So Apple’s iOS4 is finally here, released at 10am Pacific Time today. That’s 6pm for those of us in British lands.
Apple’s server was immediately barraged with iPhone users attempting to be among the first to get their hands on the new OS, and many internet connections have crumbled under the pressure. My parents, for instance, had to wait two hours for the download to take place, only to have the internet cut off half way through and have to start a second download of four hours. I still don’t think they’ve succeeded.
I was among the lucky users whose download went smoothly and within half an hour the new iOS4 was downloaded and installed onto my 3GS.
First impressions?
The first thing that strikes you about iOS4 is the visuals. Having a wallpaper in the background can make your iPhone look much more visually appealing than the standard black screen.
The folders? They do wonders to clear up the clutter on your home screens. Before iOS4, my phone had 6 heavily cluttered home screens, and the interface looked a bit of a mess at times. Within ten minutes of playing around with folders, I had reduced it to three easily navigable and organised home screens. And I could easily improve on that if I wasn’t so averse to touching my games and front screen. Making folders is easy and fun, though has made rearranging apps not in folders a bit clumbersome as the iPhone sometimes locks them into folders instead.
You finally have a place to hide the Stocks app!
Just so you can see the results of having folders, these three home screens are my home screens. And it did just take 10 minutes to do.
Multi-tasking? I haven’t had much chance to play with this because not a lot of my apps are multi-task supportive yet. But what I’ve seen is nice. This isn’t multitasking in the traditional sense. Rather, double-tapping the home button brings up your most recently used apps which can be accessed from within the app you are currently using. The iPhone will then pause the current app and switch, meaning you can go use a new app and quickly switch back without having to start all over again.
It’s easy to use, effective and battery efficient. The downside is that you will have to wait for all your favourite third-party apps to become multi-task compatible, many of which currently are not. But pressure will mount on developers to make it a standard feature, so I see most apps becoming multi-task compatible soon.
The bigger downside to iOS4 is that not all apps currently work on it. The disappointment of the day was finding David Mitchell’s Soapbox, one of my favourite apps, doesn’t run on iOS4. This isn’t a huge problem because I don’t see it lasting very long. But it is annoying. Most apps seem to work, though, so don’t fret too much.
I haven’t had time to properly examine all the changes yet, but there’s a plethora of changes available to find plenty of useful things from spellchecking to a unified email inbox. AppAdvice has a Changelog chronicling the changes they find. It’s worth checking out so you know what to look for.
Overall, I stick with my original claims. iOS4 doesn’t really bring anything revolutionary to the table, but it’s fixing its mistakes from the past and catching up in areas it has neglected. Detractors will say “been there, done that,” but I think that’s the point. iOS4 brings a lot of nice and useful features to the iPhone and has fixed many of its weaknesses, making the iPhone that much stronger as a mobile device.
I think one of my biggest frustrations with the new release is the fact that there’s still no way to change ring tones for emails, alerts and such. It’s pretty friggin’ annoying. I mean, what would be the purpose of denying one the right to change a ring tone? Seriously?
And with the “multitasking,” I’m not really sure how they can even call it that. Multitasking is when you perform multiple operations simultaneously. Apple’s version of “multitasking” is putting the app on pause while you do something else. Maybe it’s just me, but it sounds a lot more like a marketing ploy than any actual improvement in the system… other than that the app returns to the state it was in when you left it.
Anyway, I like the new blog. Keep up the good work.
I’ve found not being able to change text/email alert tones annoying, too. But it hasn’t been a major issue for me. That said, it’s basic enough that it should have been included as standard in the original iPhone. And it’s still not here.
I think “fast-app switching” is what most developers are terming it now. I like it. True multitasking really kills the battery, and Apple still haven’t found a way around that yet.
It doesn’t have a huge functional benefit over multitasking either. Fast-app switching has a lot of the convenience benefits that multitasking does without draining the battery. When the majority of apps become fast-app supportive we’re going to get a nice experience.
The only real frustration is loading and downloading things. That’s the one area I see where multitasking still reigns supreme.