Apple's iOS 4 Explored
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 22, 2010 3:27 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Apple
- iOS 4
- Gadgets
- Mobile
Grand Central Dispatch
While not listed as a marketing feature of iOS 4, Apple’s developer guide lists Grand Central Dispatch as a new feature of the OS. Those of you who are familiar with Mac OS X 10.6 will know Grand Central Dispatch as a task management/thread spawning core that aims to simplify multithreaded development while boosting thread utilization on platforms. The developer focuses on splitting up tasks in a sensible fashion rather than juggling n-number of threads and GCD deals with spawning the appropriate number of threads for the system.
This is of course a non-issue on any current iPhone, including the new 4th generation model, but it does make sense for Apple to introduce it now. While the iPhone 4 is a single core/single thread device, the 5th generation iPhone will almost certainly have two cores. The ramp to multithreading on mobile devices will be much quicker than what we saw on desktop PCs, mostly thanks to the fact that the leap on the PC is largely complete.
With Hyper Threading and other SMT technologies on the horizon for smartphone SoCs it’s not far fetched to see the majority of high end smartphones capable of executing 2 - 4 threads in the next 3 years.
Resolution Independent Development
Everyone should know by now that the iPhone 4 will have a ridiculously dense screen with over 600,000 pixels in an area the same as the past three iPhones. The 960 x 640 resolution is an even 2x increase in both directions compared to the previous iPhones, however developers shouldn’t have to do anything different to target their apps to the various iPhone revisions.
Apps draw to a virtual screen which is then mapped to the physical screen by the OS. Resolution, at least on the iPhone, doesn’t appear to be a concern of the developer. Obviously apps and games with higher levels of detail will take advantage of the iPhone 4’s available resolution but a re-write or any modifications to existing apps aren’t necessary.
Game Center
Apple made two bold announcements at its iOS 4 unveiling: iAds and the iOS Game Center. The former went after Google, the latter, Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony.
The iOS Game Center is essentially Xbox Live for Apple iOS devices. Users will be allowed to create their own online identities (similar to Xbox Live profiles) and can play with or against one another with matchmaking, track achievements, chat with one another and basically do anything you’d want to do in an online gaming service. Eventually all iOS games will use and support the Game Center, just like there’s some amount of Xbox Live integration with all Xbox 360 games today.
When I first saw Unreal Engine running on the iPod Touch I mentioned that within 3 - 5 years we’d have the power of an Xbox 360 in a device the size of an iPhone. By introducing the Game Center early on, Apple is creating the foundation for what it ultimately hopes the iOS platform will turn into. Apple also has an advertising platform built in should it want to sell in game ads, hmm...
The Game Center wasn’t ready for launch with iOS 4 however developers are given full access to it. I’d expect a follow up launch later this year once it’s ready.
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jigglywiggly - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
I haven't used my iphone 3g in a while. I have been using the Droid and HTC EVO 4g.These features have all been implemented better in Android anyway lawl.
Rnair - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
I wonder why the other sites are not as objective! I understand IOS 4 and its pros and cons a bit better now :).medi01 - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
I could only imagine how "objective" other sites are.Anand's site doesn't dare to display iSomethings in a bad light. Check recent article on android devices,
iphone is visible next to android phones, when it has advantage, but "incidentally dissapears" when it would look terrible (screen contrast).
What a shame... :(
deputc26 - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
Yeah i noticed the selective presence of the iphone in that android review as well.Affectionate-Bed-980 - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
You mean Anandtech only knows phones that are sold in the US? The rest of the phones fail to receive coverage. We all know how biased and limited the US cell phone market is. It only glances at part of the industry and only reveals part of the entire market. There's much more out there. Thank goodness for the N900 review, but honestly, if you want to do smartphones, do it like other sites do. Cover EVERY phone.medi01 - Wednesday, June 23, 2010 - link
No, being oriented to a particular market is ok for me.But showing iSomething when it has advantage (even when it is irrelevant), but "incidentally" hiding it (the author explained it like: "oh, it was probably in my pocket", that explains it, right?), when it sucks balls (contrast, for starters) is a shame.
So it seems that we have Mr Jobbs corporation, that sells a fraction of Nokia's market share, but that enjoys free, positive or very positive but god forbid negative, coverage in press.
I recall anand's site as rather objective (even though they seem to aggressively punch AMD quite a bit more than deserved recently, it was rather subtle, compared to what other sites do), so it's VERY frustrating, that it also bends to a Mr Apple's will.
:(((
Rnair - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
I agree that the smartphone is getting more and more complicated. Good for us teck geeks :).But, Is it time to get back to the roots and introduce a version that is more basic, anyone for an iphone mini (an ala kin) ?
eirikma - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
...then windows 95 is a cluster operating sytem. Even old versions of symbian does better than that.Any smart phone user who've tried using a computer knows that there are limits to how many thing you can do at once. When things stop working, you have to close down something. It is actually that simple - you don't have to "invent" absolutely everywhere.
SkullOne - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
Yeah but this is Apple we're talking about. If they didn't invent or improve upon it then it sucks. ;) My Droid has never run out of memory with its multitasking and I have it doing quite a bit at times.Apple didn't do multitasking "the right way." They did it half-assed and claim that it's magically delicious.
All I can say is it's about time iOS finally caught up to Android...oh wait they're still behind because Android 2.2 is upon us bringing JIT compiler and Flash 10.1.
I'll keep my rooted, overclocked Droid with Froyo ROM thanks. Hope iPhone users enjoy iAds. AdMob in apps on my old iPhone 3G drove me insane, glad my Droid doesn't have that problem. It's nice actually having control over the hardware you pay for. ;)
sigmatau - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
Multitasking is not at all what I expected and am very dissapointed. This is one feature I have been waiting for several months.I found the memory problem myself using Safari and multiple tabs. Some of the multiple tabs would dump whenever you scrolled through them, and then all of them would dump when you would switch to another app and back to Safari. I cleared out all the "multitasking" apps and opened up Safari again. I reloaded all tabs and they stayed fully loaded when I switched to a system monitor app to look at my memory.
Before clearing out the "multitasking" apps I had 5mb of free RAM. After clearing out the "multitasking" apps, I had 125mb free. They really, really need to give you the option to chose what to multitask. Why do I need Phone, Settings, Contacts, Clock to go in the "multitasking" bar? It makes no sense. Apple is 1 year behind others in implementing multitask and it surely is not as good as the competition.
I wont even go into being pissed that they haven't fixed the basic phone alert functions and other simple things you could do with most other free phones never mind smart phones.