I’ve been running through Steve Jobs presentation on iPhone OS4.0, in his event of developer’s preview. A lot of it has come true! Apple enhanced several features and upgraded solutions for the operating system, including multi-tasking and IAD (iPhone advertisement), along with a number of improvements tailored to enterprise community.

It might be a dodged concept of multi-tasking, but finally it is now available on the new OS. OS with 1,500 APIs gives you a long list of enhanced functionalities; from applications to games, and from VOIP calls to your unified inbox. As far as the battery life and its conservation are concerned, Apple multi-tasking is designed in a swap mode, cutting down on battery consumption.

Multi-tasking:

Given a dock at the bottom of your touch-screen, now you can easily switch through applications. You can run your music and get traffic alerts, while searching for a restaurant in one time. The other side of the story says that you can freeze your application while switching onto another. For instance, if you were playing soccer and want to switch to your mailbox, the first app freezes in the state you left, and when you come back, you can enjoy your game from right there. This sounds good but it is not really multi-tasking, which means parallel functioning. It is good because frozen app doesn’t consume power.

Apple, in its event announced 7 services that come within multi taking. They are:

• Background audio
• VOIP
• Background location
• Push notifications
• Local notifications
• Task completion
• App switching

iAD

iAD, new service for mobile advertisement that promises to bring interactivity and emotions on one platform. The service is counting 1 billion opportunities during the year along with 60% developer share. The basic concept of iAD is to lay off the burden of same old boring banner ads. Apple decides to interact with the users on emotion lines. This brings animated ads on iPhone without having to leave current app.

iPhone is devoid of flash so on what do they make those interactive ads? – HTML5. The only problem that developers see currently is that programming for ads would be intense and time costing. This brings iAD to critical criticism which we’ll deal in next posts.

Folder

A much awaited Folder option is also a part of the new release. Now, you can group icons from similar category into one. Just slide an icon onto an icon of similar category, ad it submerges into a folder. You can add any number of folders, giving a neat look to your home screen. Folders can also be dropped on the dock for easier access.

Email

The next best thing – unified inbox! This is an enhanced mailing option that allows users to check-in their new messages or even threaded conversations from multiple accounts. Faster inbox switching and a unified platform for all the mailing services make it even better. Now, users will directly open their email attachments with apps and access across all their accounts without navigating away from the inbox.

Enterprise:

While on the Enterprise facet, Apple now introduces a new Mobile Device Management that will access simple wireless configuration and management. It will also let the developers directly co-ordinate and wirelessly distribute apps to their client. Keeping another major improvement with respect to the security especially for enterprise users, iPhone OS 4.0 has new encryption options and support for forthcoming SSL VPN applications. It also supports multiple Exchange accounts beside the compatibility with Exchange Server 2010 that offers more flexibility to the corporate users.

Games Centre

With Games as the most popular category in app store, Apple also brings some changes in the gaming centre. Gaming becomes social now! You can play against your friends, challenge them and see leader boards for performance evaluation. In case you don’t have friends of your own, Apple goes a step further and recommends 4 other player of your calibre to play against you. This feature seems to strength gaming, even more.

SDK

Event was only a preview for developers so that they tighten their belts before the SDK is out. 1500 new APIs include Calendar, Photo library, SMS within the App, Automated testing tools (that Apple uses itself for approval), quick look, and accelerated framework. iPhone OS 4.0 promises a better “Drag and Drop UI”.