Oh my goodness, where do I start on iPhone OS 4.0? I’m sure you guys already know about the features. You’re obsessed with multitasking and perhaps a little concerned about iAds. But what’s really captivating is just how much this will change mobile productivity. I want to focus on what the next iPhone OS will deliver you, how it compares to the competitors’ current methods, and how it will change the way you use your iPhone for your daily activities. Read more
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iPhone OS 4.0: Multitasking, Enterprise, and Folder Thoughts
iPhone OS 4.0, Coming to the iPad This Fall
You won’t be able to install the iPhone OS 4.0 on your iPad this summer. No, you’ll have to wait some more months, because Apple has announced it will be available this fall.
While I can understand that the iPad has just been released and they’re badly working on the iPhone version right now, before the keynote started I was hoping there would be a contemporary release for both the devices. Turns out we’ll have to wait instead, and keep our iPads without multitasking. (Well, until jailbreak will come).
All in all, like I said in the live chat today, I expect Apple to change the name of iPhone OS to, at least, iPad OS for the new device.
Apple Posts Official Preview Page of iPhone OS 4.0
Follow iPhone OS 4.0 Event Live on MacStories
That’s right, we’ll be covering tomorrow’s event here on MacStories. You just have to go here, signup for a reminder and wait for our live chat to start. You’ll be notified if you previously subscribed using the widget.
From the live coverage page:
MacStories will offer live coverage of the event, instantly aggregating news from sources like Engadget, Gizmodo and Ars to keep you up to date with what’s happening.
But it doesn’t stop at live coverage. Various Mac and iPhone designers and developers (together with yours truly and our editor Cody Fink) will participate to the live chat, thus bringing first impressions and thoughts to the discussion.
See you tomorrow folks.
P.S. We’ll be kicking off 30 minutes before the official start of the event. You know, just to gather last minute predictions.
OmniVision Hints at 5MP Camera for iPhone, iPad 2nd Gen
The iPad came out 5 days ago, an Apple Media event is scheduled for tomorrow, but the rumor mill never stops. Today some OmniVision executives suggested that the next generation iPhone and iPad (yeah, already) might include one of their 5 megapixels sensor, instead of the widely adopted 3MP. Actually, JP Morgan analyst Paul Coster added that OmniVision is “well positioned” to provide sensors for Apple’s next products.
OmniVision’s sensor have been used by Apple before, and they have a long history of rumors behind them. Whether this might turn out to be true or not, I think we should only focus on the OS 4.0 now. Honestly, I can’t see myself holding a tablet to snap photos. I really don’t understand why people want this so bad.
Matt Patenaude’s Open Letter to Mozilla
Matt Patenaude, developer of Bowtie and Bluebird, regarding Firefox and Ogg Theora support:
“Mozilla’s decision to use Ogg Theora and Vorbis for video and audio (respectively) is certainly admirable: personally, I would love an open codec to gain widespread industry notoriety and usage. The fact is, however, the production industry has already standardized on H.264. Nowadays, H.264 is perhaps the most common codec for Internet-distributed video, with the exception of Flash, much of which is encoded in H.264 anyway.
Content producers love H.264 because it works with their existing workflow tools, and there’s widespread hardware-level support for H.264 on a number of devices, including the iPhone and Android-based phones. The benefits brought by a switch to Ogg Theora — if any even exist — are vastly outweighed (for most content producers) by the time and effort required to make such a switch, and quite frankly, most producers don’t want to be serving up both H.264- and Ogg-encoded content.”
Could you say he’s wrong? You can’t deny H.264 has become pretty much a standard, and Firefox is still missing from the list of compatible browsers.
I think this time would be quite fair to follow the trend.
Verizon CEO Has Told Apple of iPhone Interest
Associated Press reports:
“Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg says the company has told Apple that it wants to carry the iPhone. But he declined to say when - or even if - the popular smart phone will be available for Verizon Wireless customers.”
So they officially asked. I still have many doubts though.
Apple Keeps Refining the App Store, Adds Top Switcher and Device-specific Categories
Just like we guessed in our previous post here, Apple has pushed some other interface updates to the App Store, and they’re good ones this time.
Apple has finally implemented a “general” switch on the top of the App Store to switch between iPhone and iPad App Store and we can finally browse device-specific categories, like “iPad Productivity”. I keep thinking that all of this should be moved into a separate app (iTunes just can’t make it anymore) but still, you can check out the screenshots after the break.
New MacBooks Scheduled to Launch This Month
MacRumors reports that a user in their forums translated a news appeared in Taiwanese newspaper Apple Daily, pointing out that new MacBook, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models should be on their way to launch this month.
As MacRumors further reports:
“…new models were planned for introduction in March but shortages of Intel’s new chips pushed the launch back to this month. The report also claims that Apple will be pushing all three sizes of the MacBook to a maximum of 640 GB hard drives with 8-hour battery performance across the board.”
I wouldn’t be susprised to see the introduction of SSD based MacBooks at all, though. We’ll see.