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Posts Tagged ‘iPod’
Friday, April 9th, 2010
The continued evolution of the iPhone operating system has been rather like completing a puzzle. In its original form, the puzzle lacked important pieces like multimedia messaging and a landscape keyboard, but with each subsequent update, Apple filled those gaps.
Thursday, the company added more missing pieces when it introduced the fourth generation of the iPhone operating system at its headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. After a wait of almost three years, we finally get multitasking–though not for everyone–and other sorely needed features like home screen folders and a unified e-mail in-box. The update is available for developers now with the general release for the iPhone and iPod Touch coming this summer and the iPad in the fall.
It doesn’t deliver quite the changes that we got from the iPhone 3.0 release last year (at least for now), but rest assured that OS 4.0 is a major update that checks off more boxes from our standing iPhone wish list. Though OS 4.0 is set to bring 100 new features, CEO Steve Jobs and Scott Forstall, senior vice president of iPhone software, focused on the seven biggest changes, or “tent poles,” during the course of Thursday’s event.
Multitasking
In our review of the iPhone 3GS, multitasking led our list of common cell phone features that were lacking. Granted, that list was shorter than it had been with previous iPhone versions, but multitasking remained a major omission in light of Android and the Palm Web OS.
Apple, however, has a special talent for making us forget such things by packaging an existing feature in a flashy new way. As Jobs said, Apple isn’t about being first, but rather about “being the best.” We’ll have to get our hands on the update before we fully agree, but Apple appears to have hit the mark. During the demo, Jobs showed how you’ll be able to tap the Home button twice to get a pop-up menu of running apps at the bottom of the display. As you switch back and forth, you’ll return to the exact point you left, even if you’re in the middle of a game. There’s no task manager of any kind and Jobs dismissed competitor devices that have one. As he put it, “If you see a task manager, they blew it.”
Though the pop-up menu only shows four apps at a time (you may be able to swipe through a longer list), you’ll be able to run at least 12 apps simultaneously. Jobs did not say if that number is a hard limit, but we’ll confirm that one exists when we get to play with the OS ourselves. Forstall insisted that multitasking would not affect performance because Apple distilled background processes into seven API services. They include audio from apps like Pandora Radio (yay!), VoIP (for Skype calls), push notifications, and task completion. Multitasking also will support local notifications and related security setting enhancements.
There is bad news with multitasking, though. The feature is compatible only with the iPhone 3GS and the third generation of the iPod Touch. Owners of other iPhone and iPod Touch models still get other OS 4.0 benefits, but you’ll need to upgrade if you want the full package. Before you run to the store, however, keep in mind that OS 4.0 probably won’t appear until after the Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June. At that event–we’re still waiting for firm dates–we should get new hardware, so make your upgrade decision then.
iPhone OS 4.0 features
Folders
Are you sick of scrolling through seven home screen pages to find your app? We certainly are, which is why we welcome the option for home screen folders. After a long press on the home screen (so the icons “jiggle”), you can take an app and drop it on top of another to create a folder. To see the contents of a folder or change the default name, just tap it for an expanded view. You can add as many folders as you like, but we’re unsure if there’s a limit to how many apps you can store in a single folder.
The process appears to be easy, though we wouldn’t say it offers a huge change from the equivalent steps on Android. It’s interesting, though, that with multitasking and the home screen folders, Apple is slowly chipping away at the advantages that Android currently holds. We love a good fight so we can’t wait to see how this develops.
E-mail
Though e-mail has always worked well on the iPhone, the experience has been a little disjointed with its various in-boxes and limited options for message sorting. Fortunately, the OS 4.0 update fixes some of those flaws. Not only will you get a unified e-mail in-box, but also the ability to add multiple Exchange accounts, organize e-mails by thread, quickly switch between accounts, and open attachments with a preferred app. We’re most excited about the unified in-box–sometimes it’s the little things–but we certainly wouldn’t kick the other features out of bed.
iBooks
iPhone owners will be able to get iBooks, the Apple’s e-book reader, on their devices. They’ll also be able to access Apple’s iBookstore to purchase new content. And if you have an iPhone and an iPad, you can read your book on both devices (with just one purchase) and sync your current page.
Enterprise
Though Forstall said 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies are using the iPhone, the device still doesn’t have quite the reach of the BlackBerry in IT departments. Yet, Apple continues to pursue that market with new features like enhanced data protection, mobile device management, wireless app distribution (nice), and multiple exchange accounts. Also new is support for Exchange 2010 and SSL VPN from Juniper and Cisco.
Game Center
Coming “later this year,” so perhaps not at the same time as the general OS 4.0 release, is Game Center. It will bring features like a social gaming network, the ability to invite friends to games, leaderboards, achievements, and the opportunity for “matchmaking” (setting up two people to play). We didn’t get an extensive demo of Game Center so Apple may still be tinkering with it.
iAds
Though Jobs and Forstall spent a lot of time on this feature, we’re not so enamored. Apple knows that iPhone users spend a lot of time in apps and it has recognized the revenue opportunities. iAds appears to be all about making you “want” to click on an ad by offering multimedia and interactive content. Jobs described it as combining “interaction” and “emotion” like we get in TV commercials. For example, if you have an ad about “Toy Story 3,” you’ll be able to see a preview and search local theaters for showtimes.
Though iAds will deliver new functionality to users, developers clearly are the primary target audience. Jobs even said that Apple wants to help developers make money by offering them a 60 percent share of any revenue. Yes, we understand that free apps aren’t really free, but the prospect of more ads cluttering our phone isn’t exciting. And you can be sure iAds will be available beyond the iPhone 3GS.
Other changes
Jobs and Forstall didn’t detail the 93 other new features of iPhone OS 4.0, but we did get a brief glimpse of other additions at the start of the presentation. Here are a few to ponder.
- Spell check
- Larger fonts for e-mail, texts, and alerts
- Persistent Wi-Fi
- Tap to focus video
- Customizable wallpapers for the home screen
- Search text messages
- Choose image size in mail messages
- Recent Web searches
- Create playlists
- 5x digital zoom in camera
- Bluetooth keyboards
- Gifting of apps
- iPod out
- Birthday calendar
- Wake on wireless
- File and delete mail search results
- Web search suggestions
- Rotate photos
What iPhone OS 4 means for the iPad
Version 4.0 of Apple’s iPhone OS is going to bring many welcome improvements to the iPad, including multitasking, app folders, and more capabilities for app developers to tinker with. Unfortunately, though iPhone 3GS and third-gen iPod Touch users can expect to run the new OS this summer, iPad owners will need to keep patient until fall.
On the upside, there are a few OS 4.0 capabilities included on the iPad currently that iPhone users will have to wait until summer to play with. Features such as iTunes playlist creation, home screen wallpaper, and iBooks will have iPhone users giving the iPad envious looks until their upgrade is available. Also, the iPad already offers apps that all can maintain your place after exiting the app. These include: Numbers, Keynote, Pages, and iBooks.
Another silver lining iPad owners can hold on to is the fact that OS 4.0 should come as a free upgrade. The iPad’s OS 3.2 documentation states that OS upgrades will be provided to users free of charge up to and including OS 4.0.
The collective groan from iPad users is mostly over having to wait for OS 4.0′s multitasking capability. Given the iPad’s aptitude for Web and e-mail browsing, it’s a shame that users can’t yet use these features simultaneously–a fact that Netbook proponents are quick to point out.
It might be easier to muster some patience if we only understood why Apple chose to stagger the roll-out to the iPad. No reason was cited at the OS 4.0 unveiling event. Given that Apple releases a new crop of iPods every fall like clockwork, it’s possible that the iPad update is being deliberately delayed to dovetail with an iPod announcement and Apple’s rumored cloud music service. It’s also possible, given the larger screen of the iPad, that porting over iPhone OS 4 simply requires more time.
Resource:
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19512_7-20001998-233.html
Tags: Apple, Ipad, iPhone, iPod, Live blog, OS 4.0, software
Posted in iPhone | 24 Comments »
Thursday, April 8th, 2010
Apple’s iPad sold 300,000 units by the end of its first day of general release, perhaps proving the viability of the consumer tablet market but also setting a bar for its competitors and their own upcoming tablet PCs. HP is already attempting to create differentiators between the iPad and its upcoming slate by emphasizing the latter’s support for Adobe Flash, video conferencing and other functions. Other competitors, including Nokia, could follow suit as they roll out their own wares throughout 2010; but as one analyst warns, the consumer tablet market is still in its infant stages, and still as a whole in need of general acceptance.
Apple’s iPad sold 300,000 units by midnight April 3, including pre-orders, on its first day of general release: enough to ensure the device as a commercial hit, at least in the short-term. In a larger way, though, those sales numbers represent not so much a victory for Apple but a sign that a market indeed exists for consumer-oriented tablets. As companies ranging from Hewlett-Packard to Nokia prepare similar tablet PCs in coming months, Apple’s hardware choices and rollout could become the competitive benchmark by which these competitors map their own choices and strategy.
Some signs of that shift are already present in HP’s strategy for its upcoming tablet, with videos and a company blog showing off the device’s ability to video conference and snap images. HP has also highlighted its Slate’s support of Adobe Flash, which powers rich content on many popular Websites. By contrast, the iPad does not support Flash, nor does the current version include a camera—both things that HP seems eager to highlight as the competitive differentiator for its own offering, due at an as-yet-unannounced point later in 2010.
“With this slate product, you’re getting a full Web browsing experience in the palm of your hand. No watered-down Internet, no sacrifices,” Phil McKinney, vice president and chief technology officer for Hewlett-Packard’s Personal Systems Group, wrote in a March 8 posting on the company’s Voodoo Blog. “A big bonus for the slate product is that, being based off Windows 7, it offers full Adobe support.”
McKinney followed that up a few weeks later with another Voodoo Blog post touting the HP slate’s other abilities.
“Think about the last time you chatted with friends over Skype on your notebook,” McKinney wrote on April 5. “Or uploaded a picture from your mobile phone to Facebook or Flickr. How about the last time you viewed images or video from an SD card or USB device. We know that you expect to be able to capture and share digital content on your mobile devices.”
That same day, Engadget posted an image of what it claimed was an internal HP presentation comparing the specs of the company’s upcoming tablet PC to the iPad. That document suggested that the “HP Slate” would retail for between $549 and $599, and feature a 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530 processor, inward-facing VGA Webcam and outward-facing 3-megapixel camera. Windows 7 Home Premium, tethered to a proprietary HP touch-optimized user interface, will serve as the operating system.
Nokia is also developing a tablet competitor for entrance into the market later this year, according to recent online reports.
“Right now the supply chain (for a Nokia tablet) is being primed up for a fall release. It has to be on the shelf by September-October to meet demand for the holiday window,” Rodman and Renshaw analyst Ashok Kumar told Reuters on April 7. “You don’t want to give that much of a lead to Apple because otherwise it becomes insurmountable.”
Nokia apparently declined to comment on those supposed developments. Other manufacturers, including Fujitsu and Fusion Garage, have tablets in some stage of active development. This year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas highlighted a number of laptops with touch-screen functionality, including the HP Touchsmart tm2 and Fujitsu Lifebook T4410, designed with an eye towards both the tablet and traditional PC markets.
But how will these tablets market themselves? HP and Fusion Garage, creator of the JooJoo tablet, are already touting their Flash support in a bid to slice off some iPad market-share. (Recent online reviews of the JooJoo’s Flash support have been unkind.) Other manufacturers could follow that same route, using Flash support to set themselves apart, whether or not their device uses Windows 7 or another, more proprietary user interface.
“By ignoring a pervasively widely used technology like Flash and treating its parent company with disrespect,” Charles Kind, an analyst with Pund-IT Research, wrote in a March 10 research note, “Jobs opened the door he must have preferred to leave closed: providing his competitors the opportunity [to] define these devices, technologies and markets far more clearly than he himself has done.”
On April 5, HP released a 30-second video demonstrating its slate’s video conferencing and image-snapping abilities, suggesting that both it and other companies may use embedded cameras as another differentiator over the iPad.
Yet despite the hoopla surrounding the iPad’s launch, and other companies’ aggressive entrance into the space, the tablet market is still nascent; as one analyst warns, simply because Apple managed to sell a few hundred thousand units during its new product’s first weekend on the open market doesn’t mean that others will be able to reproduce a similar feat, extra hardware and Flash support or no.
“The market will play host to a flood of ‘me too’ tablets in 2010, but it’s an immature product category with an unproven use case,” CCS Insight analyst Geoff Blaber told Reuters in an April 7 article. “Apple’s brand and service offering means the iPad will be an exception in a category that will struggle to gain consumer acceptance.”
Resource:
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Apple-iPad-Sets-Tablet-Bar-for-Nokia-HP-Microsoft-801771/
Tags: Apple, Apple iPad, HP, iPhone, iPod, ipod app, MICROSOFT, Nokia
Posted in Software Development | 1 Comment »
Thursday, April 8th, 2010
So it’s here. Apple’s uber-hyped tablet, the iPad, finally hit store shelves on Saturday, and eager fans immediately snapped up an estimated 7,00,000 pieces on day one, making this perhaps one of the most anticipated products since…er… the iPhone. It all went as expected-long, winding queues of overnight campers, near-religious fanboy fervour, celebrity sightings and all the other trappings of an Apple launch event. Initial reviews have also been great-the iPad has delivered as promised in terms of performance, usability, features and, most importantly, killer sex appeal. It’s a terrific, innovative and exciting device that will almost certainly open up the market for tablet computers in a way no other brand would have.
In the coming months, we’ll see how exactly the iPad will impact the ‘gadget’ industry. Will it save publishing? Will it revolutionise gaming? Will it change lives? Will it kill laptops and netbooks?
Apple has priced the basic Wi-Fi-only version at $499. The highest-end 3G version goes up to $825. Pricing will play a significant role in whether the iPad gains widespread acceptance or remains a niche product that is reduced to being an expensive indulgence or a fanboy badge of honour. People respond to pricing based on perception-they will compare a product to what they consider alternatives in the same category. Since the iPad is technically creating a whole new category (at least according to Apple), consumers will start comparing it, to either other media players such as the iTouch, or netbooks and laptops. And herein lies the rub. Evaluated on its own as a standalone category, the iPad does seem like it’s reasonably priced. However, things get murkier when you start comparing it to media players or netbooks. Netbooks and laptops offer far greater functionality and much better value for money. Media players, notably Apple’s own iTouch, offer very acceptable experiences at much lower prices. And so, while many consumers will still buy the iPad simply for the quality of its experience, many will consider it and then opt for alternatives which, in their perception, offer better value for money.
However, the fact is that Apple are past-masters at manipulating perception, and convincing huge masses of people that the iPad is something they absolutely cannot do without shouldn’t be a major challenge. It is undeniable that they have delivered an impeccably engineered product that delivers an experience quite unlike any other. And all those complaints about the lack of features, functionality and the closed ecosystem really won’t matter, because the iPad user is looking for an experience, not functionality. Thanks to Apple’s flair for great design and supercharged brand management, it will only be a section of techies and sworn Apple-haters who will end up disappointed, and this is not something that will give Steve Jobs sleepless nights.
While the price of the device itself shouldn’t be a major worry, the price of content is going to play a more significant role. If the iPad is to seriously impact publishing and gaming, then it needs to offer a wide variety of affordable content. But a monthly subscription to the iPad version of the WSJ is $17.99, while an iPhone subscription to the same publication costs less than $10. Going by initial murmurings, books and games are also going to be costlier, on average, on the iPad than on other digital distribution platforms. How this impacts the acceptance of the device as a primary media consumption platform remains to be seen.
What Apple needs to watch closely, this time around, is the competition. While mobile handset manufacturers were caught napping by the iPhone’s revolutionary design, there is already talk of iPad-killing devices hitting markets soon. The iPhone had the advantage of completely upending the market because it changed the perception of what people want from a phone. With the iPad, Apple is the incumbent that is setting the standard-and the competition will look for ways to make their products ‘better than the iPad’. Since there really are no strong preconceived expectations from the consumer for the category, people will be more receptive to competing products this time around. In fact, lots of potential customers have already proclaimed that they are waiting for alternatives from companies such as HP, Asus and India’s own Notion Ink before they take a buying decision. It’s extremely likely that these products, with the benefit of hindsight, may offer comparable experiences with more flexible features and open standards that attack the iPad’s perceived weak areas. In the long-term game, Apple could find that how they respond to competition could make the difference between mainstream dominance and niche presence.
But hey, this is Apple. They have built up a fan following that borders on being a religion, based on their ‘less is more’ philosophy. They have shown that a lot of people value simplicity, aesthetics and quality of experience over features or flexibility or open standards. Will they prove it all over again with the iPad? I wouldn’t bet against it.
Resource:
Yahoo News
Tags: Apple, iPhone, iPod, ipod app, ipod OS, WIFI
Posted in Software Development | 5 Comments »
Thursday, April 8th, 2010
SEATTLE – Topping the wish list for the iPhone and the iPad: broader ability to run more than one program at a time.
On Thursday, Apple Inc. will unveil updates to the software that powers both devices. Although Apple has provided no details, iPhone owners and computer programmers who write applications for the popular smart phone are hoping the company will address their gripes about limits to such multitasking. The matter may escalate as people with iPads, which have larger screens, try to use them in place of more powerful computers.
The iPhone already allows for some multitasking, but that’s largely limited to Apple’s own programs. One of Apple’s recent commercials shows an iPhone user taking advantage of time spent on hold paying bills, checking e-mail, playing games and then switching back to calling.
But Apple has yet to give users ways to seamlessly switch among all the software “apps” available from outside software companies, the way phones from rivals Palm Inc. and Google Inc. already do.
So an iPhone user wouldn’t be able to listen to music using the Pandora program and check a bank account online simultaneously, for example. In most cases, users must return to Apple’s home screen, effectively quitting the open program, before starting a new task.
That’s unacceptable to many users and software developers, and full multitasking remains high on many people’s wish lists. Because Apple’s new iPad runs the same software as the iPhone, changes would apply to that larger gadget as well. Some people have held off buying one because of its inability to run more than one program at a time.
But the reasons Apple is believed to be resistant to broader multitasking — worries about battery life, performance and security — remain.
Ross Rubin, an analyst from NPD Group, said he believes those are still big issues for Apple, and he doesn’t believe full multitasking will be among the changes in the iPhone operating system to be announced at Apple’s Cupertino, Calif., headquarters Thursday. Apple did not immediately answer requests for more information about its plans.
Apple has given software developers limited ways to work around the multitasking restrictions, such as allowing them to send very basic notifications nudging iPhone users to open an app for updated information.
Some people hope that if Apple doesn’t add multitasking, it would at least make the notifications less intrusive. Now, if a notification comes through, users must deal with it or dismiss it before returning to what they were doing.
The last time Apple made a major revision to its iPhone operating software, in March 2009, it added features that many iPhone users had been clamoring for since the device launched two years earlier. Those features included the ability to copy, cut and paste, and a search function that worked across all programs.
But this time, beyond multitasking, there seemed to be fewer big-ticket requests from everyday iPhone owners.
The new version of the iPhone system that Apple is announcing Thursday, likely to be known as OS 4.0, probably won’t be available for a few months. Most of the changes would have immediate appeal to software developers, not regular users, said Charles Golvin, an analyst for Gartner Inc.
Golvin believes Apple is likely to launch a system for delivering ads to iPhone and iPad apps, reflecting its January acquisition of mobile advertising company Quattro Wireless.
Although many of the changes Apple makes to the iPhone software will take awhile to translate into benefits for the average iPhone user, the most committed Apple watchers and bloggers have been honing their iPhone wish lists.
They want, among other things, a unified inbox for all e-mail accounts, support for more e-mail folders, wireless synching with a computer and a way to connect an iPhone with a regular keyboard, by plugging one in or using Bluetooth wireless technology.
But as is always the case, predicting the next move by secrecy-obsessed Apple is next to impossible.
“It’s Apple,” Golvin said, “so who … knows what actually could come out.”
Resource:
Yahoo News
Tags: Apple, iPhone, iPod, ipod app, multitasking, WIFI
Posted in Software Development | 4 Comments »
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