Oh my goodness, where do I start on iPhone OS 4.0? I’m sure you guys already know about the features. You’re obsessed with multitasking and perhaps a little concerned about iAds. But what’s really captivating is just how much this will change mobile productivity. I want to focus on what the next iPhone OS will deliver you, how it compares to the competitors’ current methods, and how it will change the way you use your iPhone for your daily activities.
The goodness of multitasking
While Android boasts multitasking, it isn’t perfect. When I leave an app on my Droid for example, it might be able to update in the background and send me notifications, but I have to find the app I just closed if I want to dive back into it. In reality, the Android platform doesn’t operate too differently from the iPhone - I don’t see what the big deal is in this category. With Apple’s implementation of multitasking, it blows Android’s current model out of the water. Trust me, I own a Droid.
For multitasking, when you switch from Tweetie to Mail for example, it simply goes into a sleep state that pauses or manages a specific portion of the application you were either viewing or interacting with. I believe this is how it works (it’s how I understand it). This helps to save CPU usage and save battery life. While this matters to developers, it doesn’t matter to the end user.
Unlike the Android, you now have an idea of what’s going on in the background (okay, it does have a task manager, but it’s not obvious). To initiate multitasking, you can double tap the home button to reveal a tray that shows you the applications running behind the scenes. It’s almost exactly like using Command Tab on the Mac.
Ultimately, consumers will be able to switch between applications, and won’t know or care what’s going on the in background. All the user is concerned about is being able to go back where they left off. It’s going to be great to have Last.FM open and scrobble songs, when you have an application like Ember chugging away at Campfire, all while you’re catching up on the latest MacStories news in Safari. It gives us the ability to ditch the laptop completely in a lot of cases. Where you were using your laptop to communicate with the entire world, surf the web, and listen to Pandora at the same time, you can now do it from the palm of your hand. It’s an incredible update.
Multitasking goes much further than these basic examples. On stage, it was announced that you could make a call in Skype, leave the application, and continue the call. While people called from Skype before, you can now access the entire phone to retrieve contacts or search for information on the web. Apple goes so far as to include status bar updates from the lock or homescreen. Quite dandy.
If there was one feature that everybody wanted, this was it. And now that we have it, I’m sure people will move on to complain about something else, such as lack of support for older hardware. As I would argue that Apple can’t hang out on older hardware forever, it’s no different than having to ditch a 2002 Compaq because you can’t run Windows 7 on it. Understandably you’re under contract, but knowing that Apple updates their hardware every year, it shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Apple and the enterprise
In our latest MacStories live chat, I think my fellow reporters weren’t interested in Apple’s enterprise offerings. They were at most, uninterested. I guess that’s okay - after all these features have no benefit to you if you’re not in a suit 24/7. But it brings exactly what Blackberry chums have wanted to the iPhone: in-house management, higher security, SSL VPN, support for multiple Exchange ActiveSync accounts, etc.
President Obama himself has secured a Blackberry that’s probably more encrypted than your average Pentagon laptop. The casual business user relies on a secure phone to prevent others from snooping in or stealing highly confidential data. Heck, even my Droid has some kind of privacy option for voice communications. The iPhone’s new data protection APIs help to encrypt your business life, but I don’t know if encrypting everything with a singular, four digit pin is the safest thing in the world. I forsee that there still won’t be widespread adoption for this very issue - it still isn’t secure enough, is it? On the bright side, it’s awesome that nosey neighbors (those damn kids!) can no longer readily snoop on our conversations.
I am surprised to see that Apple will hand over control to “management” who can distribute applications and updates to company iPhones. If all the company is doing is distributing homebrew applications, then that’s great. I can see this being usable for a company of developers and designers who want to share their latest builds with fellow coworkers. I hope this doesn’t go as far as to allow businesses to control what applications we can or cannot have on our phones though. The last thing I want is an ignorant company still running IE6 to have a say in what I can and can’t do with my personal mobile.
Folders. Because we need to manage things after all.
It’s definitely an eyebrow raising feature, because I didn’t expect it at all. But in reality, it’s quite brilliant. One thing I’ve bitched about is the iPhone’s homescreen and how you have to continuously swipe through screens of apps just to find what you want. Now, I can organize all of my applications into folders. Let the OCD kick in!
It’s a strange deviation from what Apple had in mind when they first unveiled the iPhone. The idea was simple: you have layers of apps that you can scroll through and interact with. If you tap an icon, the application will come to life. But with folders, they’ve finally handed users the keys to the car, “It’s your homescreen, do what you want with it.” Users can now effortlessly drag and drop icons into folders, creating specific categories for the myriads of Twitter apps you’ve accumulated throughout the years.
Ditching that laptop
With the iPhone’s latest update, people will need to rely less and less on a laptop. You’ll be able to carry out your AIM conversation, listen to music, surf the net, and listen for email all at once. Imagine how useful remote desktop connections will become, switching from your Grandma’s computer back to mobile Safari where you’ll research problems. There’s so much that we can do with an iPhone (and eventually the iPad) now, I can’t see myself opening my laptop lid very often. In fact, I see myself moving from the laptop back to a workstation desktop - there’s no need for a laptop anymore when our smartphones are starting to become as capable. Sure you won’t be typing out an epic novel anytime soon (how many times have I heard that one before), but for quick work and managing your contacts, life couldn’t be easier.
Some of you will disagree. Others will still gawk at the nature of Apple’s closed system. But for the end user who just wants to use what’s available to them, Apple has done an incredible job of implementing what are essentially “geek” features. Perhaps Steve Jobs himself craved multitasking, or Apple had to wait until the time was right and the hardware was ripe to include such power, but either way, everyone will benefit. And in my eyes, no other mobile operating system can compare.
