Apple announce iPhone OS 4.0

The media, hardware, and development beast that Apple has become has released a promo for the iPhone OS 4.0. http://www.apple.com/iphone/preview-iphone-os/ The developer beta is also launched, so dev folks can start ripping the lid off the new OS and see what joy can be found from the new API calls.

It is exciting, and hopefully will contain some hidden toys that the dev community can blow our minds with.

Features include:

• Better multitasking, especially for third party apps (hooray).
• Better email (its not bad now, but needs a few fixes).
• And all sorts of security improvements, with details to follow.
• Book reader; meh.

What strikes me is that this is for second and third generation iPhones only, not the first generation of iphones. Apple – What the hell!

My phone is a 1st gen, jail-broken to work in Australia, and as a very early adopter and advocate of Apple’s iPhone I’m miffed. This is a dark cloud of rain on my poor battle worn iPhone, and basically makes the device’s retirement a certainty after this is released.

The silver lining is that I’ve been looking for a reason to buy a new iphone, and this might just be it. But still, I’d like to know why an OS update cold not be applied to the 1st generation iphones; as far a hardware they are not that dissimilar.