Tomorrow’s sneak peak at the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad v4.0 (Can we just call these devices, as a group, iPX? Novell won’t mind!) has a lot of expectations hanging on it. No doubt Apple will surprise us with some technology we hadn’t even considered, but there are a few expectations out there. Here’s a list of things I can think of:
1. Multi-tasking. Of course the iPhone already multi-tasks with some of its own apps (music, email, phone, etc.) but developers are looking for Apple to allow some of their third party apps. The most obvious are music apps like Pandora and Spotify as well as instant messaging/VoIP apps like AIM and Skype.
2. Printing. Seems Apple has future plans, now would be as good a time as any.
3. iAds for developers. It sounds like developers are going to have access to Apple’s Quattro service, perhaps directly from the SDK. That will make developing free apps even easier. Tomorrow? Why not?
4. Video Chat. We found the icons in the OS before Apple deleted them. We know they are coming. Apple might not mention this because no iPx hardware supports it yet, but there is a good chance we’ll see it in the next OS.
5. Some iPad 3.2 features like Bluetooth keyboard and the ability to save documents and sync them to your Mac might find their way to iPhones. Also maybe watching Youtube HTML5 video embedded in websites?
6. Tethering. Maybe, just maybe. Maybe Apple makes a way for AT&T to slow down tethering enough not to destroy its network.
7. Mapping in iPhoneOS is sorely lacking and one of the few areas Apple has fallen behind Android. I’d like to see some more layering, voice search for car, turn by turn and anything else they can come up with from the folks at PlaceBase.
8. With more services like Brightcove and Vimeo offering HTML5 versions of their videos, Apple may have a solution similar to what they offer to embedded Youtubes.
9. iWork is on the iPad, perhaps we’ll see some of iLife’s photo and video editing apps get touch versions.
10. It is probably too early but we could see new iPhone hardware, especially if it is needed to explain some of the iPhone 4’s new software (like video conferencing).
Some other stuff I just thought of/remembered:
– A dashboard/homescreen
– More Facebook integration (lots have said the invite looks ‘Facebooky’)
– unified inbox in Mail.app
– wireless syncing to the MobileMe cloud, which in turn syncs back to Mac
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