Apple has recently shown off their new OS for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. Its iPhone OS 4 and its coming this summer. It took way to long for Apple to make these features available, but better late than never. In fact, I think Apple's motto is "better late than on time" since they seem to make a ton of money with that strategy. In any case, you can read about the new features here or watch the hour long keynote here.
The biggest addition is multitasking which all iPhone owners (except for those that have been multitasking on their jailbroken iPhones for months) have been anxiously waiting for. Apple's implementation of multitasking allows background apps to do a limited array of things including using the speakers, GPS, push notifications, local notifications, and completing "tasks". A task is something like uploading photos to Flickr, since it takes a while, but you could be doing other things while it finishes.
Limiting background apps to these operations is a great way to keep them useful while preventing them from sucking too hard on your battery or slowing down your experience. Switching between apps is as simple as double clicking the home button which could be annoying for some people who currently use double-click-home for other actions.
The next big addition announced is folders which creates a single icon for a group of apps. Simple, but I'm afraid Apple's implementation is very limited for 3 reasons. First, each folder can hold up to 12 apps, so if you have more than 12 games then a Games folder will not do the trick. Second, I don't think a folder can contain other folders, so forget about sweet hierarchal app organization. Third, I bet each an app can only be in one folder at a time, so you'll have to keep track of where you put any app that fits into 2 distinct categories.
The process of making a new folder involves dragging one app icon on top of another app icon and magically a new folder is formed with both apps inside it. It also automagically gives the folder an appropriate name based on the apps inside. I don't really see the point of naming folders since the name is only displayed while the folder is open. Adding folders does improve the iPhone OS, but this implementation extremely limited.
Another addition is an updated mail app which adds a unified inbox, and threaded messages. Basically, iPhone' email just got a few features that it should have had all along.
Next is iBooks. Not much to say about this. Reading books on an iPhone is about as inconvenient as lugging an iPad around to read.
We will also be seeing custom backgrounds. Apple really has no excuse for not including this option in earlier versions of the OS...
A big addition for games is the new Game Center which seems very much like XBOX LIVE. It sets up multi-player matches, connects friends through games, and adds achievements to really suck players in. This could be the start of Apple getting into the minds of gamers.
This last addition almost made me throw up at first, but after sitting through the demo, I believe this may be the lesser of two evils. They call it iAds. Its an awful name and a concept that people dont want to even think about. Apple is making it extremely simple for developers to include adds right inside their apps.
Ads might suck, but they do help to keep awesome apps free. By letting Apple do all the work, developers can spend more time making free apps. The iAds that Apple demoed were banners at the bottom of the screen. When clicked, the ad takes over the screen and can contain all the same content and features of any app. iAds are a new form of app and will like be every where once the new OS is out. If you really hate them, pay for an ad-free version of the app.
So there. Its the new software that will change the way people use the iPhone, iPod Touch, and the iPad. Before I end this, I have to switch to all caps and big font to mention one more detail:
MULTITASKING WILL ONLY WORK ON IPHONE 3GS, 3RD GENERATION IPOD TOUCH, AND IPAD... EARLIER DEVICES WILL NEVER MULTITASK. EVER.