Less than a week after the release of the iPad, Steve Jobs took the stage at Apple's Cupertino, Calif headquarters on Thursday to announce the iPhone 4.0 operating system. Techies have already laid out what they hope to see in the update. Will Apple satisfy their gadget-hungry needs? Here, a continually updated round-up of the new features as they are announced, and what tech writers think of them:
Advertising revolution: Because people spend most of their time using applications on the iPhone, Apple has developed iAd, which incorporates "interactive" advertising inside of applications. The move helps the developers of free applications "make some money," says Jobs. "Essentially," says Christina Warren in Mashable, "Apple wants to bring the classic advertising model from television to applications."
1:50 p.m.
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Get your game on: Because of the popularity of gaming on the iPhone, Apple has added Game Center, a social network system for gamers. "Wow," says GDGT, "so Apple just totally knocked off Xbox Live (and Playstation Network) in the iPhone."
1:47 p.m.
iBooks for iPhone: The popular iBooks feature for the iPad now works on the iPhone, allowing you to download and read books on your phone. "The bookshelf looks just like the iPad," says Gizmodo, "and reading it looks similar as well (in portrait mode at least.)"
1:41 p.m.
Unify your inbox: Rather than having different inboxes for your separate email accounts, iPhone 4.0 allows you to view emails from all your accounts in one inbox. The update also allows more than one Microsoft Exchange account. Simply put, this "is a better mail system," says Brad Stone in The New York Times.
1:40 p.m.
Watch your background: With 4.0 iPhone users can easily change the background on your phone. "Bunch of wallpapers," says Mark Hachman in Gear Log. "Nothing that interesting."
1:38 p.m.
Put it in a folder: Applications can now be placed into different folders, allowing for greater app organization, and upping the maximum number of apps you can have on your phone from 180 to 2000. This is "kind of cool!," says Engadget.
1:36 p.m.
Hello, multitasking: Jobs announces the much-demanded multitasking feature, allowing users to easily switch between applications without having to quit one before launching another. This is how "multitasking is supposed to work," says Jason Chen at Gizmodo.
1:14 p.m.
