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Anybody else watching this? For the first time ever, I'm actually interested in an iPhone reveal event. I use my iPod as everything except my phone - mobile gaming, my calendar, mobile email (if I'm at a wifi hotspot), etc.

It looks like they're still not totally opening up multitasking, but the stuff they're opening up should be enough to appease most users. Location, audio, push notifications, background task completion, app idling, etc. I can deal with that.

Folders for your apps is very welcome. I'll have a "games" folder and a "media" folder and such. It's like 1986 all over again.

The media blogs are still ongoing, and I think Ars has the fastest one going right now:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/ ... veblog.ars

Gizmodo is a few minutes behind as far as I can tell.

Oooh email encryption!

EDIT: Oooh SSL VPN support from Juniper and Cisco.

I think I just got hosed on multitasking, as the currently-selling 8GB iTouch is the same hardware as the 2G iTouch, which is also excluded.

No multitasking for me:

iPhone OS 4 Compatibility

iPhone OS 4 will work with iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, and the second- and third-generation iPod touch this summer, and with iPad in the fall. Not all features are compatible with all devices. For example, multitasking is available only with iPhone 3GS and the third-generation iPod touch (32GB and 64GB models from late 2009).

http://www.apple.com/iphone/preview-iphone-os/

**** you, Steve Jobs. So much for hardware cycles. My 1.5 year old 3G doesn't get any multitasking love.

lordT wrote:

**** you, Steve Jobs. So much for hardware cycles. My 1.5 year old 3G doesn't get any multitasking love.

Gotta love apples incentive to upgrade.

well it's not like they're taking features away, and they're still upgrading the device with the other added features.

They kept saying that the hardware isn't capable of multitasking. I think what they're getting at is that older devices don't have enough memory. The 3GS has 256MB and the 3G has 128MB. The same appears to be true for my 4-month-old iPod Touch.

Here's my take on it (after I've calmed down) - if they thought they could do it well on the 3G and older iPods, I think they'd do it; after all, they still sell those devices new. Strictly speaking, the older designs can probably do, they most likely can't do it well. It's not like RAM is upgradeable in a phone.

I still see that as a fail though. They could have very easily added more ram to the 8 gig ipod touch when it was rereleased. When palm rereleased the pre as the pre plus it doubled the memory. When apple released the ipad with only 256 megs of memory...

Palm didn't "rerelease the Pre as the Pre Plus", they put out a new model with extra RAM. That's like saying "When Nintendo re-released the NES as the Super NES" - that doesn't make any sense.

And they did drop the price by 13-14% when the newer iPods came out. ($229 -> $199) I certainly wouldn't expect anything "better" for less money, only to spend less money. And it's not like they're taking features away, like I said.

256MB in the iPad is a whole other issue - that thing should have 512MB regardless and it doesn't.

derFunkenstein wrote:

Palm didn't "rerelease the Pre as the Pre Plus", they put out a new model with extra RAM. That's like saying "When Nintendo re-released the NES as the Super NES" - that doesn't make any sense.

And they did drop the price by 13-14% when the newer iPods came out. ($229 -> $199) I certainly wouldn't expect anything "better" for less money, only to spend less money. And it's not like they're taking features away, like I said.

256MB in the iPad is a whole other issue - that thing should have 512MB regardless and it doesn't.

(maybe better example?)

Ehh, differences between the pre and pre plus are miniscule, in most day to day usage you can't tell the difference (well except one has a button). While it might be a different model, the usage happens to be the exact same. Nes/S Nes where vastly different in graphics (and even the architecture was different). Sure I can open all 27 programs on the launcher page with the pre plus (4 3d games, 2d games, and various utilities), but that not exactly normal usage.

they are late

thecoldanddarkone wrote:

(maybe better example?)

Ehh, differences between the pre and pre plus are miniscule, in most day to day usage you can't tell the difference (well except one has a button). While it might be a different model, the usage happens to be the exact same. Nes/S Nes where vastly different in graphics (and even the architecture was different). Sure I can open all 27 programs on the launcher page with the pre plus (4 3d games, 2d games, and various utilities), but that not exactly normal usage.

The NES -> SNES comparison has more in common with the iPod Touch or iPhone scenario than you think. The 65c816 in the SNES is a descendant of the 6502 in the NES. Likewise the Samsung-made Cortex A8 in the iPhone 3GS is a descendant of the much slower (at least in terms of MHz and raw processing power) ARM CPU in previous devices. The big divider is the RAM, I think, but the CPU is different enough as well.

You're confusing the marketing with the differences in hardware. Apple calls them all iPod Touches but that doesn't mean they're all that similar in hardware.

derFunkenstein wrote:

256MB in the iPad is a whole other issue - that thing should have 512MB regardless and it doesn't.

WUUUUUTTTT! so how much RAM does the iPhone 3gs have? (heh I have one and never really bothered with the tech stats)

tanker27 wrote:

derFunkenstein wrote:

256MB in the iPad is a whole other issue - that thing should have 512MB regardless and it doesn't.

WUUUUUTTTT! so how much RAM does the iPhone 3gs have? (heh I have one and never really bothered with the tech stats)

256 megs.

^^ correct, 256MB (estimated):

http://www.everyipod.com/iphone-specs/a ... specs.html

/shrug. So if the iPad is roughly based off the 3Gs (or 3d Gen iTouch) I dont see the issue there. Everything runs just fine. Now when Multitasking gets here maybe it will eat into it but from the demos yesterday it seemed to run fine.

I just feel shafted by Apple's move. Can't they just let the user enable/disable this? 3G and Push massacred my battery life and I was allowed to enable/disable those. For once, just this once, let me decide.

Other than multitasking, what does this upgrade bring me? Oh yeah, advertisements and a gaming platform. Thanks but no thanks.

lordT wrote:

I just feel shafted by Apple's move. Can't they just let the user enable/disable this? 3G and Push massacred my battery life and I was allowed to enable/disable those. For once, just this once, let me decide.

That's not Apple's way. On the minus side, this gives the user less options. But on the plus side, stuff from Apple Just Works far more often then stuff from their competitors.

lordT wrote:

Other than multitasking, what does this upgrade bring me? Oh yeah, advertisements and a gaming platform. Thanks but no thanks.

An enhanced mail app fixing some stuff I've complained about (such as multiple accounts being in a single unified inbox - yay!), folders rather than a gazillion screens to scroll through (I have 7 app screens, that's a bit much), iBooks, and stuff for corporate enterprise (multiple Exchange accounts, which is nice given that my personal stuff syncs via Google's Exchange sync). I'm getting a big pile of stuff out of this and I'm locked out of multitasking as well.

Seriously, I was disappointed, but I've gotten over it already. You probably should do the same - considering your device was designed and released almost 2 years ago, it's reasonable to expect (in the mobile world) that at some point your hardware won't do everything the OS can do.

It seems like my 32GB Ipod Touch from 2 years ago, which I paid $400 for, gets left behind as well.

Gerbil Jedidiah wrote:

It seems like my 32GB Ipod Touch from 2 years ago, which I paid $400 for, gets left behind as well.

ipod touch has always been a second class citizen in the eyes of apple. They have charged ipod users for access to newer versions of iphone OS and cut hardware features to drive more iphone sales. I'm not at all surprised ipod owners get the short end of the stick again

derFunkenstein wrote:

Seriously, I was disappointed, but I've gotten over it already. You probably should do the same - considering your device was designed and released almost 2 years ago, it's reasonable to expect (in the mobile world) that at some point your hardware won't do everything the OS can do.

Yeah, I know but I think I'll need to rant a little more to get it out of my system.