iPhone and iPad was one of the hot stories in the past few years. There were billions of search queries in most of popular search engines and millions of both online and offline articles in blogs, magazines and newspapers. Also there were billions of status updates in facebook and tweets. Those facts indicate the impact these magical consumer electronic products have made on human civilization. The major contributing factor to success of these products was their operating system which is iOS. It gave a solid, streamlined and user-friendly interfaces and functionalities to the end-user with the maximum entertainment experience of using a multi-point touch screen. Most importantly it gave a flexible platform for the application developers to develop highly creative applications for iPhone and iPad with maximum hardware access including camera, accelerometer, GPS and touch screen. As a result there was millions of application in apple app store for iPhone and iPad which contributed to its success and market domination. iOS was continuously evolving with new features and providing more facilities to the application developers. Recently Apple released iOS 4.3 beta version for developers which made an active discussion again around the globe.
New Features
Multi-Touch Gestures For iPAD
There were many touch screen mobile devices in market, yet iPhone was one of the most prominent out of all mainly due to its amazingly fast responsiveness and multi point sensitivity. iOS is giving support to use this capability to deliver an unmatched multimedia experience to users. Along with this advance hardware and software, developers can come up with more creative ideas like ‘Gestures’. In here the software captures the special and unique movement using touch screen to trigger commands. Now with the advancement of iOS 4.3 they have come up with multi touch gestures which are specially designed for iPAD. It allows the users to minimize and maximize multi task bar, switch between applications etc. using four or five finger touch gestures.
Hardware Rotation Lock
Hardware rotation is one of the most attractive features in both iPhone and iPad provided by iOS with the aid of its accelerometer. The hardware was sensitive enough to capture even a slight variation of angle of the device relative to gravitational field and it was good enough even to play a car game using it as a controller. However, at some instances user was required to switch off the screen rotation and they were using hardware switch in iPad. In iOS 4.2 it was only a mute button and many of the users requests to let them choose the functionality of the hardware switch. As a result in iOS 4.3 user can select whether the hardware switch need to be mute switch or rotation lock switch which will be very useful to the iPad users.
AirPlay
This was one of most prominent features in iOS 4.2 which allowed user to send a stream of media which may include video, audio or photo to another AirPlay enabled device. However, it was enabled for built in application. In iOS 4.3, it’s going to give the same facility to developers, so they can use AirPlay in their own application to make them more attractive to the users. The limitation for developers when they are using AirPlay is not yet defined according to my research and I hope they will give maximum. That was one of the catchy points in iPhone development that they give lots of freedom to developers to use OS features and hardware unlike in previous dominant platforms like J2ME
Camera Effects
There were unofficial reports which contain some details about new camera effect in iOS 4.3. The camera in iPhone is one of most discussed hardware in it. There were lots of complains about its quality and incapability in the early stage. However it supported many software applications to deliver a high quality multimedia experience to its users. With the improvement of hardware, the camera also came a long way. Currently the ‘I’ devices are equipped with high quality cameras even with front camera for video conferencing. The iOS 4.3 will provide extended support for those hardware capabilities along with more camera effects in future.
Video Scrubbing Options
Most of the portable video playback devices doesn’t provide video scrubbing feature, just play and stop. In case you need to quickly go through a video to get an idea, it will be difficult or may be not possible. However, iOS was providing video scrubbing manually where you can drag the curser in video play back time line. In iOS 4.3 you have more options. By dragging down the finger in video playback time line you can switch between few scrubbing modes and current mode will be displayed under the time line.
In addition to above features iOS 4.3 will be equipped with more user interface advancement like icon arrangement, onscreen keypad improvement, and extended support for retina display. Further, it will be having options like 10 times SMS tone play, ping restriction and HTTP live streaming statistics.
Evolution of iOS
In the early time when 1st iPhone introduced, iOS was an inferior operating system for mobile devices compared to other operating systems available in the market in that time, including Symbian and Windows. Top of all in that time it didn’t even have very basic functionalities like multi tasking. However, due to its exceptional user interfaces and multimedia capabilities it survived. The huge success of iPhone was defined by the ‘Apple’ name itself and its exceptional hardware capabilities including multi point touch screen and accelerometer. But today thing are way better, iOS came a long way adding more and more functionalities in to that. Now it’s having multi tasking, extended application support, improved hardware accessibility to 3rd party application and great developers support. I wouldn’t hesitate to say, today iOS is way better than Symbian in many aspects. However, the major competitor of iOS, Android OS is out there growing fast too.
Future Market Impact
Apple iPhone and iPad has already made a phenomenal impact on market point of view on mobile devices. They actually redefined the previous standards and showed ‘This is how a mobile device should be!’ They made billions of dollars worth sales and dominated the market. In the meantime they developed themselves as well, both in software and hardware side. Now they present iOS 4.3 and they gave multi-point touch screen, accelerometer and retina display before. Those things make evident that they are the best and on top of the market. But are they really? Android OS is giving a silent yet significant challenge to iOS showing the strength of open source community. It’s also equipped with more and advance applications and features. Further, it’s also having a Software Development Kit released for developers which is building a huge development community around it. Most importantly it’s using the language JAVA which is the most popular according to TIOBE index. It comes as open source so its evolution is not decided by one company. It comes with many devices from many manufactures which will give a wide selection and features to its users. Hence, it takes leaps ahead in most aspects which will directly affect the market share. However, the most important factor which will decide the existence of any application of hardware would be the community and culture it will develop among its users. There is no argument that ‘Apple’ is the best in there with their ‘i’ culture where Android is nowhere near. So it is going to be a tight game and current stats say that Android is growing faster. No matter what, end of the day consumers will get the best product for cheaper price as a result of any market war.
References
- Patel, N. (2011, January 12). iOS 4.3 beta arrives for devs, brings AirPlay video support to apps, personal hotspot and customizable iPad side switch (update: video!). Retrieved January 19, 2011, from www.engadget.com: http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/12/ios-4-3-beta-arrives-for-devs-brings-airplay-video-support-to-a/
- Viticci, F. (2011, January 11). Apple Releases iOS 4.3 Beta, Here’s What’s New. Retrieved January 19, 2011, from www.macstories.net: http://www.macstories.net/news/breaking-apple-releases-ios-4-3-beta/
- Woods, B. (2011, January 13). Apple rolls out iOS 4.3 SDK to developers. Retrieved January 19, 2011, from www.zdnet.co.uk: http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/tech-tech-boom-10017860/apple-rolls-out-ios-43-sdk-to-developers-10021483/
Tags: #Apple #iOS