One of the features missing in iOS is for sure Adobe Flash support. iPad, which in theory is designed mainly as a highly portable web browsing/mail reading device, is not able to view all websites on the internet. Adobe Flash is a de facto standard, it is available for a multitude of platforms, including Linux and Android. Apple however, decided against including Flash in iOS. Apple claims, that the reasoning behind this is purely technical related. Most of the mobile device community, however, suspects that real reasons are business ones: introducing Flash and enabling users to access free web games could severely impact AppStore revenues. Steve Jobs mentioned during his keynote, that developers have earned 2 billion dollars from AppStore sales. That obviously means nearly a billion dollar cut for Apple itself.
Adobe has announced new streaming features
Adobe did not surrender, and some Flash features are still coming to iOS platform. Thanks to HTTP Live Streaming, or HLS in short, it will be possible for the server to decide what kind of stream player to use – either a classic flash player or HTML 5 based one. Unfortunately that means Flash games and websites will still remain out of reach for iPad and iPhone users, but they will be able to access more video related websites.
NEW: Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich running on x86 PC/netbook: check this post
The Android x86 project has recently built Froyo images for most popular netbooks (and of course a generic image for other computers). This means you can easily run Android on your ultra mobile computers the same you would on a mobile phone.
Internet Explorer 6 was introduced 10 years ago, and was a technological breakthrough at the time. Unfortunately with passing years, the browser grew older and less secure (not to mention it’s “weird” compatibility with HTML standards), while every other vendor upgraded their web browsing product. Microsoft took action a bit too late, but Internet Explorer was also upgraded. Read more
On 19th of January Apple has released a second beta release of the iOS version 4.3 for anyone with an active Apple Developer account.
Some of the new features include:
Tether 3G connection over WiFi (making iPhone a personal wireless router)
Picture Stream – a service allowing publishing of photos to MobileMe
Video Streaming
The side switch on iPad can be assigned either for mute (like on iPhone) or for orientation lock (like it used to be in iOS 3.x)
Previous beta release of 4.3 also contained four- and five-finger gestures for switching multitasked applications and closing the active one. This feature was for experimental use only and has been removed from beta2.
Now some sad information for iPhone 3G and iPod Touch 2gen users: there will be no iOS 4.3 for your device. iPhone 3G suffered poor performance when running iOS 4.0, it did improve a bit in 4.1 and subsequently 4.2.1, but it seems that Apple has decided that iPhone 3G/iPod touch 2gen don’t have enough juice to power iOS 4.3.
Last weekend we had witnessed yet another alarm clock bug in IOS (All devices running 4.2.1 were affected). On 1st and 2nd of January, single non-repeated alarms did not sound, as a result many iPhone owners were late for work, school, date, etc. Similar problem was reported after daylight saving time change last autumn, but it affected only repeated alarm events.
There is no official statement from Apple yet, but rumours say there will be no patch for this bug, moreover the problem should correct itself on the 3rd of January.
EDIT: Both repeated and one time alarms already work fine on 3rd of January (iPhone 3G running iOS 4.2.1)
Note to self: buy a simple alarm clock, and never be surprised again.
Last monday Apple has released new version of iOS 4.2.1 which is available for iPad’s, iPod touch 2gen and later, and iPhone’s 3G and later. This new software brings some minor changes listed below:
For iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad
AirPlay (replacement of AirTunes, AirPlay will offer stream video, music, and photos over Wi-Fi)
AirPrint Wireless Printing with Print Center (select models)
Import .ics calendar files directly for events
Birthdays icon has been changed in calendar
Updated Carrier Settings (Orange Poland again shows as Orange instead of PL OPL)
New fonts for Notes in Settings (Helvetica and Chalkboard)
Added an indicator in the App Store which shows if an App supports Game Center
Support for CoreMIDI
YouTube voting
Minor improvements in UI graphics – new icons
New wallpapers
Fixes the alarm bug caused by daylight saving time changing, affected on a part of iPhone and iPod Touch owners located in Australia, New Zealand, and some European countries.
Improved iPhone 3G performance
Additions to multitasking tray: Volume controls & AirPlay controls
Assign different text tone alerts to each contact (iPhone only)
A bug ate my Apple. Fortunately the said bug did not hit me as hard as it did others, because in Poland 1st of November is a holiday. It was still a monday, so my iPhone tried to wake me up, as it was told to. Almost. I was really surprised to see that the time is one hour PAST the usual time of alarm. I am running most recent version of iOS 4.1 (8B117) on iPhone 3G. I have tested it a few times and found out the following:
Alarms with no repeating will sound properly at the right time
Alarms with everyday repeating will sound at the right time as well
Alarms set to repeat on selected days will sound at a different time
Additionally, after quick research on Google I found, that:
In Europe the alarm will sound one hour past the set time
In US, NZ and Australia it will sound one hour earlier than set
A few days after upgrade of my 3G iPhone to iOS 4.1 I tried activating the Field Test. To my surprise it worked, but as you can see on the screenshot – not quite what I expected. It seems that 3G’s baseband is not supported, or the Field Test app is not yet ready. Either way, it is a good sign, that Field Test is back. Too bad is not really useful, at least on my iPhone 3G.
Besides that, iOS 4.1 speeds up a lot the old good iPhone 3G. Both springboard and menus are much more responsive – it works just as fast as 3.1.3 did (finally).
On the previous iPhone OS versions there was a way to open Network Monitor, or so called Field Test. By pressing *3001#12345#* and <Call> you could activate a screen similar to the one on the right. Note, that the usual “bars” are replaced with dB indicator showing the signal strength.
Unfortunately the above code only works until iPhone OS 3.1.3. In iOS 4.0 there is no such thing. Sad Panda Face again…
Yesterday was a big day for all fans of Apple’s mobile phone, the iPhone. Apple has finally published its long-awaited new Iphone OS version , now simply called iOS (by the way, I wonder what Cisco has to say about this; Cisco router’s OS has been called IOS for years).
“I had custom wallpapers in Windows 3.1 back in ’94”
Since I am owner of the 2nd generation iPhone, my handset did not get all the features mentioned by Jobs earlier this year (to avoid confusion: firts generation is iPhone 2G, second gen is the 3G, while 3GS is a third generation device). Multitasking is one of the said features. I’ve been a fan of Windows Mobile for at least seven years now, and multitasking was always there, just like in the “big” Windows on the PC. Granted, if you do not pay attention to how many programs are running in the background, the device will gradually slow down. When it slows down to a complete halt – you have to do a soft reset to clean the memory and basically reboot the Windows Mobile OS. I can understand that Apple did not want iPhone users to suffer from these issues. What I cannot understand are some other features removed from 3G iPhone, hence the “Sad Panda Face” from the post title.
No home screen wallpaper under the icons. Apple will surely claim it is due to limited memory and slow 400 MHz CPU (but I had custom wallpapers in Windows 3.1 back in ’94 – on my first PC 66MHz 486 DX2).
My favourite wall in '94
No support for Bluetooth keyboard – again, I’m sure Apple is going to invent some reason why I cannot use a foldable Bluetooth Freedom Keyboard with my phone (which worked just fine in Win Mobile and Symbian 3-4 years ago)
Ability to lock the screen orientation – since it is in the multitasking menu, it does not work on the 3G iPhone
“iOS 4.0 still delivers some small goodies”
Folder goodness in iOS 4.0
Now the good stuff, because iOS 4.0 still delivers some small goodies. Most important: folders. You can grab up to 12 icons and put the together into a single bin that takes less space. All my 6 pages of icons now only take 2 pages. You might ask why limit of 12 icons in one folder, but once you saw the screenshot, you will know why.
Another great feature is the geotagging in Photos application. It was actually always there (every time you take a photo with your iPhone, location is saved in picture’s metadata). Now you can look at the map and literally see where did you take all those photos.
Business iPhone users will be very glad to know, that improved email client also made it’s way to iPhone 3G and allows to see all messages from all accounts in one big inbox (you can still browse messages by account as usual), there is an option to see the list of messages, or in a threaded way as seen in modern Windows Mobile or in Gmail.
Left: new dock. Right: old one
And at last, something that should be in iPhone OS 1.0: character count for short messages (even my old Siemens handset from 2001 has that). Almost forgotten: the docking bar in the bottom of the screen received a minor facelift and now looks more like Apple UI known from MacOS and iPad.
“Only two latest generations are fully supported by Apple”
Apple seems to keep their upgrade policy, which was first introduced during iPhone OS 3.0 deployment. iPhone 2G did not receive the native MMS capability, which could easily be enabled after jailbreaking the handset and replacing one of the binaries. The same applies to the features which are not available on iPhone 3G in iOS 4.0 – they can be enabled in jailbroken devices. Simply put, only two latest generations are fully supported by Apple, in this case iPhone 3GS and brand new iPhone 4. Too bad. Sad Panda Face.
EDIT 28.06.2010: Sent the same feedback to Apple. It probably won’t help, but I can always try.
