iPhone OS 4.0 – Apple Romances Ads, Adopts 3GS, Disowns 2G, Gives up on UI Innovation, Jailbreak still rocks!

Apple’s iPhone OS 4.0 is close to revolutionary if not game-changing. Some of the new features being Multitasking (3GS only), iAds (ads with fluff!), Game Center (openfeint?).

Watch iPhone 4.0 Keynote in HD quality here.

Multitasking

Jailbreak folks have been enjoying the much touted multitasking feature for years while Apple finally makes it official, their style.

If you have Cydia on your iPhone, try Circuitous, a free multitasking app with better features than that of Apple’s!

Folders

You can now categorize your apps and put them in folders for quick and easy access. Again, this is something that has been available on Cydia (Categories) for a long time.

iAds – Apple’s foray into mobile ads, take that AdMob (Google)

Apple kills Flash even more by adopting HTML5 openly.

iAds look cool, sweet actually but the amount of resources they use may be a deal breaker for 2G/3G iPhones; the iPhones with limited resources.

Apple wants 40% of the ad revenue, not fair, 30% like AppStore would be much better!

Bad, Bad Apple

Disowning the Original iPhone : Apple can be quite stern when it comes to supporting its own outdated (is 2 years outdated?) hardware. In this case it is the 2G iPhone which has a tad bit lesser juice than the iPhone 3G. Not giving it any of the 4.0 love is disheartening. Well, I guess the successful Android port should breathe some fresh new life into the dying ‘Original iPhone’ – the one I bought for $600 not so long ago (2007 July)!

iPhone 3G is downplayed too btw. It doesn’t get multitasking (though it can be activated by editing a .plist file).

Lack of UI Innovation : I am tired of seeing Apple trying to sell incremental upgrades  to the iPhone every year. The UI of the iPhone is too plain and has been the same ever since its inception albeit the option to display a wallpaper which I have been using since 2007!

Is it really that difficult for Apple to implement something like this (Elements, IntelliScreen):

Jailbreak community has delivered time and again with patches, applications and what not to make the iPhonesque experience much more pleasant.

If you have to check your email, switch the WiFi off, check your appointments, any of these trivial tasks on the iPhone – you have to maneuver through various screens, settings while Android can do it with one swipe, literally. Is Apple planning to  release something similar for the next upgrade?

Where is the frickin’ Voice entry : Apple got the technology and even implemented the same in 3GS iPhones for dialing contacts and playing music. Why not go the extra mile and convert the voice to text? Google has done it in style. With their (Apple’s) reserves, that is not something they cannot achieve. I believe Apple is going to sell us this feature next year if not sooner!

Next-Gen iPhone (HD? 4G?) is Disappointing : The whole next-gen iPhone leak by Gizmodo may sound exciting but the hardware itself is plain blah! A smaller but high-res screen? Seriously? A front facing camera – incremental upgrade! It better be an early prototype and not the real deal – only then can they survive the Android competition (Dell Streak and co.).

Apple is by far the only platform amidst the company of Android, Windows, Palm phones to not innovate on the UI front. No wonder people are drifting towards much better Android phones with snappy processors and far too innovative UI. After all, smartphones are meant to make our lives easy, not complicate them!

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