iPhone OS 4: Incredible

I just finished watching Steve Jobs announcement last week about iPhone OS 4. I watched as he introduced 1,500 new developer APIs (I suspect that's messages or methods not classes) and 100 new user features. Chief among the new user features, which is what really matters to users after all, were seven improvements: Multi-tasking, Folders, "Better Email", iBooks, Enterprise, Game Center, and iAd.

iBooks and "Better Email" were kind of no brainers. Obviously, they are going to extend iBooks to the other iPhone devices and mail has been in serious need of improvement for a while. In terms of usability the big stories are Multi-tasking and Folders. The way in which multi-tasking is to be implemented is brilliant in my opinion. It doesn't give 3rd party app developers carte blanche which may piss off developers but who cares as long as it doesn't allow a 3rd party app to run wild on my iPhone. Personally, I think they nailed multi-tasking perfectly for this first round. Folders was implemented so elegantly - just as was cut-n-paste - that it is, hands down, one of the best touch features I've seen this year.

The really big news, in terms of business opportunity, were Game Center and iAd. I've been playing around with a game idea for a while. The one thing that was slowing me down was how to make it possible for players to challenge each other to games, see their status compared to other players, win awards and so on. Game Center provides all this automatically. I don't know what it will cost to utilize Game Center from a 3rd party application, but I know its going to be a lot cheaper than developing all those features myself.

iAd has implications so large it deserves a blog post dedicated to it - sadly I don't have the time for that - I shouldn't even be taking the time to write this blog entry. If you are looking for the next big consulting opportunity look no further than iAd. The implementation is brilliant - its as smart as Google Ad Words but its totally different captures a different kind of market. As Steve Jobs says the demographics of the iPhone audience is simply amazing not to mention the potential for laser like focus of ads and, unlike Ad Words, front stage opportunities for advertisers. Where Google presents adds as very lightweight and unnoticed text links, iAd is subtle but can be engrossing without being in-your-face. iAd is going to be huge and its going to make HTML 5.0 mainstream. Watch out Adobe this is going to be your greatest challenge yet.

You can call me an Apple Fan Boy if you like - I don't care about that label. I don't like everything Apple does (personally I think customer service kind of sucks), but you can't look at iPhone OS 4 and not be impressed. If there is one technology company that defined personal computing in the 20 century it was Microsoft, but the 21st Century belongs to Apple.

Update 4-14-2010

Where I see brilliance and opportunity, the Valleywag see's evil. Read this interesting article, "The Dark Side of Steve Jobs".