iOS (previously named iPhone OS) is Apple’s flagship mobile operating system developed primarily for the iPhone. It is also the default (and only supported) operating system of the iPod Touch and the iPad.
It is derived from Mac OS X, with which it shares the Darwin foundation, and is therefore a Unix-like operating system by nature. In iOS, there are four abstraction layers: the Core OS layer, the Core Services layer, the Media layer, and the Cocoa Touch layer. The operating system uses roughly 500 megabytes of the device’s storage.
Apple’s [AAPL] latest version of their iPhone OS, now called iOS 4 will be available to download later today. In order to install iOS 4 on your iPhone or iPod Touch you will need to download the latest version of iTunes, iTunes 9.2.
Once you have downloaded the latest version of iTunes, make a manual backup of your iPhone in iTunes, right click on your iPhone in the menu and press backup.
If you do this now, before you download iOS 4 you will be able to install iOS 4 as soon as it has downloaded. iOS 4 will work with the iPhone 3GS and 3G, although not all features will be available on the iPhone 3G.
The new features in iOS 4 include multitasking, which will allow you to run multiple applications at once, folders, which will let you organize your icons in different folders, for example you will be able to organize all your games in a ‘Games’ folder, or all your music applications in a ‘Music’ folder.
We have no exact time on when iOS 4 will be available to download, as soon as we get more information we will let you guys know.
At last, the latest major update for the iPhone and iPod Touch is available for download via iTunes, bringing with it such long-awaited features as multitasking, a unified e-mail inbox and home-screen app folders. Should you upgrade? Well, yeah, but don’t expect all your apps to start working in the background just yet.
The iOS 4 update went live on iTunes at about 1 p.m. Eastern, and upgrading your iPhone or iPod Touch to the new OS is a simple matter of syncing your handset with the iTunes desktop application; you should be prompted to download and install the upgrade a few seconds after attaching your iPhone to the connector cable. The entire process should could take anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes, depending on how long it takes to download the installation file (which is anywhere from about 290MB to more than 550MB in size, depending on the device you’re updating), so be patient.
iPhone 4 and iOS vs. Android: hardware features
With the fourth generation of Apple’s smartphone nearing release later this week, some buyers might be curious about alternatives that use Google’s Android OS, including the Motorola Droid, HTC/Google Nexus One, HTC Droid incredible, and HTC EVO 4G. Here’s how they compare in terms of hardware, part one of a series.
FOR MORE INFO:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/
06/21/iphone_4_and_ios_vs_android_hardware_features.html