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Testing iOS 4 beta - A Brief Review

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  • 09-06-2010 4:33pm
    #1
    happyeveryday
    Registered Users Posts: 117 ✭✭


    Uploaded the beta version of iOS 4 for developers today, being using it only for a few hours so this is not a comprehensive review, just my experience so far.

    The full release is out June 21 and has different limitations for 3Gs, 3G, etc.

    Multi-tasking - experience not great, Apps developers will have to work fast to adapt their Apps to make use of this. At present the only thing I have noticed is if you open a webpage in Safari, exit to Email, then return to Safari the page has continued to downloaded while you were out of Safari. As for other Apps they simply have to reload from beginning. Having said that, it is good that you can move between Apps you use most often as they are at the base of your screen when you double tap the Home button.

    Email - much improved, the email window is new, inbox to the top and account folders below. The inbox groups all your account inboxes, I have 3 active email accounts so this is a big help, it also groups you emails by subject, similar to Gmail.

    App Folders, very good for those with a lot of Apps. You can put up to 12 Apps in one folder. the folders automatically name themselves according to the Apps you place in them, Games, Sports, etc.

    There is also personalised home screen, important to some, not to me. Spell check, still haven't really used this much, but seems good.

    Overall, it may just be me, but it seems to load things faster, definitely loading our own App much quicker, which I'm delighted about.

    Bar the multi-tasking, which as I said is new to all 3rd party Apps, i'm impressed.


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    #2
    Graham
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 17,642 Mod ✭✭✭✭Graham


    Sorry happyeveryday but I think there's a major flaw in your brief review.

    Apps written in iOS4 cannot be released in the app store yet as iOS4 is still in beta. As such, none of the non-apple apps can support multitasking publicly yet.

    I think it's a little unfair to say the multitasking experience isn't great when multitasking isn't available to any developers(other than apple) even if they are developing multitasking apps for iOS4.

    Multitasking for 3rd party apps will not be available until iOS4 is publicly released, until then we cannot judge.


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    #3
    Eoin_Sheehy
    Closed Accounts Posts: 274 ✭✭Eoin_Sheehy


    I'd like to point out that now that it's the Golden seed, Mashable have said you don't need to register your UUID with a developer.


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    #4
    G-Money
    Closed Accounts Posts: 8,199 ✭✭✭G-Money


    I thought Apple released a 4.0 beta/SDK several months ago to specifically allow app writers to modify their apps ahead of the releases of the OS??


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    #5
    Fingleberries
    Registered Users Posts: 3,391 ✭✭✭Fingleberries


    grandmaster wrote: »
    I thought Apple released a 4.0 beta/SDK several months ago to specifically allow app writers to modify their apps ahead of the releases of the OS??
    Yep, they did. But that meant only that you could develop, or update your app for use on iOS4, but they wouldn't release it in the App store until the OS was public.


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    #6
    happyeveryday
    Registered Users Posts: 117 ✭✭happyeveryday


    Actually I believe the first day you could submit was yesterday 10th. But I wouldn't expect a massive rush from App developers, we for one are holding until we do a bigger revision.
    Graham, that was a brief review after a short duration of use and as stated I was aware that 3rd party apps wouldn't work seamlessly with iOS 4, but it feels the same as before where you would access Email at the same point as you had exited. I'll hold any further comments until I see a few more Apps using it.


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    #7
    Graham
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 17,642 Mod ✭✭✭✭Graham


    It's not that 3rd party apps won't work seamlessly with multitasking, they just don't multitask as the moment. Third party apps will work exactly as they did before even on iOs 4. There are NO 3rd party apps currently in the app store that have multitasking support.

    While many developers have/are rewriting their apps to support multitasking, users will not see those rewritten apps until apple permit iOS4 apps on the app store. This won't happen until the new OS is officially launched.


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    #8
    Gregor Samsa
    Registered Users Posts: 8,986 ✭✭✭Gregor Samsa


    I installed iOS4 GM on my 3GS last night. Here's my quick observations:

    As has been said above, no point in commenting on multi-tasking yet until Apps are out to support it. But the new dock showing the tasks running is easy to get to with a double button press.

    The App folder are great. I've got down from 6 home screens to 3, making things much easier to locate. Wallpaper on the home screens is a bit pointless, since you can barely see it with all the App icons over it, but a nice addition for what it's worth.

    Spell check, which really should have been there from the start, makes a welcome appearance.

    Games Centre App is now available, but I assume games have to be set up to use it. I didn't do much more than log into it anyway, and it just asked me to set up some settings, so I quit out of it for now.

    The iBooks app isn't installed with iOS4 GM, so either it will come with the official release, or will be a standalone download. EDIT: Yep, it seems it a standalone download, and needs to be done throug iTunes 9.2 ( http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/11/apple-rolling-ibooks-out-across-ios-4-devices-get-your-winnie-t/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+weblogsinc%2Fengadget+(Engadget) )

    There's now a setting for Character Count in the Messages app. I enabled it, but I don't see any character count when I write a message. Does anyone else see it? EDIT: The character count appears over the Send button after you've typed 24 characters in a message, so mystery solved. Still no sign of SMS delivery receipts, which is really inexcusable at this stage.

    One thing that disappoints me is Playlists in iPod. I had read that playlist folders would be supported, and I was excited about this, because I have my playlists organised in folders in iTunes on my Mac. But when I dragged a playlist folder onto the iPhone, it merged all the playlists in it into one big list on the phone, as it has done before on OS3.x.

    Looking at this page for the Touch (http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/ios4-software-update.html) Apple says iOS4 supports nested playlists. But a similar page for the iPhone (http://www.apple.com/iphone/softwareupdate/) makes no mention of it - just the ability to make and edit playlists on the phone. So maybe it's a Touch only feature. Anyone else have any experience with this?

    I had read of people having issues with GPS reception after installing, but I've seen no issues with TomTom or Google Maps. Compass App asked me to do the figure of 8 move to recalibrate when I opened it for the first time, but seems fine after that.

    Screen lock is a bit hard to find, but it a much welcome addition. You need to double tap the button to bring up the multi task dock, then swipe to the right to see 5 button - Screen lock, and iPod icon, and 3 music controls (previous track, play and next track). Screen lock only locks in portrait orientation, so you can't lock the screen to landscape.

    Photos app now supports faces and location (places). So you can view a map and see pins where photos in your library were taken, and if you have faces set up in iPhoto, you'll see groups set up for each person.

    Safari has Bing as a search option, if you're that way inclined.

    The camera zoom isn't particularly useful as it degrades image quality noticeably, but then you wouldn't expect much from digital zoom on a camera like this. But it's better to have it as an option than not, so no harm in it being there. Just tap the screen in the Camera App to get the zoom slider to appear. It doesn't work in video.

    Last but not least a word of warning. I installed this late last night when I was tired. I'm usually meticulous about backing stuff up, but last night I thought I had synced my phone when obviously I hadn't. So, after installing iOS4, when I restored all my settings, the backup I was restoring from was from last week, so I lost some photos, a potentially very important (and irreplaceable) note, and some trivial text messages. Be sure to back up properly before installing, and double check your backup!


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    #9
    G-Money
    Closed Accounts Posts: 8,199 ✭✭✭G-Money


    phutyle wrote: »

    Looking at this page for the Touch (http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/ios4-software-update.html) Apple says iOS4 supports nested playlists. But a similar page for the iPhone (http://www.apple.com/iphone/softwareupdate/) makes no mention of it - just the ability to make and edit playlists on the phone. So maybe it's a Touch only feature. Anyone else have any experience with this?

    I hope this is implemented as I imagine. I hate having to connect my iPhone to iTunes everytime I want to create, or add/delete songs from a playlist


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    #10
    Gregor Samsa
    Registered Users Posts: 8,986 ✭✭✭Gregor Samsa


    grandmaster wrote: »
    I hope this is implemented as I imagine. I hate having to connect my iPhone to iTunes everytime I want to create, or add/delete songs from a playlist

    You can now create, edit and delete playlists in iOS4 - that bit is no problem (and a cool feature)

    The issue I'm seeing is that the iPhone doesn't seem to support playlists nested in folders, where the iPod touch does.


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