iPhone OS 4 news coming Apr. 8 [updated]

"While other companies innovate, Apple just sticks a lowercase "i" infront of a product, and all the sheep run out to buy it, while all these "journalists" do nothing but jerk-off to their mediocre devices."

I'm sorry, but how is this a problem for you?

It's a free market—vote with your wallet, vote with your page views, and stop wasting bandwidth repeating what has been said a billion times already.

http://venturebeat.com/2009/03/17/iphone-30-event-30-million-sold-now-thats-a-game-platform/

Yes. iPhone OS fails...

:S

Well, every firmware update, games run even smoother on my (regular, :'( ) iPhone 3G, I wouldn't be surprised it it get's even better.

1. The free market hasn't existed in over 100 years. Apple couldn't survive in a 100% free market. The protections their company enjoys just by the tax code alone (startup companies would get crushed just trying to make sense of the taxes, let alone pay the ridiculous California costs) is tremendous, on top of other huge protections like being able to spread the regulatory costs over a larger business base and flooding the patent office (free markets loathe patents) with tons of barely thought out concepts that eliminate potential competition.

2. One of the great features of a free market is consumer criticism, which is just one of the myriad of ways that allows it to function so well. If people don't come out and speak out about how Apple products are inferior to other alternatives and just pretty products with a great marketing campaign behind it, Apple may actually sell more of their junk. That would be a travesty of humanity.

I already have a cell phone and an mp3 player. I bought an iPod touch for the games.

Anyways, just to be sure....will this new firmware be available for the iTouch? And is it coming out on the 8th, or is it being announced then?

Do not care at all. the Iphone could brick its self as far as im concerned. Until apple stops making everything a one way street where you do it their way with their connector with their software....i just dont care.

I really want multitasking, but if the iPad doesn't have it, I can't imagine one week later they announce it for the iPhone.

So in lieu of multitasking, I really want something non-gaming related, a lock screen with real information on it. Bring dashboard widgets to the homescreen.

My feeling is any new features are 3GS and new model only, and the 3G will go the way of the original model. Not because Apple is screwing those people per se, but because the 3G is already limping along since the 3.0 update. Multitasking, if that is in fact the news, might cripple the 3G (further).

A confirmation that it is coming to Verizon and flash.

Yeah thanks for clarifying what is and isn't a free market. But my point concerning it still stands: no one is getting force-fed Apple products. Everyone has the opportunity to buy Windows/Android/JooJoo/etc. People who are vehemently against a brand (and for THAT argument, please see the book on fanboyism) seem to have this ill-conceived notion that everyone who buys it must be complete idiots.

Protip1: For every brand and product, there are uninformed "idiots" that purchase it. Protip2: That notion is just simply untrue.

I've seen the exact situation with the Nintendo Wii, and considering this is Joystiq, I shouldn't have to explain what is going on there. What is one-hundred percent fact is that there are some people who seem the Wiimote and think, oooh waggle! instant buy! That is why Move and Natal are being introduced. (See parallel: iPhone is why Android and Windows Phone 7 exist.) And then there are the vast majority of Wii sales that have gone out simply for practical reasons: family reasons, nostalgia reasons, fitness reasons, you name it. Although gaming consoles isn't my focus at where I work, I've seen enough different types of situations to understand why customers buy one console of the other.

The same thing happens when I sell a Zune, or a Sansa, or whatever. Those people simply found the value proposition of those products better for them (ALONE) than an iPod. It doesn't offend me (considering I own iPod product). It's what works for them.

And re: criticism, the keyword is here is "constructive". And trying to go on a holy war against one brand or product is ridiculous, and pure and simple fanboyism: it's reasonable to be unimpressed with a product because it doesn't fulfill what you're looking for, but believing everyone else must conform to your opinion despite a wide range of differing needs and desires is not only immature, but incredibly disrespectful.

Of course, this is the internet, where etiquette was thrown out the window long ago.

I, too, thought the 8th was Thursday. April 8, 2011 is on a Friday, however.

"Other (enter in the comments below)"

"The ability to throw it down the cliff and never hear anything about iPhone OS again. Seriously, eff those guy."

I just wish that there wasn't a 30 second lag every time I try to friggin do something, I'm getting pretty sick of this phone, fastest iPhone my ass

tether, damn it.

For the love of God add Flash. HTML5 is nice but its not mainstream yet.

I have to learn to start avoiding Apple articles. Some of you guys really need to relax, it's ridiculous.

Some of these features sound very appealing, especially the multitasking, and maybe the video chatting would be interesting. Although Ill still wait until the os 4.0 is jailbroken before updating.
www.freegadgets-laptops.com

Support for controller attachments. A decent D-Pad would be nice....

Don't they normally charge for firmware updates? :/
Aren't they going to charge for this one too? :/

God, I hate apple.

4 Shadowing ha Very Clever

I think Speech to text needs to be on the new iphone. There would be nothing better than getting a text and then holding a speech button and speaking my reply instead of typing.

I'm pretty sure it's Thursday. April 8th=Thursday

A standard USB-ish gamepad protocol so 3rd party manufacturers can start making game controllers that works in all games. So tired of touchscreen controls!!!

How about being able to search the calendar back more than 1 year..say, like Palm has always been able to do, in every iteration of their OS. C'mon Apple, aren't you better than Palm...Aren't ya?

You know what I want? Something dead simple in the iPhone. Something that every other damn cell phone has. Wait for it.... the ability to set custom sounds for incoming emails and text messages for Gods sake! A Shitty 5 year old Nokia phone can do this! Why can't the iPhone?!?!?!?! I'm forced to jailbreak it just for this purpose. I hate the jailbreak process and waiting for a new one to come out with every upgrade. Just let me assign custom sounds I can sync in iTunes and let me use them! How hard is that?!

I'm guessing the MAIN feature Apple will announce will be an almost-multitasking capability based on app state saving. The switching component of this feature might even be called "sneak peak" or something similar since it's not going to be nearly as cool as Expose.

They'll probably hint at some new iPhone models. Tell us that iPhoneOS 4 won't run on 1st gen iPhones (or even 3G iPhones) and tell us that we'll ALL have to pay for the upgrade. Why do we love this company again? I guess we'll know on Friday.

1) Multi-tasking. I want to be able to listen to Last.fm while reading Tweets.

2) Unified inbox for email accounts (like Apple Mail on OS X).

3) Using ringtones you've created for things other than phone calls, like txt messages, calendar alerts, and so forth.

No one yet has said FM tuner finally unlocked? I've been dying to use this since the day I bought it

Custom themes! nothing else :) I want make my iPhone look what i like! :)

App limits go the way of the highway: No more limits on how many pages. Or at least if that's not possible, be able to manage and move around the ones that aren't visible.

Make web shortcuts even after the screens are full: Adding to the last one, this should be able to do that too.

Google product support: I mean, COME ON

Google maps upgrade: The Android version has turn-by-turn and a bunch of other new features. Why don't we have them?

Better resource management: I hate having to restart the phone all the time just because I have a ton of apps.

I'd like to see flash on my iPhone to be honest.

One friends list for all games accross the system. So ya I guess like xbox live.