Apple’s next iPhone OS 4.0 will be announced on 9 Apr 2010 1am HKT/SGT, catch out LIVE coverage in real time on twitter and facebook

LIVE coverage in real time on iPhone OS 4.0 (highlights from mobilecrunch and engadget)

In about 3 hrs time, Apple will soon unveil the next operating system for the iPhone. OCWorkbench will have a live twitter and facebook update on this next iPhone OS 4.0 on 9 Apr 2010 1am HKT/SGT, catch out real time coverage on twitter and facebook

Before it is unveiled, here are some possible improvements on the new OS.

Multitasking – At present, the third party apps either run or stop. We expect this to be improved on the OS 4 enabling us to surf, read email and twitter at the same time. We also look forward to some sort of a task manager where you can kill tasks.

Bluetooth keyboard support hopefully will be made available just like the iPad. There is much talk about direct printing from your iPhone.

Will Apple dump Google and replace its search engine with Bing. Will iPhone finally get the Opera Mini in OS 4? All these remains to be seen. So stay tuned at 1am HKT/SGT, 2am JPT, 1pm EST.

Stay tuned, follow us on twitter and join our fan page at Facebook now.

LIVE

12:39am At the iPhone OS4 preview press conference, everyone seems changing dongles to ensure updates can go online in realtime.

12:40am iPhones, iPads everywhere.

12:49am Pictures not allowed inside due to space constraints.

12:52am 8 more minutes to go.

1:00am Press Event started

1:04: We’ve got something to share today that we’re very excited about. That’s iPhone OS 4. But before that: something we just shipped recently: the iPad.

1:06 3,500 iPad apps in the App Store

1:06: They sold 350,000 iPads on launch day, and 450,000 total so far

1:07  250,000 iBooks on day one. 600,000 iBooks downloaded since. 3.5 million apps downloaded so far

1:11 We’ve sold over 50m iPhones to date, and if you add the touch, over 85m iPhones and iPod touches. If you’re a dev, that’s a plum market to go after.”

1:12 “So today we are giving a dev preview of iPhone OS 4. We’ve been working on this for a while, it’s pretty great — we’re going to ship this summer and release a dev preview today.”

1:14 iphone 4 adds thousands of new APIs. Over 2000 “Accelerate” APIs alone, providing hardware acceleration to developers

1:15 Finally Multitasking!!

1:16 It’s really easy to implement multitasking in a way that kills battery life. It’s also really easy to do it in a way that reduces performance. If you don’t do it just right, your phone will feel sluggish and battery life will go down”

1:17 He just showed home screen with wallpaper

1:18  It’s really easy to implement multitasking in a way that kills battery life. It’s also really easy to do it in a way that reduces performance. If you don’t do it just right, your phone will feel sluggish and battery life will go down”

1:19 Double click the home button to bring up all running apps

1:19 All the apps running are shown at the bottom, and you can scroll through them

1:19 Scott Forstall explains how they do multitasking but conserve battery life.

1:20 We looked at the 10s of thousands of services that the iPhone apps need, and we’ve distilled those services that developers need in the background
. Seven services (APIs) will be able to function i nthe background. The first of these is Background Audio; forstall goes on to discuss Pandora, and its popularity.

“With iphone OS 4, Pandora can continue to play in the background, and you can use the pop up iPod controls to control it.”

1:22 Tim Westergren of Pandora has taken the stage, and is discussing the implications of the iPhone

1:23 “With the launch of the iPhone, our growth rate doubled almost over night. When Scott offered to bring us here today, we jumped at the chance.”

“Our growth rate doubled over night. We add 30,000 new listeners a day on the iPhone.”

1:24 Multi tasking works because Apple picked 7 APIs to allow to run in the background, chosen because they’re the most popular uses

1:25 Next API: Voice over IP in the background! The problem is: Up until now, if you close the app, the call ends. With iphone os 4, that all changes. You can switch, and the call continues.”

1:26 “Until today, navigating away from the Skype app meant I went offline. With iPhone OS 4, when I leave the app, I can still receive calls.”

1:27 Demo Hey Aaron are you there?” “Yeah you want to go to dinner tonight?” “Yeah, let me go into other apps to find a restaurant.” And… it’s multitasking

1:28 Next API: Background Location service

1:29 Demo He’s listening to music while getting turn by turn directions

1:30 “We’ve figured out a great way to allow these apps to work without draining the battery: Cell towers”

1:31 “With these location apps, we take privacy very, very seriously” “We’re taking security several steps further with iPhone os 4”

1:31 “We take privacy very seriously. We’re taking it further in iPhone OS 4. We’re adding an indicator on the status bar to see if something is asking for your location. Next we’re asking fine grain settings you can enable or disable per application. And if any of them have asked for your location in 24 hours, we’ll show you.”

1:32 Next big update: Push notifications. Apple pushed 10 BILLION notifications since launching them 9 months ago. New addition to push: Local notifications. No server necessary. This is for things like TV Guides; things that need pop up alarms

1:33 Next Change : Task Completion –  uploading to flickr. If the app is in the middle of uploading something, saving, etc, it can continue to do so

1:34 “Fast app switching”. “This is what allows apps to be store its state and put in the background, so it’s not using any cpu at all”

1:35 End of Multitasking updates

1:35 Now about Folders – Users can now put folders on homescreens.. Just like android widgets, you can hold a app , it will “move” drag one app onto another, folder is created. The folder will be named by the category of the application and can be renamed.

1:38am Wall Paper of the home screen can be changed. You used to be able to see 180 apps on your phone, now it’s over 2000.” using Drag and drop UI and intelligent naming.

1:39 You can now have enhanced mailbox. One mailbox for all your accounts. a Unified mailbox for multiple email addresses.

1:40 You can also now open attachments in third-party apps in mail.

1:41 we’re adding iBooks for iPhone OS 4 with same interface and same store

1:42 “We think customers will really enjoy this. It’s a delightful ebook reader. You can buy your books once and read them anywhere.” Even Steve doesn’t seem that excited about this.

1:43 iBook store, buy once read anywhere, Sync pages and bookmarks between devices. Oh, and free copy of Winnie the Pooh

1:44 Enterprise features Starting with even better data protection

1:45 mobile device management, wireless application distribution

1:46 Fourth: “As steve mentioned, multiple exchange accounts, along with Exchange 2010 and SSL VPN”

1:46 Tentpole 6: Game Center  This is a dev preview for OS 4. Gaming is extremely popular on the iPhone and iPod touch. We have 50,000 games. Let’s compare that to the competition… the PSP and DS… we blow them out of the water.” “We want to make gaming even better on the iPhone — so we added a social gaming network.”

1:47 Wow. So Apple’s got their Xbox Live. This is kind of huge. Achievements, leaderboards, match making.

1:48 Apple is announcing their advertising platform! So our seventh tent pole is called… iAd. It’s mobile advertising. Now, what’s this about?”

1:48 Developers [of free apps] need to find a way to start making their money. A lot of developers turn to advertising – and we think these current advertisements really suck.” “If you look at advertisements on a phone, it’s not like on a desktop. On a desktop, its about search. On mobile, search hasnt happened. People aren’t searching on their phones. People are spending their time in apps”

1:50 The average user spends 30 minutes a day in apps. If we put an add up every 3 minutes, that’s 10 ads per day.Throughout the iPhone community, that’s 1 billion ad impressions per day. We’ve all seen interactive ads on the web. We want to deliver interaction – but also emotion.

1:51 “You know the ads on the web — they’re eye catching and interactive, but they don’t deliver emotion. What we want to do with iAds is deliver interaction and emotion.” “We have figured out how to do interactive and video content without ever taking you out of the app”

1:52 Apple will sell and host the ads, and give 60% of ad revenue to developers

1:54 While showing the ad: “Oh, by the way, all of this is done in HTML 5.” (no Flash required)

1:57  Now Steve is showing an Air Jordan ad with an embedded video. This is kind of cool — the ad has a “history of the Air Jordan” app/ad.

1:59 Animation are interactive, and crazy smooth.

2:00 Summary  “These are just 7 of the thousands of new features”

2:01 Multitasking, folders, enhanced mail, iBooks, enterprise, Game Kit, and iAd. And these are just seven of the 100 new user features. Now we are releasing a dev preview today.

2:02 They’re releasing it for iPhone 3gs and iPod touch 3rd gen this summer – those devices will do everything. iPhone 3G and iPod touch 2nd gen will not get multitasking. And, we’re bringing OS 4 to the iPad this Fall. There is no mentioning of iPad multitasking.

Q&A

Susan from IBC: I’m wondering that, given multitasking will increase data usage, how will AT&T compensate?

Jobs: I’m not sure that’s an accurate assumption. Remember: Data usage requires attention. We’re not multiplying the # of minutes users will give to their phone.

“The wireless app distribution. You described that as an enterprise feature, but I wonder if that opens a door for downloading apps without the app store”

Jobs: No. Forstall: Apps must still be signed via Apple.

“Given the huge demand in the US of ipad, will that impact international launch?”

Jobs: No. We said it’ll be near the end of April, and it’ll be near the end of april.

“Will the social gaming network supplant the openfeint, NGmcoo plus+ networks already available?”

Forstall: The problem was that thereare so many networks. When you play a game, you want your friends to be on that network. Jobs: There’s no money to be gained by having your own social gaming network.

Jobs: There’s no money to be gained by having your own social gaming network.