Tag: iphone

APPLES iPHONE OS 4 oficially released!

its here its great(er) and it has tons of new features. i cant name them all, mainly because im lazy and theres other posts to post, but heres a few of the cool ones:

• Multitasking: It’s here, finally. It’s handled with a simple task switcher: double click your home button, and you get a list of running apps. Select, switch, done. Multitasking is limited to audio streaming, VoIP and GPS apps, as well as a few other allowances: they can finish specific, important tasks in the background, for example. As far as non-music/nav/VoIP apps, those can be suspended in the background, but not left running. (See below.) Full details here.

• Fast app switching: With iPhone 4’s multitasking, most apps aren’t actually running in the background—just certain functions of the app, like an audio stream or a GPS lock. But! All apps can now be frozen, in full, so that when you reopen them, they’re restored to exactly the state they were in when they were closed.

• Local notifications: Notifications can be sent between apps on the phone, not just from remote servers. In other words, if something important happens in an app you’ve opened and moved away from, a notification will pop up in whatever app you’re using at the time, effectively saying “switch back to me!” It’s a fairly clever way to keep track of multiple apps without the need for a start bar or dock-type interface. From Apple’s dev guidelines:

Exclusive update on the New iPhone (iPhone HD) with a front-facing camera!

You heard right, folks — according to the Wall Street Journal, Apple is currently “developing a new iPhone to debut this summer,” and as if that weren’t enough, it’s also “working on another model for US mobile phone operator Verizon Wireless.” As of this moment, details about the break are nowhere to be found, but it’s not like either tidbit is shocking. This summer will mark the one-year anniversary of the iPhone 3GS, and if the Cupertino-based company keeps with its historical refresh pattern, we’re just a few months out from seeing the latest and greatest iPhone. There’s also been no shortage of iPhone-to-Verizon rumors over the years, with the latest of ’em happening during the run-up to the iPad’s launch.

Update: We’re now learning that the “next iPhone is being manufactured by Taiwanese contract manufacturer Hon Hai Precision Industry,” which just so happens to be the same outfit responsible for crafting all prior iPhones. That’s according to “people briefed on the matter” and sourced by the WSJ. It’s also stated that the world’s first CDMA iPhone will be manufactured by Pegatron Technology, which we caught just last week dabbling in some of NVIDIA’s Tegra 2-based wares. If all goes well, Pegatron could begin mass production of the CDMA iPhone (exact model not disclosed) this September, so it’s hard to say if Sprint or Verizon would have access before the all-too-lucrative holiday season. As for quotes on the matter? Most everyone involved wouldn’t say a word, but an AT&T spokesman did utter the following: “There has been lots of incorrect speculation on CDMA iPhones for a long time. We haven’t seen one yet and only Apple knows when that might occur.”

On a week that couldn’t possibly get any bigger for Apple, that’s exactly what just happened. Everyone suspected that a fourth-generation iPhone was in the works, but having an outlet like the WSJ confirm it just makes the summer that much harder to wait for. There’s also the possibility that 2010 will be the final year that AT&T retains its death-grip on the iPhone, but by the sound of this report, it still seems as if the nation’s largest GSM carrier may nab exclusive rights on the latest iPhone. I also can’t help but wonder about the future of a true 4G iPhone — will Sprint manage to grab a WiMAX-enabled version? Will Verizon get its grubby paws on an LTE model? I figured only Jobs would know, but now… there might just be someone else out there willing to spill the beans.

Update 2: Soon after the news broke, I was informed that the next-generation iPhone would be announced on June 22nd (a Tuesday, naturally) and would be dubbed the iPhone HD (a name that has been tossed around before). That certainly makes sense given that Apple almost certainly has to up the pixel count in order to rival the EVO 4G, HD2 and all of those other high-res handsets, but we’re still reserving judgment until we see that fateful media invite hit our inbox.

Update 3: John Gruber’s just weighed in with some more tidbits, in his characteristically polite way. Gruber says the next model will have an A4-class SoC, a 960 x 640 display, a front-facing camera, and that iPhone OS 4.0 will enable third-party multitasking. A pretty safe set of predictions, in all, but Gruber’s done pretty well in the past, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

The Most Amazing iPhone App EVER!

You hear that sound? That’s the sound of my mind being blown.

When the folks over in Cupertino strapped a little speaker to the bottom of the iPhone and released an SDK, do you think that any of them thought “Oh, people are totally going to use this to make apps that can push little Styrofoam balls around a fake soccer field.” Yeah, probably not. But sure enough, people have.

The 99 cent app, Football – Real Kick, is a clever twist on the “blower” concept we’ve seen before. In a nut shell: sound pushes air around. Certain sounds that the iPhone speaker can emit push enough air around that you can just baaaarely feel it, making it just strong enough to blow out a candle — or in this case, blow around a little Styrofoam ball.

Unlike past blower apps, this one doesn’t emit a constant stream. It only putts out air when you tap that “kick” button; combine this with a hand drawn soccer field, a couple of iPhones, and a whole lot of beer, and you’ve got the world’s most expensive game of foosball that doesn’t actually involve a foosball table.