With over a hundred new user features, Apple has made the best mobile operating system even better.

A year ago, Apple wowed us with their debut of the iPhone OS 3.0. Today, they have reached near perfection with the 4th version of the massively popular mobile operating system, the backbone of the iPhone, iPod touch and the recently launched iPad.

Releasing the developer preview of the OS today, with it coming to consumers in the summer (iPad in the fall), Steve Jobs highlighted in his presentation seven of the most major improvements, dubbed ‘tentpoles’. Some of these are additions that users have been clamouring for ages and a couple of them just completely blew our minds away. Then again, what is an Apple release without any gargantuan industry changes?

The UrbanWire provides a complete run down of the latest developments made to the iPhone OS 4.

Multitasking: Announcing that the biggest flaw of the iPhone OS was finally fixed in this new version was the monumental start that Jobs needed in his presentation. With the introduction of multitasking, the mobile OS is at long last on the path to rival the conventional desktop. Now you can simply double tap the home button to bring up a ‘mini-dock’ with a list of apps currently running in the background at the bottom of the screen.

Of course, not the whole app (only essential services) would be running in the background, which is a necessary concession to prevent a sizeable drop in battery life and performance.

These services include:

  • Background audio
  • Voice over Internet Protocol (think free Skype calls anytime)
  • Background location services using GPS and now even cell towers to preserve power
  • Local notifications which don’t require the use of a server
  • Task completion to alert you when things like uploads are done in the background
  • Fast app switching which preserves the state of the app when you leave it and resumes immediately when you come back.

App folders: Instead of flicking through pages of apps (which can be extremely annoying if you have dozens of them), you can simply drag and drop them into folders that can be placed anywhere on the homepage or the dock. This greatly increases the number of apps that can be displayed, from 180 to 2160. The OS even has a nifty trick where it automatically names these folders based on the category that the apps came from.

Enhanced mail: With a unified inbox, users can now use one app to access their mail from several accounts, a big help seeing as most of us have at least 2 separate email accounts. You can also view your emails in each account using fast inbox switching or keep track of your email conversations by threads. Not only that, email attachments can also be also be opened straight from the email using the respective app.
iBooks: Nothing really new since its introduction with the iPad but still nice to have on the iPhone and iPod touch as well.

Enterprise: The iPhone is already a major tool for enterprise with the 80% of Fortune 100 companies use the iPhone, so how could we not have any improvements in that area? The latest enterprise innovations include better data protection with email encryption, wireless app distribution and remote device management.

Game Centre: Apple has essentially introduced its own version of Xbox Live to the iPhone OS. With over 10 times the number of games as compared to dedicated mobile gaming devices such as Sony’s Playstation Portable and the Nintendo DS, Apple has furthered its lead over the competition by introducing a social gaming network where you can invite friends to play, have automatic match made games online with players of your own ability level, keep track of your ranking on leaderboards and monitor your progress with achievements.

iAd: This really hit it out of the ballpark. Changing the whole mobile advertising industry, Apple has included this directly in the OS in order to improve advertising within apps, helping developers keep apps free. With a focus on combining interactivity as well as emotion, iAd could potentially be the future of mobile advertising, trumping both conventional television ads as well as online ads.

The most important thing for consumers is that it isn’t as disruptive as ads available now which completely yank you out of the app you were using. These ads will now function as “mini-apps” within the main app, providing features such as games and videos to add a whole new dimension of interactivity to mobile advertising.

Some other interesting features:

  • Gift apps
  • 5x digital zoom
  • Tap to focus video
  • Spell check
  • Customisable wallpaper
  • Bluetooth keyboard support (for the iPad)

Have any thoughts on the new iPhone OS? Post your comments below.