Multitasking
Steve Jobs said at the event, "we weren't first to the party, but we're gonna be the best." Multitasking is coming to the iPhone and it will be done in a way that doesn't hinder performance or battery life. These are the two biggest issues that other mobile platforms that already support background processes face, so it makes sense that Apple wants to make sure these problems are addressed in its multitasking solution.
gdgt quotes Scott Forstall, SVP of iPhone software as saying:
"How are we adding multitasking while preserving battery life and performance. We looked at tens of thousands of apps in the app store, and we've distilled the services those apps need to run in the background. So we implemented those services, and we're providing those services as APIs to developers so they can add multitasking while preserving battery life."
He continues:
"We're providing seven multitasking services. First: background audio streaming. Pandora is great, but until now if you left Pandora to go to another app, the music would stop. Not anymore!"
Tim Westergren from Pandora then demoed how Pandora will work in iPhone 4.0 OS, saying, "it's s not an exaggeration to say that the iPhone has singlehandedly changed the trajectory of Pandora."
Another popular app, Skype for iPhone, was also demonstrated on stage -- showing how the OpenTable app can be accessed while on a live Skype call.
Background location is a new part of iPhone 4.0 OS. Background location will work with social apps and with turn-by-turn applications. In turn-by-turn apps, if you leave the app, it can still continue to track your location by GPS in the background. This can be heavy on power consumption, so it will likely be best used in the car.
Social apps also use location -- with Loopt, Foursquare, Gowalla and others gaining in popularity. With social applications, Apple is taking privacy very seriously and is adding in an indicator to the status bar that will let you know if something is tracking your location or not.
Additionally, users will have control over what applications can use location and which apps can't. This can be done on an app-by-app basis.
Push notifications were first introduced with iPhone 3.0 OS and have proved very popular, with more than 10 billion push notifications sent in the last nine months. Local notifications will be a new part of iPhone 4.0 OS.
Folders
Many have complained about Apple's obstruction of any sort of file system layer. Although plenty of apps have utilized workarounds for a lack of file system access, it's still a pain when attempting to manage data on your phone or iPad.
Folders will be added to iPhone 4.0 OS and they look very similar to Stacks from Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6. You can drag and drop apps onto one another to create application folders. This will take the number of maximum apps that you can visually see on your phone from 180 to 2160!
Mail is getting a total overhaul in iPhone 4.0 OS.First and foremost, Mail will now feature a unified inbox. For those of us who have several mail accounts on their iPad or iPhone, this is a great, great addition. Oh, and multiple Exchange accounts are supported too, so Google Apps and Exchange users don't have to play Sophie's Choice with push mail anymore!
Mail can also now be organized by thread. Mail can now open attachments within Mail and have the file open in an app on the phone or iPad.
iBooks
iBooks came to the iPad last week. With iPhone 4.0 OS, it's coming to the iPhone and iPod touch too. This is a clear sign that Apple is in the eBook space to play. They arguably have the largest install base of any eReading device on the market if you count iPhones, iPod touches and iPad devices.
Enterprise
The iPhone never really went after the enterprise phone market, instead, the enterprise came to Apple, by way of executives who wanted to the new hotness and IT guys and gals who had to suffer and find a way to fit the devices into their ecosystems.
Three years later, Apple is ready to really embrace the enterprise in a big way. The first step will be by building better email encryption. They'll make the APIs available to developers and allow data to be encrypted inside their applications too.
Additionally, Apple is stepping up its mobile device management and deployment management tools. iPhone 4.0 OS also adds wireless app distribution for internal apps (a la BlackBerry's BES) and support for SSL VPN.
Game Center
Despite Nintendo's claims to the contrary, the iPhone platform is becoming a mobile powerhouse for gaming. Apple wants to make it even better by adding a social gaming network. Think XBox Live but for your iPhone or iPad.
iAd
Apple's doing mobile advertising. Jobs says, "users like free apps, developers like to make some money." iAd is designed to help them do that. However, this won't be like existing solutions, because according to Jobs, "most [mobile] advertising sucks." He's got a point, the AdMob model leaves a lot to be desired.
Taking a swipe at Google he says,
"On a mobile device, search is not where it's at, not like on the desktop. They're spending all their time on these apps, they're using apps to get to data on the internet, not generalized search."
"The average user spends over 30 minutes using apps on their phone. If we said we wanted to put an ad up every 3 minutes, that'd be 10 ads per device per day ‚ about the same as a TV show. We're going to soon have 100m devices. That's a billion ad opportunities per day!"
Essentially, Apple wants to bring the classic advertising model from television to applications. Because iAd is built into iPhone 4.0 OS, interactive video content can be included in an ad without ever taking the user out of the application.
Users can return to an app anytime they want and Apple thinks that users will be more interested in clicking on interactive ads if no penalty is involved for doing so. It's true, if clicking on an ad won't take me out of my application and disrupt what I'm doing, I'm going to be more likely t do it.
They'll also split ad revenue with developers 60/40 (developers get 60%). In a demonstration, Jobs showed off how a game could be built into an ad.
And More...
These are just seven of the biggest features coming to iPhone 4.0 OS. More than 100 user features are being added and developers will have access to more than 1500 new APIs.
Developers get access to a the iPhone 4.0 OS preview today and it will be launching on the next iPhone, the iPhone 3GS and the third generation iPod touch this summer. Those devices will do everything. For the iPhone 3G and the iPod touch 2G, they will run many of the new features but won't support everything. For instance, they can't do multitasking, the hardware just isn't good enough.