MacMost Now 413: iOS 4 First Look

Take a look at iOS 4, available today for the iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch. You can have multiple apps running at once and store app icons in folders. Apps like Camera, Photos, Mail and others have new features. You can also use Bluetooth keyboards with your iPhone.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi this is Gary with MacMost Now on today's episode, let's take a look at the new IOS4.
So, we're still a few days away from the iPhone 4 being released, but we have the new operating system. So, let's a look at the IOS4 running on the iPhone 3GS. 
So, the first thing I noticed is a change of the default background image, the wallpaper, and you can set that separately for the locked screen and for the wallpaper behind the apps. just like on the iPad. Now, the big new feature is multitasking. So, the first thing we want to do is make sure we have a bunch of apps running, so let's run Safari there. Let's run another app, say the calendar, and let's run the weather app. Now, once you have all these running, the way to access multitasking is to quickly double tap the home button and that brings up this multitasking interface here, which shows you all the apps that happen to be running at the time in the background and to switch to any one of them you just tap it, and it flips out like that. Double tap again, and you can switch to another one. 
Now, big problem on other phones that support multitasking is getting these to quit. Doing it here on the iPhone, what you do on the iPhone is you tap and hold on any one of these apps and they shake, just like you were going to move them around, but you have this little minus symbol. So, you can quit any app running in the background just by tapping the minus sign next to it.
So, app folders is another big in IOS4, so say you want to put a bunch of apps together in a folder. The first thing you need to do is to tap and hold, just like your going to move the icons around, then they'll sort of jiggle like that. Then you decide which ones your going to move together. So, let's move the stocks and weather apps together, and you do that just by dragging one on top of the other, and it will enlarge, you drop it in there, and it will give you a name. It will try to guess what kind of name you want for it, so we'll leave it as the default name, or you can change it there and then we can tap on the screen and we have this black box icon that contains really tiny versions of those apps there. We can drag other apps that we want into them, so  we can drag this one over here, just drop it in. And then you can stabilize by pressing the home button again. Now we have three apps in there. If I tap it, it gives me this little menu here of the apps that are inside, and I can choose which one it is that I want to run.
So, there are other improvements to the default apps. For instance, here we are in mailing. As you notice at the top, the name of the mailbox is all mailboxes, because you get to select either one of your mailboxes, one of your email accounts, or a screen that will show you all of the incoming mail messages for all your mailboxes, which is nice.
Other new features include in the camera app, you've got the ability to zoom in and the way you do that is you double tap on the screen and it brings out this little slider here, and you can zoom in, and it's a digital zoom, but it could be useful.
In the iPod app, under play list, there's an add playlist, and you can create a new playlist. And it works just like it does on the iPad, you can add different songs by just pressing the plus button there, and edit them in various different ways.
In preferences, there's some new things you can do, for instance, you can set wallpapers for both lock screen and behind your apps. Under Safari, you can now choose Bing as an additional search engine there. So you can also add keyboards under Bluetooth keyboard here. You can select one, like say I wanted the apple wireless keyboard and use that to type, just like you can on the iPad.
So, to get IOS4, all you need to do is sync your iPhone with your Mac of PC, have iTunes running, go to the summary screen for that iPhone and look under version, and there's a button for check for updates, and this should find the new IOS4 and give you the opportunity to install it. Now, IOS4 only works on the 3g, 3gs and the new iPhone 4. Now on the 3g there is a much slower processor, and Apple has disabled a lot of things, such as multitasking in the new IOS4. As a matter of fact, some people are suggesting that you don't even get IOS4 for the 3g, just stick with the iPhone OS 3.0, and of course your going to be forced to do the same thing if you have the original iPhone as well.
So, hope you like this look at the new IOS4, till next time, this is Gary Rosenzweig with MacMost Now.

Comments: 3 Responses to “MacMost Now 413: iOS 4 First Look”

Daniel

15 years ago

This great over view but I have first generation iPhone. :-(
Not sure when I can upgrade.

marnoldi

would it worth my while to upgrade my phone from 3G to 3GS , so that i can use the IOS4.0 ?
i am not so sure that i'd be happy with iphone 4.0 with all its problems - your thoughts

Gary Rosenzweig

Why upgrade to a 3GS? Upgrade to 4. I don't think it makes any sense to go to a 3GS now. The iPhone 4 has so many hardware features that make it better than the 3GS: better processor, camera(s), screen, etc.
The only problems I have heard about with the iPhone 4 are the reception problem (but many say it is the same with the 3GS anyway -- and a case solves it) and the yellow screen problem (which seems to go away after a few days, I hear).
I would seriously not consider a 3GS at all.

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MacMost Now 413: iOS 4 First Look

Comments: 3 Responses to “MacMost Now 413: iOS 4 First Look”

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