.95 for iPhone 3.0. There’s been no word on iPod touch G1 availability either, however. Apple’s SDK agreement has revealed that iPad users who bought with 3.2 will get 4.0 for free but not subsequent major updates (i.e. iPhone OS 5 in 2011).

Again, there will be roughly 6 to 8 betas released on a roughly bi-weekly schedule from now until WWDC 2010 when we’ll likely hear about the final version, whatever extra features will come with the next-generation iPhone (current rumors suggest iChat video), and get a final release data — likely also to coincide with the next-gen iPhone release date.

We’ll update this preview as more and better information becomes available, so if you notice anything we missed or just plain got wrong, send it in or let us know in the comments.

Note on Using Beta Software

If you’re not a developer, don’t even think about putting iOS beta on your main iPhone. Betas are for testing purposes and could contain any number of bugs and performance issues, could stop working or require updates when you may not have access to one, or otherwise give you problems when used in a manner for which they’re not intended. Stay away.

[Thanks to everyone who contributed screenshots and descriptions for this walkthrough]

TiPb Live Podcast #94 — iPhone 4.0-boy!

Rene Ritchie — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 15:05:09 +0000

Join Rene, Phil, and Keith for post-iPhone 4.0 event analysis on multitasking, app folders, iBooks for iPhone, Game Center social network, mail enhancements, enterprise enhancements, iAds, and more. Listen in!

Want to be part of the show?

Grab your iPhone, launch VoiceMemo, record yourself introducing the show. Tell us your name, where you live, your favorite app, and finish it off with “…and my favorite podcast is TiPb Live!” Then email it to news (at) tipb (dot) com with subject “TiPb Live intro”. We’ll pick one of you, and you’ll be on the show!

Example: “Hi, this is Jon Rubinstein from Sunnyvale, my favorite app is… um… dunno, but my favorite podcast is TiPb Live!”

Credits

Thanks to the the iPhone Blog Store for sponsoring the podcast, and to everyone who showed up for the live chat!

Our music comes from the following sources:

I Called You — iPhone Remix by Pete Leidy

Sneakmove iPhone Ringtone Challenge

Is Apple’s cross-compiler ban pro-multitasking not anti-Adobe?

Rene Ritchie — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 19:39:37 +0000

While Apple’s ban on cross-compilers in the iPhone 4.0 SDK has raised a lot of discussion on the net, and generated some fiery responses from Adobe, AppleInsider claims a source who says the move had nothing to do with Flash CS5 or another other, specific cross-compiler, and everything to do with multitasking performance:

The primary reason for the change, say sources familiar with Apple’s plans, is to support sophisticated new multitasking APIs in iPhone 4.0. The system will now be evaluating apps as they run in order to implement smart multitasking. It can’t do this if apps are running within a runtime or are cross compiled with a foreign structure that doesn’t behave identically to a native C/C++/Obj-C app.

“[The operating system] can’t swap out resources, it can’t pause some threads while allowing others to run, it can’t selectively notify, etc. Apple needs full access to a properly-compiled app to do the pull off the tricks they are with this new OS,” wrote one reader under the name Ktappe.

Apple is using a different kind of multitasking than we’ve seen before in mobile — saved state combined with API-level services that take the place of running apps. Are Cocoa touch apps generated in Xcode really different enough from Flash or C#/.Net apps cross-compiled by Flash CS5 or MonoTouch to cause Apple’s multitasking system problems?

We’re not developers, you tell us.

Apple announces multitasking for iPhone OS 4 (iPhone 3GS/iPod touch G3 only)

Rene Ritchie — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 17:26:17 +0000

Apple today announced support for multitasking in iPhone 4.0, which go to developers today and the public this summer. CEO Steve Jobs admitted Apple wasn’t first to market with multitasking, but like with cut, copy and paste from iPhone 3.0, he thinks Apple’s implementation is best.

Multitasking will be supported for iPhone 3GS and iPod touch G3 (both released in 2009) but not previous generations like iPhone 2G or iPhone 3G due to hardware limitations. (Presumably it will run just fine on an iPhone G4 this summer…)

In terms of the UI, double-clicking the home button raises the current window and shows you actively running apps in the dock. You can scroll through those apps and rapidly switch between them. State is saved so apps appear persistent to the user. (For example, if you leave a game and come back, you no longer start over — you start where you left off.)

Inside, Apple’s SVP of iPhone Software, Scott Forstall explained they looked at existing apps and distilled 7 services those apps needed to run in background, then provided them via API. According to Apple, these are:

Background audio – Allows your app to play audio continuously. So customers can listen to your app while they surf the web, play games, and more.
Voice over iP – Your VoIP apps can now be even better. Users can now receive VoIP calls and have conversations while using another app. Your users can even receive calls when their phones are locked in their pocket.
Background location – Navigation apps can now continue to guide users who are listening to their iPods, or using other apps. iPhone OS 4 also provides a new and battery efficient way to monitor location when users move between cell towers. This is a great way for your social networking apps to keep track of users and their friends’ locations.
Push notifications – Receive alerts from your remote servers even when your app isn’t running.
Local notifications – Your app can now alert users of scheduled events and alarms in the background, no servers required.
Task finishing – If your app is in mid-task when your customer leaves it, the app can now keep running to finish the task.
Fast app switching – All developers should take advantage of this. This will allow users to leave your app and come right back to where they were when they left – no more having to reload the app.

Pandora said it took 1 day to recode and enable background in their app. Skype is also shown (which may explain their delayed 3G launch?)

Overall, it appears like Apple has once again abstracted a concept from low-level and developer-centric to higher level and OS-managed. Like Grand Central does for multi-core dispatch in Mac OS X, or CoreData, CoreAnimation, etc. do across Apple’s platforms, it does the heavy-lifting and tries to maximize user experience at the same time.

Our question for you is, does this beat Palm webOS cards or Android multitasking? Is it enough to make you happy?

Pics and video after the break, or read our complete iPhone OS 4 preview for more!

YouTube link

iPhone OS 4 beta 2 fast app switching animation:

YouTube link

What will we get in iPhone 4.0?

Rene Ritchie — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 14:46:35 +0000

Tomorrow at 10am PT, 1pm ET, Steve Jobs puts sneaker to stage and, along with SVP of iPhone software, Scott Forstall, gives us a sneak preview of the highly anticipated iPhone 4.0. No one outside Apple knows exactly what new features and paradigms iPhone 4.0 will offer. However, tradition demands we make our best guesses and ask you to do the same.

This isn’t what we want, mind you. We told Apple what we want back on December 25, 2009: multitasking, better notifications, widgets for the home screen, instant access to important settings, themes, gestures like pervasive pull-down-to-refresh, system-wide “back” implementation, orientation lock, and resolution independence, along with a ton of great reader suggestions in the comments. We’ve also asked for a Finder app, like the Photo but to store document files.

This is what we think we’ll actually get, given the rumors and the direction Apple looks to be going. This is us, TiPb staff and TiPb readers reading the tea leaves…

iPhone 3.2 (aka iPad) features

This is the most obvious, really (and we’ve written about it before). All the little tweaks and enhancements Apple has made to the underlying OS, like adding “replace” to cut, copy, and paste, adding spell check to auto-correct, adding dictionary lookup to text select, etc. Wallpaper for the Home Screen, week view in Calendar and the other, sometimes small but still important, chance to the built-in apps, should be there as well. So should Bluetooth keyboard support. Oh, and iBooks.

Better Mail handling

Steve Jobs himself reportedly responded to an email saying a “universal inbox” was coming. That means, like Mac Mail but unlike current iPhone Mail, users with multiple accounts would have the option of seeing all their new messages in one place and not have to tap into and out of multiple folders every time they wanted to check every new message in every account. (Yes that sentence was crafted to feel as laborious as the current process!). Whether we’ll see more than that — IMAP IDLE, multiple exchange accounts, “synergy”-like messaging integration, etc. is unknown.

Multitasking (of a sort)

We’ve been hearing this for a while now — that Apple will offer some level of multitasking in iPhone 4.0. We’ve even seen it in the shadows. The three use-cases that it could cover are background tasks (listening to streaming internet radio while you browse Safari, keeping navigation running while you check Mail), fast task switching (going from Notes to Contacts and back), and multi-window workflow (dragging data from one application space into another).

While the “Pandora” model could easily be handled by allowing streaming accounts to be entered inside iPod (which already has background access going back to iPhone 1.0), the navigation model won’t be solved unless there’s a more universal background implementation. However, Apple has always put stability and mainstream user friendliness ahead of power-user functionality. A compromise seems most like — full background access for a highly limited number of applications.

Fast task switching was accomplished in large part by the speed of iPhone 3GS. What remains missing is the consistent saving of state by apps on exit (if you leave a twitter client or a race game and then go back it should be at exactly the place you left it), and a more elegant way to quickly move between apps — swiping between two apps 11 screens apart isn’t very Apple. The rumor here is for a Mac OS X-style Exposé implementation where a double-click of the Home Button would cause the current screen to fly out and a grid of active (background) apps to fly in. That sounds much more Apple.

Multi-window drag-and-drop may not be obvious given the small size of the iPhone, but given how Palm’s webOS Cards view presents apps — and how the iPhone Safari Pages view does likewise — is remains a tease. Still, we don’t expect it. Not yet.

New home screen (SpringBoard)

SpringBoard is the internal name of Apple’s Home Screen UI, which right now consists of an 11 page-wide application launcher grid with SpotLight search bolted on to the right. Rumors have persisted since before iPhone 3.0 that Apple has a new SpringBoard experience waiting in the wings. Again, there are several elements that could be at play: better organization, glance-able information, themes.

We’re not wishing here, so no grandiose “Apple will re-invent the metaphor for home screens with some ingenious new approach”. We’re looking at what Apple has already done for clues as to where they’re going. Stacks, then, where groups of similar apps are combined together until a tap expands them into a grid-launcher would be reasonable. Likewise, Dashboard where useful, glance-able information is always just a tap (or swipe) away. Dashboard could even integrate SpotLight, allowing it to replace a singletasker with a multitasker (how fitting). It could function similarly on the Lock Screen, for ultimate glance-ability.

We don’t see themes, however. Though they’d be a boon to users and designers/developers alike, they don’t seem very Apple (beyond the home screen wallpaper already mentioned).

Improved notification handling

We’ve beaten this one to death — if you get a constant stream of SMS, IM, game challenges, or any heavy amount of notifications each new one obliterates the one before meaning all but the most recent functionally never existed and hence never notified you of anything. Both Android and Palm webOS do this more functionally, though developers have complained to us that it may be too complex for the mainstream market Apple is targeting (too much management for mom). Could Apple create a more robust yet still drop-dead-simple notification system for the iPhone? Sure, and given how fast and far push notification has been adopted, we think it’s likely they will.

The simplest solution would be a Notification app (please, no smiley face logo) that listed all new notifications. When you’ve received multiple notifications, the dialog would show the most recent but also inform you of how many others you’ve missed, and an option to “see all” would be presented.

But that would likely make no one happy. This more than multitasking might be the most difficult nut to crack, and may end up being part of that new Home Screen mentioned above. That’s closer to guess work than we’re comfortable with for this post, however, so we’ll just leave it there for now.

iAd platform

“iAd” was rumored to be shown off on April 7, and April 8 is just a day later. Apple’s mobile advertising platform could certainly be part of the iPhone 4.0 SDK feature set unveiled for developers. Gossip says Steve Jobs wants to do for mobile advertising what iTunes did for digital music — make it not suck. We certainly hope so. Punch-the-monkey with push notifications is certainly not the new Home Screen experience we want.

iTunes.com

It’s fairly certain iTunes is moving to the cloud and becoming something akin to iTunes.com. We’d love to see streaming video from Apple, MobileMe “whispersync” to keep our place between iPhone and iPad, and other great, media-centric features. But Apple typically saves those for September to coincide with the new iPod touch and lately, new iTunes releases.

###Mobile iChat

We put this here just for Chad. We still think Mobile iChat (text and audio/video) is coming but not until the 4th generation iPhone is revealed at WWDC 2010. Apple usually holds a few new OS features back to show off the new hardware (like Compass, VoiceControl, etc. last year). Patience, Chad!

MobileMe 2.0

Beyond “whispersync” MobileMe has fallen so far behind Google services, DropBox and others that Apple really has to up its game here. Photo sync, cloud backup, and other features have gone from nice-to-have to must-have. Again, however, that feels more like a WWDC 2010 Phil Schiller announcement to us.

One more thing…?

That’s what we think is most likely to come with iPhone 4.0 tomorrow, but Apple has shown they can always surprise us (who expected the long, long list of previously missing features rattled off at the iPhone 3.0 event?). What are you expecting to see?

iPhone 4.0: Multitasking Exposé, Universal Inbox, Contacts on Home Screen

Rene Ritchie — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 19:55:26 +0000

AppleInsider is adding to the multitasking rumors we’ve been hearing for a while now, saying iPhone 4.0 will finally extend the same benefits to 3rd party apps that Apple’s own Mail, Phone, and iPod apps (among others) enjoy.

Using a key combination, such as the double Home click that now triggers Spotlight or Camera (or whatever you choose in Settings), the current app would zoom out and you’d get a grid view of all running apps, similar to Mac OS X’s Exposé feature. Tap an app, it zooms in, and you’re good to go. How many apps will be allowed to run at once, and whether or not multitasking will work on older, RAM-starved iPhone 2G and iPhone 3G devices is unknown. (iPhone 3GS has double their RAM, and we’re hoping the 4th gen iPhone doubles that again for buttery smooth multitasking).

Whatever the implementation, Apple has a to make sure the new functionality is enough for power users but not too confusing for the mainstream. Apple’s success to date has largely been based on their ease of use as much as their ecosystem so keeping that is key.

Also mentioned again is the Universal Inbox Steve Jobs “confirmed” previously, where you can see all new email messages in one view and not have to tap into and out of each account (if you have work, home, school, or any combination of multiple emails).

Lastly, they claim Apple will allow you to pin contacts to the Home Page for speed dialing, much as you could previously pin web page icons for speed browsing. Just tap the husband, wife, friend, or partner’s picture and you’re off an dialing.

We still have no idea when we’ll see iPhone 4.0, but we’re keeping our fingers crossed for a post-iPad beta launch and a typical summertime release. Right, Apple?

UPDATED: 4th Gen iPhone HD to Launch June 22, have Apple chipset, 960×640 display, front-facing camera, multitasking

Rene Ritchie — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 01:52:47 +0000

Daring Fireball often blurs the line between carefully concealed wink-nudge leak and flat out facetious commentary, so with that in mind John Gruber has this to say about the 4th generation iPhone (which still won’t be called iPhone 4G!):

Apple A4-family system-on-a-chip. Nothing on whether that would be the ARM Cortex A9 multicore CPU with brand new PowerVR SGX GPU we’ve been drooling over, however.
960×640 display. That would be bigger than even the bigger DROID Google Android phone, but fit perfectly with the mediocre pixel-doubling announced for current iPhone apps on the iPad‘s 1024×768 display.
Front facing camera. Which would mean all those iChat Video rumors we’ve been hearing about forever would finally come true, albeit after the HTC EVO 4G broke the barrier.
3rd party multitasking in iPhone 4.0. Yeah, that one we’ve got covered going way back. Which just don’t know how they’re going to implement it yet?

Again, this could just be Gruber cracking wise at the WSJ’s Verizon-rumoring expense. However, a lot of this might also be considered obvious things Apple “has to do” to stay competitive. Yet Apple hasn’t exactly been pushing the hardware specs since the iPhone 2G back in 2007. Steve Jobs was rumored to have said the next iPhone will be an A+ upgrade. Is the above a good start?

UPDATE: Engadget says they’re hearing it will launch on June 22 and be called the iPhone HD. Hey, that sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Multitasking Support to be Included in Apple’s iPhone 4.0 Software

Jeremy Sikora — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:46:34 +0000

AppleInsider is reporting that they are hearing from reliable sources to expect multitasking in Apple’s iPhone 4.0 software. This is not the first time we’ve heard about multitasking being included in 4.0 but if it does hold up to be true it should silence many of the iPhone haters out there while making all iPhone owners jump for joy.

The iPhone currently does do some very minimal multitasking with apps such as email and iPod, but those of you with jailbroken devices are well aware that the iPhone can handle full blown multitasking with ease. Apple has just been shy to enable it since day one claiming it would bring poor battery performance along with various security threats.

The sources also claim the 4.0 software is still a long way off from being finished (this summer) so show some patience as good things come to those who wait.

Anyone else excited for some iPhone 4.0?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

Is RAM the Thing That Will Dictate iPhone 4.0 Multitasking?

Rene Ritchie — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 05:23:38 +0000

On the last iPhone Live!, Dieter, Phil and I discussed iPhone 4.0 and whether, as rumors suggest, we’d finally see multitasking brought to the platform. That’s when the discussion turned to RAM. The iPhone 2G and iPhone 3G have an anemic 128MB of RAM. The iPhone 3GS has 256MB. That’s the same amount as the original Palm Pre and Motorola Droid, which do multitask but do bog down and sometimes error out while doing it. Just-released phones like the Palm Pre Plus and Google Android Nexus One up the ante to a beefy 512MB of RAM.

What does this have to do with the iPhone and multitasking? We’ve seen time and time again that Apple would rather not offer a feature at all then offer one with a poor user experience. It’s why we waited for copy and paste until iPhone 3.0, and why the iPhone 3GS does 30fps video recording and even though the iPhone 3G could do half that, maybe, Apple won’t enable it.

When Push Notification was announced, head of iPhone software Scott Forstall made fun of Windows Mobile-style task management on a mobile device, and sighted battery drain as the primary reason Apple wasn’t doing it. Let’s assume Apple gets better battery life in the 4th generation iPhone as well, unless they get more RAM, it’s still tough to see them enabling multitasking unless and until they beef up the RAM so that at least a few apps can run in the background with as much smoothness and reliability as Apple demands.

Will iPhone 2G get another free update to iPhone 4.0 when it’s released? Will it get the full update, unlike 3.0 when it didn’t get MMS or A2DP. Will iPhone 3G, when it didn’t get video recording? Will iPhone 3GS?

If RAM is the thing that will dictate iPhone multitasking, 512MB (or more?) might just be the magic number, and potentially the magic cut off (or scale back) as well.

iPhone 4.0, 4th Generation iPhone Rumors at CES – Limited Multitasking, Verizon-capable

Rene Ritchie — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:08:15 +0000

While iPhone accessories and apps are everywhere here at CES, the iPhone — meaning Apple itself — is characteristically absent. That doesn’t mean people are whispering about it. There are lots of rumors about iPhone 4.0 software and the 4th generation iPhone hardware, but the ones floating around the most are:

Limited multitasking ability. Whether it’s that new multi-core ARM Cortex A9 processor, a new SpringBoard (Home Screen) metaphor, or just Apple finally deciding to invent it, iPhone 4.0 may see us able to run a few apps (or more?) in the background.
Verizon-capable. Again, it could just be the buzz around Qualcomm’s new dual CDMA/GSM chipset which should be ready just in time, but the technology seems to there and all that remains is for Verizon and Apple — control freaks both — to come to a subsidy agreement.

[Oh, and by the way Google, we've been using that whole superphone meme since February of 2008.]

ProSwitcher iPhone Jailbreak Multitasking UI Goes 1.0

Rene Ritchie — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 13:22:24 +0000

ProSwitcher [github link], the webOS “Cards”-style flickable, flick-to-close-able multitasking interface for Jailbroken iPhones running Backgrounder that we posted about last week has just gone primetime with version 1.0. You can find it in Cydia.

If you try it out, multitask us up a comment and let us know how it performs.

[via ShiekHali form the TiPb Jailbreak Forum, thanks also Wen Muenyi!]

ProSwitcher for Jailbreak Brings Safari Pages, webOS Cards-style Multitasking UI to iPhone

Rene Ritchie — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 15:25:02 +0000

If you’re Jailbroken yet still frustrated that you can’t move between iPhone apps as easily as you can web pages in Safari (or Palm webOS users can in card view), ProSwitcher [Free beta - Cydia] is something to consider.

A front end to Backgrounder, which enables multitasking on a Jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch, duplicates the “Pages” metaphor in MobileSafari, including swipe-able switching and X-icon closing, and for good measure adds in the swipe-up-to-close gesture from Palm’s webOS “Cards” interface.

ProSwitcher is currently in free beta and available via Cydia at http://booleanmagic.com/repo. If you try it out, let us know how it works for you, and how badly you think Apple better add this in to iPhone 4.0!

[via JGold in the TiPb Jailbreak Forums, RedmondPie, and thanks Taimur for the pic!]

Jailbreak: MultiFl0w Task Manager for Backgrounder-enabled iPhones

Rene Ritchie — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 12:41:47 +0000

Running Backgrounder on your Jailbroken iPhone and looking for a little UI magic for your task switching? Check out MultiFl0w, free to try and $5 to buy, it’s not free like Kirikae but it’s fun.

If you give it a go, let us know how it works for you.

[MultiFl0w via Gizmodo, thanks Dylan for the tip!]

More on Apple Potentially Allowing Limited Background Multi-Tasking

Rene Ritchie — Sun, 17 May 2009 04:03:52 +0000

Friday we linked to Business Insider and Daring Fireball both quoting sources that claimed Apple was considering allowing some form of limited background multi-tasking on the iPhone at some point in the future. Now TechCrunch is weighing in, having heard a similar rumor from its sources:

while this is in no way a done deal yet, Apple is definitely trying to come up with a way to offer background support for third-party apps. They went on to note that while Apple may have something to say about it at WWDC, it’s very unlikely that any solution would be ready at that time, and could be a situation similar to how Apple announced Push Notification at WWDC last year but said it was coming in a few months (which it later was delayed until iPhone 3.0).

TechCrunch cites processor power, user experience, and battery life as factors currently concerning Apple. They also suggest the soon-to-be released Palm Pre, with its webOS multi-tasking as a driving force behind all chatter we’ve been hearing about it all of a sudden.

Apple to Allow Limited Background Multi-Tasking for Apps in iPhone 3.0?

Rene Ritchie — Fri, 15 May 2009 20:40:38 +0000

Business Insider rumormongers that Apple might be considering some limited form of multi-tasking, perhaps as early as iPhone 3.0, which would allow 3rd party apps to run as background tasks. They point to two possible models:

Apple might allow users to select two apps that can run in the background.

Apple might selectively allow some apps to run in the background. We assume that developers could apply for permission to run in the background, and that Apple might approve or deny them based on the resources they need and how well they behave with the operating system’s stability.

Daring Fireball steps up to throw a combo of water and fuel on that particular fire:

I heard something very similar from a decent (but second-hand) source back in January during Macworld Expo. What I heard then was that Apple was working on a vastly improved dock for your most-frequently used apps, and that there’d be one special icon position where you could put a third-party app to enable it to run in the background.

Gruber also rightly points out that the iPhone 3G’s 128MB of RAM is likely the constraining factor to current generation multitasking and that won’t change with the iPhone 3.0 firmware. If reports of at least 512MB of RAM in a 3rd generation iPhone are to be believed, however, this could be a much more compelling and powerful feature.

A dock that slides up like a slot-limited version of Google’s Android app shelf maybe? And one that grants background permission to anything placed inside it? Yes please.

Sprint Palm Pre Leak Shows why iPhone Users May Not Want Multitasking?!

Rene Ritchie — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:13:02 +0000

Our sibling site PreCentral.net has gotten their mobile accomplishers on yet another (rumored to be) leaked internal document. This one supposedly comes from Sprint and details what, to PreCentral.net, are some interesting factoids. To us, however, they represent some far more interesting questions:

The picture above shows what looks to be fairly user-toxic troubleshooting steps for Pre and memory management. While the iPhone has memory issues as well, you either reboot or restore. Here, steps are approaching the level of finicky task management and triage Apple has made fun of in previous iPhone keynotes.
Tethering looks to be gone, which may be a bad sign for iPhone users hoping AT&T would throw it in when OS 3.0 — which enables it — rolls around this summer.
Also, no cut and paste from web pages, which is interesting given that webOS is based on web 2.0 style pages. Shouldn’t that one be a gimme?

For much, much more, check out the source blog and let us know how the Palm Pre is developing, competitively to the iPhone, from your point of view. (Of course, we won’t know any final feature set or functionality levels until it actually ships… sometime before June 30).

(Some) Multitasking Apps Coming to iPhone OS 3.0?!

Rene Ritchie — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 17:13:54 +0000

We’ve asked whatever happened to the iPhone’s Push-Notification Service quite a bit recently, even secretly hoped they may find it too difficult and just start to allow some “favored nation” background multitasking…

Now MacRumors is rumoring that that is exactly what might be happening in a future firmware:

While we aren’t sure what the specific issues are, we’ve heard that as an alternative Apple is considering allowing apps to run as user selectable background processes. If so, this feature would likely come in the rumored iPhone 3.0 software update but would be limited to only one or two processes on current hardware. The next generation iPhone, however, would likely see less restricted background process support due to its improved hardware.

So how does that work for you, fellow TiPbsters? Better than Push notification? Worse? And is a few user-selectable apps enough? If the next gen iPhone allows more multitasking, is that a compelling reason to upgrade in and of itself?

TiPb SMASH: the iPhone and Multitasking Misconceptions

Rene Ritchie — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 19:42:47 +0000

There seems to be some confusion out there about the iPhone and multitasking, no doubt fueled by the way Apple handled — and is still handling — all things iPhone. Just to be clear, the iPhone multitasks quite well, thank you very much.

While listening to music, you can receive a phone call, take the call, jump into Safari, Google for an image, save the image to your camera roll, jump into Photos, choose the image, hit the “+” and choose to email the image, fill in and send the email, etc. and when the call is over, your music will fade seamlessly back in.

Steve Jobs showed a simpler version of that when he first introduced the iPhone back at Macworld 2007. Even today, you can begin a new iTunes 3G music download, jump into a Twitter app, tweet a response, and jump back to iTunes and see your download still progressing.

So from where does this confusion come?

Apple only allows their own built-in apps like Email, Phone, etc. to multitask (Daring Fireball posted a nice list on which ones a while back). In the current SDK (Software Development Kit — what people use to write iPhone App Store programs), the licensing prohibits everyone else from multi-tasking. So, no 3rd party IM, Twitter, internet radio, etc. applications can stay on once the user hits the home button.

Apple’s Push Notification Service was supposed to work around this by sending status alerts (badges like unread message counter on Email, pop-ups, or alarms like Calendar events) from Apple’s servers, but while this was promised for September ’08, it was yanked from iPhone OS 2.1 Beta 4 and hasn’t been heard from since. Rumor has it Apple is afraid — for good reason — of repeating it’s near-disastrous MobileMe launch, and would rather delay it than get it wrong. Developers we’ve spoken to agree – no one wants to handle customer support calls based on a buggy PNS implementation.

Selfishly, we kind of hope Apple doesn’t manage to nail PNS in a timely fashion and is instead forced to open up real multitasking, even if only on a limited basis (i.e. more rigorous approval process). (We’d even like to see a CoverFlow task-switcher while they’re at it.)

Multitask-Masters: Brain Surgeon Stat!

Rene Ritchie — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:55:55 +0000

The iPhone SDK will not allow 3rd party apps to multitask or run background services. We’ve previously covered both initial developer Twitter-rage at this, and pundit counter-points. We’ve also covered Craig Hockenberry before — the man who (perhaps poetically) develops Twitterrific for the Mac and jailbroken iPhones, and is now bringing it to the SDK.

Hockenberry, via his furbo.org blog, shares his experience on iPhone development and his views on the multitasking (non-?) issue.

To be blunt, I’ve never seen so many experts without a fricken’ clue. If you haven’t written code using the jailbreak tool chain, your opinions on the iPhone SDK, based entirely on what you see in a simulator, just aren’t relevant. You might as well be explaining the nuances of brain surgery.

Wha-wha-wha-what? Please, allow Mr. Hockenberry to continue:

Twitterrific on the iPhone could definitely make use of a background process to gather new tweets. In fact, a prototype version of the software did just that. And it was a huge design failure: after doing XML queries every 5 minutes, the phone’s battery was almost dead after 4 hours. In fact, the first thing I said after giving Gruber this test version was “don’t use auto-refresh.”

Hockenberry goes on to discuss the power demand problem of the radios, both EDGE and Wi-Fi, and the danger of even well-intentioned developers getting individually reasonable but collectively overwhelming access to background services. He does, however, expect that in a future release Apple may include some method of notifying network apps that the radios are being used (for example, by MobileMail Touch), and allowing brief TCP/IP connections during that period. Bottom-line, at the OS’s discretion, not the individual apps’.

Sound reasonable? Sound crazy? Should Apple give unfettered access to everyone immediately an trust users to sort through it themselves? Or should Apple be as strict as possible from the get-go? What do you think?

Multitask-Masters: iPhone Pundits Strike Back!

Rene Ritchie — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 15:55:54 +0000

Developers want them their multitasking. They want them popping up, one after the other, like Agent Smith replicants in the Matrix sequels. What? Viruses incarnate from poorly conceived follow-up movies is a bad analogy?

Not according to some leading Apple pundits.

Witness Daniel Eran Dilger’s iPhone 2.0 SDK: The No Multitasking Myth from Roughly Drafted Magazine:

By limiting the amount of background processes running, the iPhone’s OS X can offer more of that available RAM to the foreground application, along with a less distracted processor. The iPhone is not a general purpose computer; it is primarily a phone, browser, and iPod. Due to the restrictions imposed by the SDK, it will also be a credible gaming platform and pack the power to run significant productivity applications, all without giving up the ability to be a responsive phone, browser, and iPod. Other devices can’t make that claim.

Sure, Dilger is sometimes considered on the extreme-end of Mac’tivism. Let’s see what Daring Fireball‘s John Gruber has to say when he takes on One App at a Time:

Why has Apple imposed this limitation? Easy: the iPhone is severely resource constrained. Battery, RAM, and CPU cycles are all severely limited. If third-party apps could run in the background, all three could suffer. RAM would suffer for sure; all running apps consume memory. The iPhone has just 128 MB of RAM, and no swap space. CPU performance and battery life would suffer when background apps do something — and if they’re not doing anything, what’s the point of keeping them running? I noticed a significant increase in battery life after I switched the Mail app’s auto-checking interval from 15 minutes to 60 minutes. That’s just one app.

Okay, but they’re not developers. They don’t understand the needs, the passion. But then developers aren’t pure consumers either and developers don’t always understand consumer needs. Sometimes developers are so busy with the abstract coolness of what they can do, they don’t always stop and consider the colder reality of whether they should.

For every OS-changing Switcher app, there are dozens of buggy, crash-inducing WinMob and Palm fetishware. (As I can personally attest to, when even major apps from major developers rendered my Treo unusable).

No developer goes out there with ill-intent (malware aside), but their concern is app-level, not device or OS level. That’s where Apple comes in. The overall user experience isn’t the developers concern, nor should it be. It’s Apple’s concern, and right now Apple is imposing that concern via no-multitasking guidelines.

Note: John Gruber, quoting Hank Williams, also gives us The Flip Side of the Multitasking Argument. (Hit up the Roughly Drafted link above for some excellent back-and-forth between Williams and Dilger in the comment section as well.)

UPDATE: Gruber follows up in Foot, Meet Bullet, a point-counterpoint with Ian Betteridge.

What do you think? Is the ban on multitasking good or bad for the general user-base (i.e., our moms!)? For power users? Will Apple make exceptions for certain big developers (like AOL for AIM)? Will they relax the policy after the initial development rush is over, the space shakes out, and only cooler, more seasoned and reasoned heads remain in the game? Will some crafty devs will figure ways around the rules? (creativity thrives under constraint!). Or will things just stay the way they are?

No Multitasking for 3rd Party Apps?

Rene Ritchie — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 11:20:48 +0000

John Gruber skims through the iPhone updated HIG (Human Interface Guidelines) and reveals the following:

Only one iPhone application can run at a time, and third-party applications never run in the background. This means that when users switch to another application, answer the phone, or check their email, the application they were using quits. It’s important to make sure that users do not experience any negative effects because of this reality. In other words, users should not feel that leaving your iPhone application and returning to it later is any more difficult than switching among applications on a computer.

Will there be a function to preserve state between App uses? (The way iTunes remembers what song you were playing and where you were in that song) Or will each App have to load fresh each time? (The way photos gives you the album chooser, rather than the last photo/state screen upon launch).

Treo users have been stymied for years by lack of true preemptive multitasking, while Windows Mobile has been criticized for letting Apps pile up like splattered bugs on an speeding windshield. But functionality like background music playing, downloads, data (i.e. email checking now that it’s push) seem like no-brain must have’ems. What’s the deal Apple? And what do you think?