On April 8th 2010, Apple announced some major updates that they will be making in their iPhone firmware — OS 4 (not 4.0).

Calling it the next generation of the most advance mobile operating system in the world, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said the iPhone currently has a 64% U.S. mobile browser useage market share.

“To date, we have sold over 50 million iPhones,” Jobs said. “If you’re a software developer, that is a plum market to go after.”

The company provided a developer preview of the next major release of the iPhone operating system.

“We’ve been working on this for a while, it’s pretty great,” Jobs noted. “We are going to ship it this summer.”

The seven updates that Apple announced to the public were:

• Multi-Tasking — Will not reduce battery life. You are simply going to double-tap your screen, and a small popup will come up in a bar at the bottom of your screen. You are then able to see all of the apps that are currently running in the background. Overall it sounds like a great idea, just as long as it doesn’t drain battery life or take up loads of memory, especially because they promised that it won’t.
• Folders — The second announcement that Apple made was folders. In a nutshell, this will increase the maximum amount of apps that you can see on your iPhone/iTouch screen from 180 apps to a whopping 2000+ apps in multiple folders. To create a folder you are going to hold your finger down on an app until it starts wiggling, then drag it over top of another app and let go. Doing this will create a folder that you can then add more apps to and name the folder (i.e. games, utilities, etc.).
• Wallpapers — Apple is finally allowing you to add your own wallpapers behind your apps. It’s about time apple is doing this.
• Enhanced Mail — Apple is creating a unified mail box which is going to take all of your email accounts and put them into one feed, even if they are from multiple services (e.g. Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, Sympatico, etc.). Don’t fret, though, if you don’t want to switch to unified mailboxes you can make it as multiple feeds for all of your accounts. Apple is also creating an app that you can download from the app store so that you can view attachments that you receive in your email. It hasn’t been revealed as to exactly what format of attachments you will be able to open.
• iBooks — Apple also announced that iBooks is coming to the iTouch and iPhone; as we all know, Apple is EXTREMELY generous so they are giving customers all a free Winnie The Pooh book. Wireless syncing is also being allowed across all of your devices which means that after you buy the book, no matter where you are, you have the book.
• Game Center — Apple is introducing a game center which is being compared to the likes of Xbox Live and PS3′s online gaming experience. It is a social gaming network that is going to allow Leaderboards, Matchmaking, Inviting Friends, Achievements/Goals, etc. Pretty cool if you ask me.
• iAd — Last, but certainly not least, is the iAd. It is going to be Apple’s advertising platform on applications. It is made in HTML 5 and is replacing the old advertisment system that developers had access too which was called Admob. Developers are going to receive 60% commision. They are fully-interactive ads, which are simply explained as a mini-app within an app. Some of the advertisments will have mini games in them that will obviously advertise their product. It opens up in a pop-up with a small X in the top righthand corner. As we are all very used to, Apple is completely hyping up iAd an telling us that it is going to be “an emotional experience”. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been touched by an advertisement; angered, yes,  but I have never experienced an emotional event.

Overall Apple clearly gave a lot of thought into just these seven out of an apparent 100 total new features coming with the new firmware.

Editor’s Note: The preceding article was contributed by Steven, a Big 3 News viewer.

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