Apple Releases New iPhone 4 Software and SDK. New Features Presented

Apple has continued their usual methods in releasing new betas of their iPhone software with the distribution of iPhone OS 4: Beta 3 and the corresponding SDK. The download was made available to developers through the iPhone Dev Center on Tuesday, May 4. Apple has been releasing new version of the beta to help aid them in ironing out the wrinkles of the software before its public release scheduled for this summer, which is just around the corner and is usually made available a couple weeks before the new generation iPhone, and will also be enabled for the iPad in the fall of 2010. As usual, developers have already been combing through the iPhone software to see what new features and functions have been added.

In the latest beta of the iPhone OS, it has been revealed that numerous features have been added to the multitasking interface. From the screenshot above, Apple has added controls to the iPhones iPod function. Also included, they have added a dedicated software button for locking the screen orientation of the iPhones current state. The controls are accessed in the multitasking user interface the same way Spotlight is accessed on the homepage of the iPhone. Simply by flicking to the right of the interface, the controls can be accessed allowing users to pause, play, fast forward, skip forward, rewind and skip back. Its also accompanied with the iPod icon familiar to the one seen on the softwares homepage front for quick access to the iPod built-in function.

Screen orientation locking of the software has been a very requested function of the iPhone OS. First implemented in the iPhone OS 3.2, which the iPad solely runs on, and now the iPhone OS 4, locking of screen position on the iPhones display has been asked from any iPhone OS users, particularly when the user wants to lay-down or recline.

Another characteristic that has been added tot he iPhone OS 4 interface is the ability to quit applications that are running in the background more efficiently. Previously to the update, the end-user was required to hold an app’s icon until it entered in it’s secondary mode or “wiggle” mode, then they would press the badge with the minus character to close the app. Afterwards, the user would have to initiate wiggle mode again to quit another selected application. With the new beta, Apple has enabled the ability for the user to quit multiple applications with having to invoke wiggle mode for each individual application. The function has become highly requested in just a short amount of time being that developers and testers of the iPhone OS beta say that it was awfully time consuming of using the previous method compared to this newly implemented one.

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