How 'bout them folders?
The new Folders feature works as advertised. It's a simple matter to cram up to a dozen apps into a single icon-based container by holding and dragging them over first one app icon, then the folder that doing so has created. And although the folder is originally named with the category of the first app you drag over another app to form the folder, you can easily rename folders.
Left: folders can be renamed and can contain up to 12 apps
Right: A folder gets the category name of the first app dropped into it, but apps' categories don't need to match
To access any app in a folder, you merely tap on the folder and it opens up on your home screen. Launch an app by tapping it, or remove it from the folder by holding and dragging it onto the home screen. To delete a folder, just remove apps from it — when there's only one left, the folder disappears, and the app regains its original icon.
We'll dig deeper into the iOS 4 for a more-comprehensive review in the future. There's a lot more to explore: a unified mailbox, creating iPod playlists on the fly, iPhoto-based Faces and Places functions, built-in spell-checking, claimed improvements in photos and videos, and more.
And, of course, the iAds mobile-advertising platform, which is scheduled to go live on July 1.
But for now we'll leave you with one puzzling annoyance: although you now have the capability to choose wallpaper for both your lock screen and your home screen, we discovered that photos that looked just fine and dandy in iPhone OS 3.x now look like fuzzy crap in iOS 4.
We'll try reloading them from iPhoto when we get home, where we store all of our digital memories, and include our results in a future update. ®
Bootnote
One of the reasons that our installation process took so long was that the first 15 minutes or so were wasted on a failed download attempt. As the download continued — as this series of successive progress bars shows — the estimated remaining time steadily increased, then the download simply gave up the ghost.
Apple's servers were hammered by fanbois furiously attempting to score their free copy of iOS 4.
Apple's iOS 4 beams into unprepared world
COMMENTS
Arrrrggggghhhh
Please can we put a stop to these inane 'my [insert name of device] has been able to do this since [insert date I downloaded a hacked ROM for xdadevs]' comments?
Fine, so the N900 can do lots of things. But it's a shite smartphone. The thing weighs more than an iPad.
If the N900 was so fecking great, how come the only place I've ever seen one is actually at Nokia? Mostly because most people don't want to look like a dick holding a small computer up to their faces.
You may love it. You may also love recompiling your own kernel and furious onanism. But please, can you stop with these pointless comments?
Wow... that was quick.
While I accept that the iPhone is really popular and does a lot of interesting stuff, I am always amazed by what it can't do. For example, setting the wallpaper, setting a song from the media library as a ringtone, create playlists on the go and so on. These are things that I assumed pretty much every phone in that class would be able to do. Many phones have been doing it for a long time, so in fact it is conspicuous by it's absence. if I got an iPhone, not being able to do those things would surprise me.
Now maybe people don't miss those things. Maybe they are not important to you. Maybe a lot of people don't use them. Maybe other manufacturers have something to learn here - in that it is worth taking everything out then adding it back later for a premium.
But to be blunt, if you are going to talk about exciting new feature X you have to expect that some people will wish to point out that feature has already been done. Apple often claim to have re-invented the wheel every time that an update is made, other people seem to be frustrated / bemused by the way that people buy into this - getting excited about something that everyone else has been doing for a long time.
What's your opinion the Nokia version of cover flow, on the upcoming N8? Let me guess... the important point is that you iPhone has been able to do that since...
Get real
Virtually every smartphone fresh from a box can do everything the iPhoney can and more. No need to hack anything; that is really only required to circumvent what Apple doesn't think you should be doing on the iPhoney.
A good counter
All those "my 'phone has been doing that years" comments are a useful counter to the hype every time Apple adds something that's been around for years but gives it a new name so it will appear they invented it.
And it's not just with the iPhone.. Remember "spaces" ... a crippled version of virtual desktops that Linux had for years?
And then "there's firewire" and "airport" ...
BTW, a neighbour of mine has never used WiFi because, "I never go near an airport!"
Is Required
I'm tempted to tell you that I've seen your not so beautiful girlfriend naked, numerous times, but I wont.
I'll leave it to the rest of our football team to tell you themselves individually.
