iPhone OS 4.0 could see 'imminent' release, developer hints - Page 3

Perhaps it is your PC http://www.pcworld.com/article/18165..._for_some.html

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Bitch and world slaps you silly."

Sometimes Im amazed that computers work at all.

Or the folks sitting in front of them.

Touché.

Nexus introduced 20,000 sold first week, iPhone released on Vodafone UK 1/14/2010 50,000 sold the FIRST DAY!

So what does Apple need to do again?

Apparently nothing. Its funny. Apple sells 2.5x as many iPhones in a county saturated with iPhones but Ive read that the Nexus was a success. I suppose its all relative.

Regardless, the Android mindshare seems to be high enough that I think well see a demo of iPhone OS v4.0 come the 27th with many of the features that Android and WebOS already have.

Things Id like to see...

• Gaming API to make gaming even more of a focus
• Homepage that allows for Widgets, like weather
• New Homepage Widget API so that devs can sell really cool Widgets on the App Store
• Multitasking for the 3GS onward (I have an idea how this should work to not be problem like it is for devs and users on WebOS and Android)
• Robust app for keeping detailed history of All notifications. Making it searchable and accessible nearly everywhere
• Safari update with ability to search pages
• Folder for apps so I don't have to use so many pages (less likely)
• Smart Folders for apps that can categorize many apps in multiple places, like Recently Added apps
• I'd like a way to see how many times I've accessed an app, last time I used it, like in iTunes audio. Also, like in Windows' Program Manager.
• Aggregated Mail accounts the way multiple contact sources are aggregated on the iPhone
• No animated backgrounds (such a stupid idea for a phone)
• Fix the way Find My iPhone is turned on and off on the iPhone (not likely)
• Universal voice-to-text (I think theyll eventually add it but it will take to long to get right this year)
• Ability to remove some of Apples default apps from the Home Screens

no chance apple arent stupid.

Apple sold 1.5 million 3GS in its first week. Nexus sold 20,000. Yeh man great success. You want the iphone like windows are you mad???

I reset only when iTunes refuses to sync, and tells me I need to reset.

Restore is tantamount to formatting the drive. It may not be a precisely correct use of the word.

As posted on other sites, the 4.0 is the version of the update of the app, not the version of the iPhone OS. Sorry to say.

Whatever you posted it's certain 4.0 is coming after 3.

While I agree that iPhones are better, for me at least, those figures only support the fact that good marketing is effective. It doesn't always mean the product is better. Although in this case it does. So I wouldn't go around simply quoting sales figures to prove a point.

Hitler was a marvellous salesman.

Did you respond to the write posts? I have no idea what Dick Applebaum and my posts had to do with your comment.

"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."

Shame on you, this wasn’t even a heated debate.

I didn't something had to be heated

Like a blitzkrieg into Pol. (Dammit! See what you did?)

Extremely inappropriate. To equate Google or Apple to such is demeaning.

You could get sanctioned for it. I suggest you pull the innuendo.

Why do you equate the Tablet being carrier neutral with Apple being stupid?

Apple's contract with AT&T is for the iPhone and it is rumored to end this year.

Apple can build a Tablet (and later iPhones) that can work on any (approved) carrier and be sold by that carrier.

Likely, this would mean that Apple would continue receive subsidies from the carriers that sell their devices. And, Apple could sell an unsubsidized device that runs on any carrier.

To my mind, that equates to more acceptance for the Apple devices and more profit to Apple.

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Interesting post!

• Gaming API-- I have been fiddling with the SiO2 Game Engine, and it offers some promise!. It takes scenes (games, if you will) created with Blender 3D, exports them a scene file that is combined with an XCode template of pre-coded game functions. The result is compiled and runs on the iPhone or the Touch. I can see the value of incorporating something like this into XCode. Both Blender 3D and SiO2 are free, open source!

• Multitasking-- I agree, care to expand on your idea?

I agree with the others!

I would add:

• Improved navigation-- I have in mind, kind of an hierarchical coverflow, where the top level is app type (games, utilities, music, etc... alphabetic listing, active apps). Then, when you select a cover, you drill-down to the next level, etc.

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What is it with weather widgets (gadgets for those in Windows land)?

What happened to looking out the window?

The weather widgets I've seen are always so out of date they are next to useless, for current and accurate weather information there are far better sites e.g. in Australia it's the Bureau of Meteorology

Regarding forecasts "tomorrow will be the same as today" has a surprisingly high accuracy rate.

I'm just wondering why someone who apparently has a Macbook, bothers with syncing their iPhone with a windows machine, when iTunes works so much better under OSX.

I’d like to see a Gaming API that allow for touch controls on screen that can be instantly linked to a HW D-pad accessory. Making it easy for developers to make this virtual to physical connection via the 30-pin connector without having to build for a specific HW vendor making the D-Pad.

This would open up the gaming accessory market by standardizing the developers efforts while making it simple to do. It would also help bring more and better games to the platform and hardcore mobile gamers wouldn’t feel be afraid that they’d have to buy multiple HW D-pads for different game vendors.



The best solution I can come up with is like the Push Notification Service. PNS has to first be setup by the developer who codes for which items will use the service. The user then decides which apps and which services they want turned on.

This is how I think background apps should work. Most apps simply don’t need to run in the background and many could be very harmful to your user experience if left to run in the background unchecked. The apps that benefit from running in the background will be enabled by the developer according to specific RAM and CPU requirements. This helps ensure that the app will not impose on the rest of the system in negative way.

The user then can turn on Background Apps in Settings and choose which app(s) from the list. An icon appears in the Menu Bar signifying a background app has been launched. When you click the Home Button the app goes away but it’s still running as indicated by the Menu Bar icon.

(More and better ideas are welcome. Love to hear what others think is the best solution.)



Oh yeah, forgot about that one. I hope they have something slick for the Maps app. I am having increased issues with the current one. I’m not sure if it’s the HW, the OS or something server-side, but I suspect it’s got to be something localized since the location is often off or has trouble getting a GPS signal.

PS: I’d love to have a GPS chip in the next run of Mac notebooks. It’s small, cheap, and I think it will become standard, eventually. Can have "Find My Mac" with MobileMe, can use HTML5’s Geol-ocationfeature, which Google already uses for mobiles, for automatically knowing your location for searches. Then you could have Dashboard widgets like weather and movies that automatically know where you are without having to change you zipcode. They added an auto-find to the timezone section of the clock in Snow Leopard that uses your IP address, but they could do much, much more.



"If tomorrow will be the same as today” then there would no such thing as weather. Looking out of a window can’t tell me the temperature, can’t tell me the highs and lows of the day. It can’t tell me the rest of the week forecast, including snow, ice and rain storms. it Can’t tell me the humidity or wind temperature unless there are specific visual clues. It can’t tell me the weather for other parts of the world, which I may be going to or have family. And you never know, I might not be able to get to a window prior to getting dressed and have head out into a cold front or pouring storm.

Note, my example was just an example. I’m not one to care much about the weather. I’d rather have other Home Screen based apps developed by clever people.

Nah. Certain quarters of the American political spectrum have mainstreamed the idea that any and everything you don't like is much like Hitler/Stalin/Pol Pot/Castro/Chavez/Mussolini.

As far as I can make out, there is simply no limit to and no level of overtly grotesque disproportionateness that is out of bounds, these days, and I've noticed that the habit has spilled over into other than political discussions.

Thus, if you think a public service announcement encouraging saving energy is exactly how the Holocaust happened, it's not much of a stretch to start yelling about how not getting a rebate as fast as you want is an obvious example of totalitarianism. Or that Google is Hitler. Or that Steve Jobs is Stalin.

Stupidity: all the kids are doing it.

Oh, and if you don't believe me, you don't have to go any further than our own Political Outsider, which is why I don't imagine Hitler references even register with the mods as anything remarkable. Apparently it's the end of days and we're all living in death camps.

I see why you like Apple so much! You are totally within their paradigm.

Comparing your description to existing solutions is interesting. Backgrounder is one of the most popular programs that Apple won't let you use on your iPhone.

The way it works is that the USER (not the developer) decides which apps to background, as they go along. If you push the home button, the app closes normally. But if you hold the home button, it will stay running in the background.

When an app is running in the background, its icon has a symbol superimposed on it, making it easy to tell which apps are open.

The Backgrounder app lets the user override the default behavior described above. Apps can be set up to always run in the background, or to never run in the background.

I set up TuneWiki to always run in the bavckground, so I need to always shut it down by holding the home button, instead of briefly pushing it. When I want it to stay on, I just press the home button and fire up another app.

There are also add-on programs for Backgrounder, which add more functionality and various choices, making it similar to WebOS's "card" system.

I am a long time user of Backgrounder. I like the badging of the icon that is running in the background, though forget to mention that in my post, but I dont think its the best way to tell if you have background apps running. I think having an icon in the Menu Bar would be best so I dont have to go and hunt for the app through multiple pages.

i think quick access to an running in the background could be had by flicking right to the search page as its mostly blank and used prior to searching. The background app(s) could be listed there. Or flick up to see your Notification history as well any background apps.

I also dont care for the way the developer is out of the loop, of course, they have no choice at this point so its not their fault. I think giving the developers a method for which to control which apps can be backgrounded and allows them to cater the performance needs when its running in the background makes it easy for users to choose the appropriate app(s) and gives peace of mind that it wont inhibit the rest of the system. For those like us with jailbroken iPhones its not a big deal to monitor our systems but for the average user this is more than they want to do and more than they should be expected to do. Im sure Apple agrees.

I dont like pressing and holding the Home Button. I often forget since I routinely dont use it and then have to go back in to the app to do it again. Id like a completely different system. My idea fails since the user may not always want that app running in the background but I think that if you want it more often than not to do so, maybe setting the app to always run in the background expect when you press and hold the Home Button for 3 sec would be better all around. Reverse order of the same thing.

I think WebOS cards work for it but I didnt like the action for switching apps. I also have to wonder if Apples hubris would prevent them from copying anything as blatant from Palm even if they thought it was the best way to do it. I think that that alone will make them not use a card system for multitasking.


PS: The biggest reason people want background apps seems to be for streaming music. I have a feeling that Lala was bought to incorporate streaming into the iTunes app, which already does run in the background, making the need moot for many people, unless they still want to use a 3rd-party source like Pandora.

Left for search, up for notifications/widget home screen, down for background apps/direct app switching. Having a dedicated screen for background/switching is actually better than Palm's deck metaphor, IMO, because it doesn't force you into a linear scroll thing to get to what you want-- given the relatively few simultaneous apps that can be realistically run on a handset, a page of icons should be more than sufficient to let you jump right to where ever you want.

On a device the size of an iPhone flicking to adjacent screens is easier than selecting an icon in the dock on (desktop) OS X, or using tab/command to bring up the app switcher. I'm actually a little surprised that Apple hasn't already made use of the virtual real estate afforded by up and down-- unless they're worried that an errant flick might send you hurtling off onto screens you'd never seen before and you would become frightened.

However, the advent of system-wide search to the left suggests they're willing to go there, and I'm guessing they will.

That sounds good as a hardware extension. IMO, there also needs to be some kind of "game engine(s)" support/software APIs.


I submitted a feature request that would allow a class of apps/push notifications that would allow a notification to launch an app (not just notify) if a certain set of system (Apple) and user conditions existed, e.g., no no other bg app was already running, no system app requiring major resources was running, etc.

The idea was if your phone wasn't doing anything, why not let the notification launch the app, run the app and go away. For example a "Where are you" app to keep track of the kids?

With the advanced capabilities of the Tablet and newer iPhones, I suspect Apple will relax multitasking restrictions.

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A lot of it depends on how it's said, and what it's referencing.

Over time, people seem to have a need for greater superlatives, both good and bad.

The word "star" was used for the early major actors in film. But that wasn't good enough. So "superstar"came about.

But some company or agent always tries to make their charge seem bigger than any other, so we also now have "megastar".

Where it will end I don't know, but people seem to have a need to make something seem greater than it actually is.

Apple isn't selling to the geeky customer. They are selling to the majority of potential customers for the phone. Because of that, they aren't going to allow something that the average user will get confused about, and so think that Apple's device is at fault.

Demanding that the user manage apps for background use to save battery or cpu cycles, is too much to ask of Apple. They won't do it.

What Jobs said, is what will happen. Once Apple is satisfied that processor power and battery life are adequate, they will have it, but not before.

They don't want the customer fooling around with these settings because they can mess things up that way if they don't know what they're doing.

That goes against Apple's philosophy, which is KISS.

If some people, and there are a few of them, who can't abide by that, then this isn't the product for them. The rest of us will wait until our contracts are up, and get the new model.

Honestly, there are a LOT if people with iPhones, and Touches. This isn't anything that most care about, and for the rest of us, it's a minor inconvenience that Apple will resolve when they've got it working well.

There were a lot of complaints about the lack of C/paste, but now that's it's been out for a while, most people still don't use it. Apple knows this, and will take the time to get this right, the way they did with C/paste. That way, when they DO come out with it, people will be happier with it, and other companies will scramble to try to do it the way Apple does.

Happens all the time!

They don't do that for the iPhone and I believe its been documented in a few places that when developers buy hardware from Apple they actually are put behind full paying customers.

Problem with the user is users are dumb. They don't know that leaving an app not designed for background operation will drain their battery like Fat Albert on a milkshake. They don't NEED to know.

So by letting the developers design their apps for backgrounding and then letting the OS know and then finally letting the user have control over that is far better than what you have now with Backgrounder.

I use Backgrounder myself, but I personally find it way to administratively busy. I spend more time managing my apps than I do just enjoying my apps than I'd like, though I use it because in a few situations I find it important.

Giving the user all the control leads to chaos and geekiness. Giving a better balance is frankly going to be better. That's the philosophy that makes the iPhone so great.

Since you use Backgrounder yourself, do you have a solution to propose that would be as ideal as Apple made copy/paste for the iPhone. I think my idea is okay, but I think its missing a key component that I just cant wrap my head around to really make it great.

I wouldn't say most consumer are dumb, few people want to be bothered with managing the resources on their phone. I certainly would not want to deal with it.

Seems the sticking point would be setting a hierarchy of apps running. When the phone runs out of memory something has to be bumped. How does the OS decide which app gets closed? What is an elegant and easy way to give the user the ability to decide what apps can close? Perhaps the OS would alert the user that one of the apps needs to be closed before another can be opened.

Surely the reason why Apple purchased the engineering IP of that mapping company. They haven't incorporated any of Google Maps newest features. I absolutely believe they are totally redesigning the maps app.

On the back end, this is where the real talent at Apple will shine, though most people wont even realize it and of the ones that do know about most will likely say Apple is artificially limiting my usage. Love like jailbreaking for those people .

I think Apple will make a way for a set number of app(s) to be loaded in the background and those app(s) combined can only use a set amount of RAM, this way the entire system can still perform effectively.

The original and 3G had 128MB RAM with the OS taking up nearly half of it without any of the Apple 3rd party apps running in the background or the use of a 3rd-party app in the foreground. Having the iPod running with multiple pages in Safari was rough.

With the 3GS that problem has been eliminated and there could be plenty of RAM for background apps to use, but I doubt theyd give it that much which is why I think theyll go the Push Notification Route and have developers work to make their apps function in the background with strict performance rules.

The way I decribed it earlier is the most elegant way to create it that I can think of, but I do think its missing something.
This is my 3GS with several Safari pages open, the iPod playing and obviously the iStat app I used when I took the screenshot.

Apple has never been one to rush into just adding features and I don't see them starting now.

Look at the adoption of the Android phones - while the sales are OK, they are hardly earth-shattering - even having the best feature the iPhone lacks - the "Big V"

Would I like them to release new features more often? Sure - I am a geek and I always like new things to play with But remember Apple's focus on the customer experience. Look how long it took them to add cut and paste. I wouldn't hold my breath \

Apple has added new features in midterm updates many times in the past, and there's no reason to believe they won't do so again.

Competition is more fierce than it was, and Apple can't stay aloof, and pretend it doesn't exist. It's not possible that Apple hasn't been working on many of these features for some time. The way software development works, and it's true for OS's as well, is that many features get finished well before the project as a whole is complete.

Developers deal with this in different ways. Some, as Palm, and Google are doing now, introduce features as they become available, and others wait for a more substantial release, but come out with a major number upgrade only when a major overhaul of the project is done. Others only release bug fixes until the project is complete, and then release everything at once.

Apple has used all of those approaches for different software, including OS releases in the past. An iPhone OS upgrade isn't nearly as big an undertaking as the computer version is, which is why they can do it once a year, rather than every 18 months to 30 months.

I'm positive that many features are completely ready and bug tested, and are just sitting there waiting for release. Only features that are dependent on overhauls of other areas of the OS won't be ready, or nearing completion.

It's up to Apple as to how they want to do this. But they could if they wanted to.

Probably because my Windows PC is vastly more powerful than my Macbook. Plus my Macbook's hard drive couldn't store even 1/4 of my iTunes library.